(Two Towers Rohan King Guy) So, it has come to this. Jo March vs Galadriel, with the Time Traveler’s Wife’s Husband guy: an epic space opera without singing, directed by ~Joe Wright~, Joe Wright. (shakes head, to facilitate thought, then continues) You have so much talent, JW: such a big, Big brain…. You have shown that England can hide her tyranny, in the world of Gen X—and, perhaps, beyond…. (totally awesome delivery) But can you bring the people, justice, as well? (looks at the camera like he’s the King of Rohan, which, of course: he is!) Whatever happens: I will tell the people, the truth! (puts on helmet, mounts horse, etc.) 

…. (Jo March/Artemis vs the, reindeer, I guess) 

That girl can run fast, bro. 

…. Father Mars is a tough guy. 

…. Such a quiet movie, right. Warriors need a lot of quiet time. Time to commune with the Spirit of Death and the Eternal. (nods) 

…. It is a sort of patriarchy, right. Woman is superior to wild beast; man is leader of (superior to) woman, right. 

Although obviously it’s an unusual flavor of patriarchy. (Much like much of Greek mythology and all that.) 

Of course, the actual learning is quite pedantic: it would be a lot better if they ~were~ musing on The Nature of Life and Death, than…. School-crap, you know. Which is the right answer to my meaningless question? A, B, C, D, or E? I’m bigger than you, you know: you have to answer my ridiculous questions! 

lol. Good times…. They say. “These are the best years of your life.” ~(look of abject fear), lol 

…. (deliberates) I don’t know. I mean, she has the Grimm’s Fairy-Tales German picture-book, juxtaposed with, be prepared to wake up and fight your father play-acting the assassin, right, but…. Why? Why be a spy? Why ~not~ just (carefully memorized details of non-spy cover life), right? 

It seems like the earlier you introduce motive, the more time you leave yourself to…. Twist it round and round, and be deceived, and reinvent it, right?…. Nobody JUST practices thwarting assassination attempts, just for the hell of it, right. That would be crazy. 

…. (factoids vs the girl) OMG, did you seriously bring only a goddamn encyclopedia set, and not Shakespeare, or some real book, right…. 

…. She’s very passive, in a certain, way, Artemis. It’s like, she can will a death-battle with a woman, but she can’t even get cross with her father, right…. 

(patriarchs describing the movie over an expensive dinner, lol) “It’s brilliant!” “Bravo!”, etc…. ~lol 

…. So Athena is going after Artemis…. 

But yeah: I’ve heard about warrior stoicism, but this is cray cray, dog: battle of the statues, right…. (smirk) Course, that’s what people think that the gods are, right. Statues for Lord Grantham’s estate, no…. 

…. I don’t understand why you would do that, if your idea was ‘stay and wait to get captured’, right…. Very…. Unlike Middle Earth (original sense: not the Upper or the Lower World), right, very teenager-y; it doesn’t seem…. Real. 

(shrugs) It’s better than Joe’s movies “Pan” and “Cyrano”…. But not by much. 

…. She’s surprised that that’s how it worked out. Is she…. Not well? Was there a triggering incident? It seems like there was no triggering incident. 

(Joe Wright) (annoyed) Just wait: I’m gonna wait until the last five minutes—then I explain everything. It’ll be like a five minute movie, with an hour and a half plus set-up. Capisce? 

~I’m not one of your operatives; I don’t speak French. (laughing) 

…. It’s very, external, right; (external = male, lol…. Joe!). Like, it’s “About a Girl”, right; (is Hugh Grant in it?), but it’s like…. Like, it’s a guy, a very masc-y guy…. Putting the girl through his corn grinder, right…. 

Joe Wright’s movies: I think a safe assumption might be: they’re always interesting to watch, basically, but they’re never good. Never THAT good, anyway…. 

This is like, Joe Wright being a man, basically: he needs this girl to put under a microscope, to do that, right…. And I love the man, sometimes; the man is like wind, and fire…. 

But the man also likes to run this computer program in his head, right, like: “Warning: danger. Do not become involved with life”, basically. 

…. (running around with a gun) The story doesn’t seem “compelling” to me, as the trite designation has it: (not for lack of trying to compel, right)—but Joe Wright movies—I don’t know exactly who is responsible for these things, but I guess ultimately it’s him, in the visual sense, they are always very visually compelling, I think…. Always like expensive decor, (that somehow is appropriate for a man, right)…. Always very visually appealing: always in this, “Joe Wright” kind of way, right. 

It has entertainment value, I would certainly say. 

…. Very visual movies. Like one of those masc-y people, who either silently dread or almost visually loathe chit-chat, right…. 

…. (trying to sound like a trite reporter) We’ve never been this divided, as a gendered population, right. (beat) What I mean is, we’ve always always been this divided…. (rambles on) 

…. It’s like, this girl obviously had something psychiatric going on with her, (maybe she is German, right, and/or an encyclopedia, and/or mentally ill), and they’re not even trying to get inside her head. 

(Joe Wright) (shhh) We’re gonna have some more aesthetic-type scenes: promise. 

…. (chuckles) It’s like she’s too masculine to be a spy; I’m going to have to tell Hermes about this girl. Or…. Well, I feel like the Morrigan wouldn’t find her amusing. They find the whole thing a little…. Off. They don’t have the same sense of humor, Hermes has about everything. 

…. Like, all the characters are too much, right. There’s like the mentally ill girl, the office bitch girl, and the teen idol fan girl, but they’re all…. Stretched, you know. They’re all, too much, you know. They’re not real people. They’re not real girls. They’re some man’s caricatures of what girls are, right.

…. So many caricatures…. It’s like: an endless juxtaposition of caricatures, right…. If it was ironic, it would be quite funny. I don’t think it is funny, though: this movie really believes that this, is the way it is, right…. That’s the funny thing about propaganda: it’s only propaganda if you believe it. Stop believing it, you hit it big in comedy, right…. But then, you have to give up feeling serious, right. A sort of illness, seriousness…. 

…. Although the funny thing is: it’s not an adventure, because it’s not fun. It’s a comedy-drama, an observational piece. It’s like F. Scott Fitzgerald, as a movie, where people die, right…. It’s not like The Ballad of Azog the Unlikely, right: THAT was an adventure; you were meant to have FUN…. This is like, “Oh, a girl; girls are weird/different…. Let me put my thinking cap on, so I can figure out this strange extraterrestrial being, right….” (chuckles) So othering. 

…. (checks movie lists) Yes, it’s like “By the Sea” (2015), only people die and it doesn’t make sense, as like, an othering-tactic, right…. It’s not like LOTR, at all, right…. 

…. It’s like, I don’t know if we were in the same class and I missed a day, or maybe this was somebody I knew from work, but one time when my middle name was Azog, (I was unlikely, right)—I think it was at work, at Pathmark, in like the late 2000s, I was, 20 maybe—when you’re 20 you’re unlikely, right, you’re Azog, right, (if male, lol)—and anyway I was talking to this girl in a good class at school what she was learning, and it was about “othering”: making someone else alien, ~other~, and not like, another actor, (in the non-movie/stage sense), right: not another one who does—just, ~other~, right…. And it’s funny: because that’s Exactly how I treated her, right. You are so smart! So smart, so different! (I won’t tell you about your hair cut, but you’re sure not like me; right!) 

It’s like: wasn’t I smart, too….?…. lol?…. 

I can’t explain it. 

…. The soundtrack isn’t bad, exactly, but it’s this one-trick stuff that only plays when shit is going down. If what passes for social interactions, (perhaps an important part of being a spy?) is happening…. Silence. 

…. “I’m going to go now.” 

“Okay.”

At least, one scene, in this damn movie, was almost well done, at least by the protocols of this mad dash they’ve set up, right. 

…. “This is the sandman.” 

The German nightclub/assassin dude is a caricature, like all of the characters, right…. But he grows on you. 

No doubt. 

…. (people speaking German) 

(smirks) People shouldn’t speak German; it makes them sound too educated…. That’s my considered opinion, hahaha. 

…. —Do you have any children, lady? 

—No, because I’m a heartless bitch. I’m an antagonistic character; the audience isn’t supposed to like me. In these days, Man needs cautionary tales…. To be told…. 

…. The reference to actually going to some kind of Grimm’s Fairy Tale House in Berlin seems extremely contrived and generic, forced, you know—“we are girls, we like (strew of facts about Jakob Grimm or some crazy guy)”—but 95% of that scene—“We don’t know who you are, Hanna! But we are both girls! We are friends!”—is SURPRISINGLY good, for this movie, and Joe Wright, you know. 

…. (lots of action later) 

Well, next sitting it’ll be over, right: time for a little re-cap. Life lessons: 

—Men are bad. 

—Genetic engineering…. Action scenes…. Ah: go with the first one. 

lol: and I don’t mean that men are bad because they punch you in the face and shoot you with guns. Most men don’t do that. (Although it can be a very useful device in a story, right.) But yeah: men are bad…. Because they don’t see the truth, right. 

(Joe Wright) I understand what girls are like! 

~Where do you start with that, right?….

Still, it is amusing to see how something as contrived and irrational as an action scene can sorta—usually just, sorta, I feel like—be part of an entertaining and modestly not bullshit whole, right…. I mean, you come downstairs to eat Cheerios or whatever, and people are watching a movie, an action scene: it’s like…. What gods-forsaken bullshit is this, right. 

(shrugs) I don’t know. It is what it is. Which is full of lies, basically, about the human personality, but…. But one of the things hoomi does, is lie, right? 

…. (walks by book of quotations) (opens) I hope it’s by a woman! (It’s a quote by a famous male poet, about a fictional woman, and the quote is that her fathers from many generations back, or whatever: way on back, generation after generation, were all rich)

(nods) Men are bad, lol…. I am not a loyalist, my friends…. I’m a spy! A-hahaha…. 

…. But yeah: the whole father-daughter thing is kinda weird. I mean, they don’t even talk, practically, they just fight, theoretically together, so it’s like the maximum of masc-y emotional deadness, and not closeness, right. But Joe does want Hanna to be ~loyal~ to her father, right: even if she can’t be close to him…. I don’t know. I’ll never have kids, but of course, who, what male, right, wouldn’t want to have a lovely young female growing up, who has loved (and felt, loyal?) to him since the instant she came into existence, right…. But it isn’t good for her, even though it’s a sweet deal for him, it seems like to me. In an age when female individuals and female culture is devalued and its contribution to human consciousness is minimized: here’s Joe Wright saying, be loyal, little girl, to your father, the captain of the patriarchal family—and feel utterly alienated from the evil bitch feminist who represents all powerful women, especially that you aren’t connected to by the bands of “family”, that institution that everyone praises and no one thinks about critically, or asks to see a balance sheet about, right. 

…. The last sitting— (Joe Wright) (looks at watch) I should explain what the movie is about…. 

I found the emotional content especially sparse and nonsensical in that last thirty minutes. Lots of action…. And I don’t see the ending leading to what we’re implying that it means, right. 

But yeah: I just kinda watched through: I waited until the very end of the sitting to write, because there was less, that merited discussion…. And: to some extent, I was just kinda grateful, or, almost: it’s hard to say. I’m glad, almost, that we made a movie about a girl, right. Women are beautiful—and they’re beautiful all the time…. And believe it or not, they’d be beautiful, even without kitschy anti-feminism, and weirdo hyper-masculinity, and weirdo anti-abortion conspiracy theories, right…. Deluded pro-family-ism, right…. Women would still be beautiful without all that: because women are beautiful, all the time, right. 

They are even beautiful, when the men in the shadows, want them dead, right. Dead, like an animal. An inferior form of life, we’re told. 

(I suppose the real kick in the head, is that women would be beautiful, would be women…. Without men, right. {smiles} We think that we…. {shakes head} I don’t know what we think.) 

(shakes head) I take it back: it’s just as bad as “Pan”, right. We like white girls when we’re in Hawaii, or some crazy place like that. When we get to Fairy Tale Haus in Berlin, Germany, we tighten the screws, a little. 

(shrugs) And, it was also, in addition to being a movie about What Men Think of Women, it was also, in a certain sense, if you’ll forgive the deluded optimism, also…. a movie about a woman, right. 

(Re: Tolkien, etc.) 

This will probably be a lot of fun, right. Who says that we shouldn’t tell twelve-year-old white boys, and people who are twelve year old white boys at heart, that they aren’t far more important than they actually are, right? 

(15 seconds of 3.5 minutes of female screen time in movie) (your mom) Even the smallest white boy can change the future. 

Tolkien definitely isn’t Wagner, right. With Wagner there’s music, singing, love. In Tolkien a girl is either your weird girlfriend who brags that she’s Better Than You every time she scores a point against you in basketball, even though she makes 1/5 of the money you do—because that’s just your weird relationship dynamic, right—or else she’s your mom; or some kind of composite of the two: Protecter-Mom, right. (3 minutes of the 3.5 minutes of female screen time in the film, lol.) 

Wagner thought that women were an important part of the reproduction of patriarchy, right; Tolkien just didn’t have a use for them, basically. Didn’t Tolkien write somewhere that the dwarf population was only 1/3 female, and that the women often didn’t get married. “Slow population growth,” he noted—probably around Valentines’s Day, right. 

…. Wagner had forsaking love for the sake of power as a plot point: Tolkien just DID it, you know…. Although as soon as he married power, he started making noises about a divorce, right…. 

But yeah: who says that masc-y white boys can’t have fun. Answer: My mentally ill romantic former self of the early 2010s, ironically enough! It’s ok, though: I’ve grown since then. I know you don’t want me to ask for your take on me; I know you don’t want me to not know what to say, yet to say it anyway. 

It’s ok. 

But yeah: I agree with the concept of three “Hobbit” movies. Tolkien stories are long and complicated, and movies are short and simple; having three movies to a book like that is EQUITY, homies. Also might give Peter Jackson some leeway to play with it a bit, something that John R.R.T. wasn’t known to do, right. “First name? Pah! In my day: a man didn’t have a first name. He’s a man, you see?” 

I don’t, but…. That’s ok. Feel no obligation to explain. 

~But yeah, “The Hobbit” could easily be the better of the two stories, once you correct for the issue of length, right. Consider, first LOTR: 

(Gandalf) Grandson, I want to write a story to make people feel sorry for themselves, maybe get them in church. Any ideas? 

(Pippin) Grand-dad, just write about an evil magic artifact that “proves” that power is evil, and misery alone endureth. That’s a very depressing story—make lots of people feel sorry for themselves, right. (beat) Be sure to include lots of stuff about how the West is dying, and the East sure to conquer. 

(Gandalf) (nods) Karate Kid bad; short kid good. (tries to get up, fails) (beat) I’ll just rest here, a while. 

~There is something about England and littleness, right. When other countries go rogue, they become Greater: Greater Germany, Greater Whatever: and soon, you WILL be a part of it! But the more trad-style England is, the more it’s Little England, you know: does anyone really deserve to be part of England? Can anyone ever TRULY be worthy?…. Like, the little trad English man: little, small, proud, but not too powerful, a little deceitful, and perhaps a little timid, but…. Honest, you know. The honest weak man. Of England. 

~And of course, much of that remains in “The Hobbit”, (or was foreshadowed), but it’s a fundamentally better story, less ruined by what Nietzsche might call “the taint of moralism” or something like that. (And yes, yes: I know, Wagner, Nietzsche: don’t I know that Germans are a bad sort, that they got kicked out of the white race when they became Hitler, right? “Hitler is bad for white supremacy, young man, bad business….” Maybe Germans are…. Egyptian, right. Maybe they, used to, walk like an…. ~I’m sorry. I know not everybody likes all that, you know…. (your mom) Many of the great songs were written before I gave birth to you. Much that was known of them is lost, for none now live, who…. (realizes that there’s no way to end that sentence in a logical, correct way) (waves hands) Anyway…. ~Yeah: “The Hobbit”—we’re literally just talking about killing a dragon and grabbing his stuff, right…. 

And many a fine mansion in a magazine was built with dragon-bones, you know; many a wed couple was wed beneath the aegis of his wings…. 

I speak of general verities. 

…. (reads back of DVD) It’s like a coven—Thorin Oakenshield’s All-Male Coven, right…. 

May the Straight White Boy-Straight White Boy Romance, commence. lol. 

…. And yeah: I don’t know how I feel about the Great Enemy of England being the “Necromancer” right: John T isn’t exactly Sunday School education, or Edwardian manners—which probably counts for at least as much in many churches as anything else—but yeah, we have Gandalf, the Odinic Christ, right: but that’s “good” because it’s like the power and nobility of our warrior tribe, and the mystique of primitive masculinity, right…. “Necromancer” kinda implies, “pure paganism” (whatever that means), and reflect the fear of psychic powers…. (horror movie whisper) “he talks to dead people….” 

Basically, it suggests the background essentially being a Folk Christian king, preserving runic lore, or whatever, but also sallying out into the heath to slay the “heathen”, basically…. 

I’m not going to go into this: but it is funny how well Marxist memes and Tolkien personnel—people, at least—go together online, right. It’s like, would these two people, like each other…. Would embracing masculinity be enough to bring them together? 

Yeah. 

…. Ok….

Let’s see: Music by Howard Shore—respect…. 

…. “Frodo, I am a wise old male….” Cool. “The city was peaceful and prosperous” We’re taking bets on how long that keeps up, lol…. 

“And where sickness thrives, bad things will follow.” I agree, Socrates. “…. People died.” Yup. 

Why can’t I have another dress, honey. “Long ago, in the dragon times, the dragon Smog came, and….” Ok, I’m alive and that’s enough. Ok. Great. (walks out as he tells the whole twelve hour story) 

…. Some of these lines are really funny, omg…. 

…. Who wants to take bets there are no girls in this movie, lol…. Omg, he hides the valuable stuff before parties: guess he’s not married, is he…. It’s like a trench, only turned into a manor house: no need for girls, though…. 

…. Why Fehu: does he need money?…. 

But yeah: I’m always struck my how weird “my kind” is, right: the Race of Mars…. 

…. Life lessons: steal food, lol 

…. I’m glad I’m not really a male anymore, so to speak…. But yeah: that’s exactly what happens to me in tarot/rune readings, a lot…. Oh, Fehu means: lots of crap; come take it…. Like, it definitely helps you make sense of the ~past~, right…. (laughing cat emoji) 

…. But yeah: 

Odinic Christ: Do you want an adventure? 

Bilbo: No. 

Odinic Christ: Well, screw you; I’m going to die for you, someday. (carves rune for ‘good loot found here’) (wanders off, whistling suspiciously) 

…. Just trying to figure out: (a) why everyone is so pompous; I’ve been through bureaucracy meetings that were more exciting; (b) why this story makes sense: or is it just like…. “It’s impossible…. Hahaha, we did it: the writers were on our side” (back-clapping), and (c) why does anybody like Gandalf, and what does he do that’s at all sympathetic; he seems to remind me a “traitor” Druid counseling a chieftain how to bring Saxon pagans into line, more than anything else. 

…. Yeah, I mean: the folk music was good; the idea of a quest that spans more than one lifetime is good; but I just don’t like them, you know—they’re just pompous males…. Up, female hobbit extra in non-speaking role around minute 40: was I wrong? LOL 

…. The landscape shots are nice…. 

…. “And then, Azog the Afri—“ 

(Peter Jackson) (waves, “no”) 

“Er, Azog the, Funny-Looking….” 

(Peter Jackson) (gives thumbs up) 

Or is he like, Irish, or something? He’s a “pale orc”, right? Irish people didn’t used to be white; the St. Patrick’s Day revelers of today don’t know, and don’t experience, much either good or bad about any of it…. But yeah, Tolkien didn’t like the Irish, did he? He hated the sound of the language. He only liked Old English and Welsh, and most of the Germanic tongues, I guess; you can almost guess from what he thinks of Jane Austen clergyman manners what he thinks of Latin and Greek: although that at least shows bravery; I can’t fault him for that…. 

…. But yeah: there’s no political party for me, right, although I do vote. It is what it is. Tolkien-Jackson could be like a political ticket, you know, (if not for nationality, other things like that): although they’d be about nine days in power, before their followers figured out they weren’t BOTH going to get what they wanted, right. Nine days a president, right. 

…. Yeah, it is a feature you see in French politics, I’m told: the alliance of the extreme left and extreme right. Maybe “Tolkien” could be president of France, or something. 

Kink in the knot: death to dagos and frogs; they’re just not ~moral~ like good old SAXON England, right. Wussy cowards, you know. (shrugs) 

(pauses) What does the left see in Tolkien, again? This is so confusing, you guys. 

…. Or maybe Azog is “the Hun”, right—in order to fight WWI Germany, England had to throw it out of the white race, right. 

…. The Radagast Interlude (although he’s coming back, I guess), is nice: not awful like a lot of it; recognizable as a sort of Druid—the wizards of pop fiction, right—and sorta nervous but not too terribly done…. I suppose that anyone can be nervous, right…. But yeah, it’s like…. (Sorting Hat) “Sure you don’t want your persecute Druids? Persecuting their wizardry would help you grow…. But if it’s not the Druids you’ll be wanting to kill, I suppose it’ll have to be— (loud voice) WITCHES!” 

~Not that “Harry Potter” isn’t common food, you know: a common gulp; dross…. But yeah: that would be like what fantasy stories Really are like, right: children, Christian children, get sorted into groups based on what kind of paganism they want to destroy…. LOL…. 

…. Yeah, the trolls were funny, right…. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be based on: probably just other mainstream movies and/or bedtime stories, right: “Get the children to sleep! Tell them a story!” “I’ve never been outside the village; what’s ever happened to me?” “Make. Something. Up.”…. Although it is amusing, not like some of it…. I guess there could be creatures harmed by sunlight: there are different names that exist for things like that…. I don’t know if it they’re supposed to be highwaymen; but they seem too…. Something…. To be anything but a Bed-time story…. Something, right…. Yeah, a lot of fantasy stories are B.S., lol…. I won’t make comparisons: I know that the High Tolkien Fanboy Council is seriously considering assassinating me as it is…. But yeah, the trolls are just kinda…. A comedy sketch, almost…. Not real. 

…. Almost anything is better than Gandalf and Thorin B.S.-ing though…. The two big bosses at work, right, like…. Yeah, it’s like: I am INSPIRED…. I want to work HARDER, right…. (lol.) 

…. Let’s see: they made some money; good for them…. 

Radagast came back; only now he’s more unambiguously a moron, plus also a plot-point dumper, it’s like…. ? ~I mean, I guess both of those things are inevitable, but…. 

And yeah: “And then, they attract, Negative-Spirit!” 

What’s the origin of the curse, Peter. What’s its nature. What’s going on. 

(shrugs) “Well, you know: plot-points attract paychecks…. All Things Come Together…..!” 

Uh huh. 

And yeah: action sequences. Well, that comes with the territory, right. 

…. Well, anyway: so now we get to see if Italians and Germans can get along: quick, nobody talk about their favorite opera…. 

…. Yeah, “Rivendell” is pretty, for sure…. Maybe I should go there, lol…. 

(They don’t like the food) Hardcore German patriots, lol: all you need is steak and potatoes; and you don’t have to cook the steak, OMG…. 

“Moon runes” 

I don’t know if that’s…. But it is curious…. Oh, that’s what I wanted to do: (internet) Let’s see: I was born under a waxing moon, the fourth day of the lunar month, not counting the dark moon; it was also a Friday. 

…. But yeah, certain things have to happen on certain times. It’s not like, always just 9-5 Monday-Friday, like we imagine: doesn’t matter, and all that… 

…. (Azog the Unlikely) what a propaganda villain, right…. So much, more…. Than is necessary. 

…. Up; I was wrong: 1 hr 34 min in: we have a real female character: the Moon-Queen…. (I guess to Germans, Italian=Celtic?….). I wonder how long this will last…. 

(Saruman) Up, well, that was a full minute, I guess, in which female authority mattered…. 

…. Wow: that was boring…. 

…. And Galadriel is like: don’t forget about your mom, either. She’s sad that there isn’t a girl who’s important in this story. Try to play that part down, with the reporters, Gandalf. 

…. (Gandalf) Some people like, JS Bach, or Wagner, the best: I rather prefer…. Ralph Vaughan Williams, you know…. 

…. Yeah, although it is funny: there’s “war” and there’s, “unexplained killings”, basically: no need to confuse the two, friend. 

…. Although yeah: that is one way to deal with social entanglements: can’t knock the hustle…. 

~And it’s like: I mess up the schedule, and then I’m embarrassed and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to play it right: as it gets worse and worse…. And then it’s over and I’m here with them and they’re like, (shrugs), There are a lot of other people I have to kill before I get to you, right. 

~It is funny how like, the whole diplomacy of everything is determined by how people look: it’s like America—you don’t want to look TOO good: but you do NOT want to be, Ugly, right…. But yeah: blowing a social entanglement could be like, an ~hour~ of “Gossip Girl”, easy: in this show, it’s like…. ~Hey we got away; it’s over…. ~(shrugs) Sometimes they’re right, you know. 

…. (Finally gets the words like the 100th sitting) (150th, lol) “The pines were roaring, all along the height; trees blazed like torches, filled with light.” (I take it that, means something, lol….?)

Cool story, bro. 

…. It’s interesting how the giants don’t give a shit about them; they’re just fighting each other, and being giants, and their Elemental madness/magic causes chaos for the brave little Vikings, right. 

I’ll buy that. 

…. (generic hanging off a cliff/generic insults) 

Yup. Playing to the base. Solid economics, lol. 

…. (Bilbo and the watchman) A unusually good scene. Not genius, but for a boys’ adventure story: pretty good. 

…. (action scenes) For action scenes, this is actually kinda interesting. 

…. Giving the Goblin Chief around 250 pounds of fat in his neck/chin is kinda…. It’s lame, you know. Like Peter Jackson is Australian, I think: but it’s like America gobbling up Aussie-dom, right: if he’s got that much fat in his chin…. He should probably, DIE!!! lol. 

…. (playing mind games with schizophrenics lol) 

Save yourself and others grief, and do not play mind games with schizophrenics in real life, lol. 

You would never win at riddles with a schizophrenic, you know: although the two of you would never agree upon the rules. 

The only thing that would really stand would be emotions, you know…. You could say, Blah blah blah, Fear!; or blah blah blah: you’re safe! And he might get that—especially the fear, maybe not the calm, right…. 

But John flexing his Old English riddle-craft skills on the floridly mentally ill: it’s like…. WOW. 

And, NO. Also: NO, right…. Omg…. Omg…. Ok. 

…. I mean, I realize I wasn’t charming as a symptomatic person, right: but you couldn’t see my backbone, right—my hair was actually rather too full (lazy) rather than…. Like, is Gollum bald? 

Can you imagine being a diagnostician: a psychiatrist or psychologist or psychiatric social worker, if it was like…. “Given that we can see your backbone, and that you’re not wearing any clothes: we’d like to put you on…. (quickly Googles something)” 

Right? 

…. Odin-Jesus…. Is the Light…. 

~All right: I’ll admit, visually: it looks cool. 

…. Although there wasn’t really an attempt to make it: you know, plausible. 

(shrugs) 

…. —Do you think that the Ring is that story from Plato? Power to become invisible = the perils of power? 

—Vikings can do anything. I saw a movie once, that proves it. It’s their blue eyes. They just gaze at their enemies with their blue eyes: and they just…. Explode, you know. Their beauty alone destroys their enemies, right. 

…. “And then I decided: NOT, to kill the schizophrenic weirdo.” 

(makes clicking noise of approval) Classy. 

“I am Radagast the Brown: and I approve this message.” 

…. “Edwardian males are fundamentally good people, my Viking friend”, seemed pretty repetitive. 

And yeah: BTS should do a song like, “Fake Magic”, although I won’t know what they’re saying, and won’t bother to look it up. 

LOTR music does have a certain charm, but so much of it isn’t new, right…. I feel like…. Omg, a father just walked by telling his 7 year old daughter in lecture voice that not everything in a book is true. OMG. (That’s so funny, bro.) 

…. And the action, I don’t know: I’m waiting for it to get good, right…. Yup, if you can’t beat the Vietcong: just wait for the air support, brother. That’s what all the real heroes, do…. 

(Azog the Unlikely screaming in honor-pain because Chairman Mao didn’t give HIM an air-force, right…. Oh well. He does seem like a jerk, lol.) 

…. Yeah: US Special Forces Strike Team Gandalf (15 men) nearing Baghdad—liberation is imminent, lol…. 

And yeah: modestly cringe-worthy, right…. The point of being a man is to tell the other guy that HE isn’t a man: but it will NEVER happen to YOU, [random guy it will happen to, lol] 

~Although I’ll probably watch the other five fucking movies, eventually: hopefully without paying for them, new, right. 

…. Oh wow: it was a boys’ choir, who did that Catholic-esque music, right. I thought that was their idea of the stereotypically feminine, lol. 

….. But yeah: if I were a girl, I wouldn’t have married Thorin or whoever, even if all that gold were his, OMG….

Wow, the library has THREE copies of this DVD: I’ll never have to push back a sitting in time because it’s checked out…. I guess Joe Wright is a pretty prestigious filmmaker. Of course, that one attempt he made to make a movie with a mixed-race cast, “Pan”, (2015), was kinda a crash and burn failure, right…. But among historical-literary white stories, he does seem to have talent, right: more than average…. And here it does look like he’s following the new trend of introducing actors of color into trad “white stories”, or whatever, (although to not be in denial or over-state the positive: making exotic stories simultaneously white-centric probably hasn’t mysteriously gone poof), and yeah: it can be a hard thing to do successfully, or whatever: just from the theatrical poster cover, it does seem as though there’s the possibility of introducing racial tension into the story, to replace the 100% white-centric thing, if that makes sense. We’ll see if Joe can leap over the hurdles, right. 

And as for romantic stories mostly about men: they can make sense and obviously they do exist, right—but I wonder how well he tells both the good and the bad in terms of men, or if it becomes kinda a romantic delusion about men, that conceals how unromantic men tend to be, right…. I wonder…. 

The singing I can take or leave, but some of the instrumental music is really pretty good. 

The sniping between the penniless romantic girl and the shrewd maid is good: realistic, especially for a movie. 

“Children need love. Adults need money.” 

Especially given the casting, “She’s well above your station”, was a great line. Who wouldn’t like to prove That wrong, eh? 

“A child with a full purse is an adult.” 

No commentary required. 

…. “Freedom at first sight”, or…. Third-party thieving at first sight? (Ok symbol emoji) 

It’s a good lyric: but we pay musicians to deceive us, lol. 

…. (baroque French theatre or…. Something?) 

What an odd culture….

(enter Cyrano) Wow, what a turd…. I’m supposed to like this small-time thug? OMG…. I wonder how many hundreds of pages of Victorian novel musing I would have had to suffer through to figure out I hate that diminutive…. Loser. 

[Wikipedia: Actually, it was a play written in verse in 1897 by a French guy named—

Great. But I wasn’t entirely wrong.] 

…. Anyway: superficially, at least, the level of artistry is very high. Visually and sonically the art is very pleasing…. It just doesn’t seem to have depth…. Like, the first few minutes: I just loved how quotable it was. But unlike say in a Nietzsche (how do you get a name like that?) book: after a while I wanted it to be less quotable, since it was saying very common things, albeit, you know, in a way very flowery and shit, right…. I don’t know if at least half of Joe Wright movies start out great to me, and then start kinda a descent into mediocrity: or whether a love story about a beautiful woman and an ugly man, is just too much, right—too much of a challenge, and not the right one, for anyone to set themselves, basically…. 

I do think it’s interesting how it’s basically a thriller-romance, almost, although I don’t really care for it, right. I’ll have to watch the “Jason Bourne” movie, and see which one I like better. I read the book JB, and in print it did seem like kinda a straight adventure story, right; but I have a feeling on the screen it will be similar to this, close to half-and-half, even if, if forced to choose, I’ll probably end up putting them on different sides of the fence, so to speak. 

But I can’t imagine liking this better, you know. 

…. But yeah: a play written in verse in the 1890s was never going to tell the most ‘brave’ story about love, you know…. All the tropes; all the feels…. It’s not Oscar Wilde: if it weren’t for the 1918 pandemic, he could have lived to a ripe old age, untroubled by the literary police, right…. The literary police probably walked with the casket, at the “normal”-style funeral, after the pandemic was over, lol…. 

…. (the actor with a French name) (crying) I had a successful career for decades, and I was still on top of my game, until some small-time thug threatened me off the stage with threat of violence, to impress a girl he didn’t have the courage to talk to! 

(Freud) (pushes tissue box closer, but) Don’t say “small-time thug”. It’s an unhelpful label. 

(the crying actor) He literally wasn’t that tall, Doctor…. (drowning in tissues) And I should be able to hold a job down without needed to knife hecklers with ulterior motives! Man, fuck that guy! (crying) 

…. I mean: I hate to make it sound like it’s antipathy to the actor—I really don’t know much about him—and of course I don’t want to alienate people who aren’t tall, right: like, “you should have to be ~Tall~, Mediterranean, and handsome!” (sometimes: obviously, though for anything to ever happen even once, to a propagandist, you have to call it eternal verity, right—and obviously Hollywood doesn’t like them too “dark”, lol: blaccskinnedgangstaohnoes, only if there’s, like, no other option, right; which is why he’ll be portrayed as a tough, lol…. See the logic? (laugh emoji) …. Although the Mediterranean or otherwise exotic look comes into season, now and again….). But yeah: I never understood the thing about height, right; one girl I knew obsessed about how she was “short”: like, not only do I not perceive these subtle things about height the way that I guess people do, but it’s like, Girl, you’ve got good…. (Only I didn’t, because she had no self-esteem. Somehow, she would have found a way to hate herself, right. Skip to the part where you’re not involved.) 

But yeah: I mean, as much as you don’t want to intentionally frame anybody (at all) as unattractive out of spite, I don’t think that discouraging what we now call “body shaming” was what was going on for an 1890s writer, probably to the right of Dickens and his successors, right. Not even for a man, even though it is kinda like a Nickie Sparks novel, that old shit, old propaganda: “A love story about a man…. In love, men have so much. But they shouldn’t have to….” And yet, it’s not even quite that, really…. It’s more like…. An aggressive and insecure man? Why, then—why not a short guy who stabs people to death! (OK sign emoji) 

…. Yeah, I don’t believe that any girl is that stupid, basically. 

Cyrano being that self-effacing is possible, I guess— a sort of pride warring with pride, right; though it would be more swimming against the current than the story shows. 

But yeah: mostly, just the girl in that scene (the “confession”), is not a real girl in Middle Earth, right…. Media can be so deceptive. 

At the same time, if you watched Many movies, this might strike you as being better than many, perhaps: it has potential; they don’t always have that…. It’s not gutter trash; a saying that wouldn’t always be honest, right…. 

…. It was briefly so cool to see the Black guy fighting white guys giving him a fraternity hazing in the 1600s…. And then, I knew it was coming…. But he’s like: I’m a dummy! I’m not smart enough to be a romantic, the way you are, Diminutive Soldier Shakespeare. 

Ah, shit, right…. OMG…. (facepalm)…. 

…. “I’d sing pop songs; but I’m smart enough….” 

…. But the choreographer deserves some award or something, right…. 

It is surprising like Old Hollywood, right: lots of style…. Racist…. Very fancy, though….

…. And it is like that song by The Cars, right: I’m suspicious of women; all women, pretty women; and I don’t like other guys; they get in the way: to like your friends isn’t the masculine way…. “And she used to be mine!”…. (My Best Friend’s Girl)…. 

Like, the wounded little man: he should have been Napoleon…. A sorta Black Snowball is on the loose…. LOL…. 

…. It reminds me of this novel about New Zealand, “In the Land of the Long White Cloud”, where the girl agrees to marry this guy based on letters “from him”, whereas really he just had this Austen clergyman, you know, romantic-conventional-flowery-Victorian, write them, and then she shows up in New Zealand and finds out that she’s married to a gruff laconic boar of the farmer, right. 

Anyway. 

…. I don’t like Cyrano-less Christian turning into a monkey with Roxanne. Even if there were no “color” thing, it’s very bad about class. Watching that, I feel like I’m being bullied by some Shakespeare professor. Maybe a philosophy teacher…. And I’ve read once through Shakespeare, and more philosophy than most people read, by some margin, really. 

Roxanne and the Duke is complicated…. “I love the man for whom I fear” is a great line sociologically: I feel like it must have been spoken many, many times, with many, many meanings…. 

But largely it is, not an obnoxious, but a familiar bad rich man-heroic beautiful woman cautionary tale, right…. It is hard to disentangle the idiocy and neurosis of the trad rich from kinda…. Socialistic moralism, you know: lust and disgust; money is “funny” stuff, right…. 

It is kinda curious to think that an adventure story—with dragons and dragon’s blood, right: with probably 92% of the audience being males-running-from-romance, right—is more the type of story where the man can start poor and end rich, right…. So that the beautiful woman can have her frills and thrills without the socialistic moralists leering and jeering, Lust and disgust! Money is funny stuff, I say!…. ~Right? 

…. Anyway: halfway through, I’m not sure whether I’d call it straight mediocre, or just modestly bad, right. I’m not sure that will ever be resolved, really, whatever number I end up having to pin on it, since on this site, things need numbers, right. 

…. But yeah: SO weird how similar it is to Old Hollywood, right: JUST as fancy; JUST as racist…. Only it’s different, because now people have found the goodness in their hearts to explain, so that you can understand, just as they, in their great knowledges do, right—which tropes apply to Blacks, right. It used to be that they’d say, you know, But when is whitey going to ~actually meet~ a Black person in real life, right…. We’ve gotta keep our propaganda practical, know—(cynical laugh), It’s gotta sell, you know!…. And if the world changes, it won’t be because of me—print that in my obituary: I won’t exist anymore! (cynical 20s laugh) 

…. Like, sometimes I wonder how much white ideology is behind so much quotidian punctilious asshat teachings, you know…. “Straighten out your car…. You don’t know me, but I’ll shoot! We have to do things the right way, if we’re to remain above the bugs and the ants and natives!” “Great, fine. I hate you, but, I’ll forget you, I guess. Not worth dying over.” “Thank you. I no longer seek your death.” “Asking nicely the first time would have been more…. Proper, asshat.” 

You know: but if the person who guards the parking space on the other side of the lot/houses, feels the same way: why, then they’re right! Society can never be wrong! White Ideology tells me so! 

You know, like: once there’s hierarchy, it never ends, right. “I park my car better than you.” “I didn’t even hit your car.” “That’s not the issue here. The issue is, 1890s Lit Crit Man is superior…. But I’m superior, too. I’m sorry, Neotheognis, looks like this time: ~you~ are the sacrifice to White Ideology.” 

And God knows this movie is White Ideology, right…. 

And like, I could almost understand them

standing around gossiping about the time the cops came, but what was it this time, right? Waiting to see if someone shows up who parks “the wrong way”? “It says right here in this information booklet that being 75% off to one side is against law and custom. You can only be 5% off to one side, even if you drive a Civic…. After all, these spaces are tiny. You should look into that! Come to the meetings with the other gossips, right. Oh no wait; you don’t have money…. Never mind.” 

And I mean: god knows that even when Joe Wright makes a movie, he’s more interested in the Car Parking Gossip Market, than the Quixotic Dreamer Market, right…. But you gotta have good choreography, so you can disguise that fact to all the chess club robots who sold their soul to the Cylons, right…. 

…. Yeah: I’ll probably give the movie one half-star less instead of one half-star more, because that lady really pissed me off, you know, and she wasn’t unlike the movie, right. 

It’s also probably not going to get better, right. We haven’t even reached the Wistful Regret Of the Big-Hearted White Man Over the Interracial Relationship, Which Owes Its Very Existence To His Own GOODNESS, Right: his sad, sad, pathetic white man goodness, right…. 

We haven’t even gotten to that part yet, lol. 

So much to unpack, OMG….

At least I’ll have my revenge on slave market capitalism, though…. Yes, I am a little quixotic…. That windmill grinds the corn of Satan, son…. Don’t buy from that miller. “All the other millers are like him, only more cruel and violent.” Hmm…. (Don Quixote contemplates his symbolic revenge on the best of all Satanic millers…. For some reason, he needs to chew on a straw of grass, to do this…. Finally….) We won’t boycott the mill of Satan; but we’ll…. Make very subtle, complicated insults about it; yes, very ambivalent insults for the best of all Satan’s sons…. Yes, yes…. I saw the answer, as though in a dream…. 

…. And it is kinda weird, right: I just started rereading this feminist book which, while ‘negative’ in the conventional sense, I think isn’t actually as…. Wrong, I guess: as I thought when I was very (happy-clappy Wisdom) Christian, and a little precious…. Yeah, and I know that it’s going to get into the idea of separatism, right: which is offensive to male pride, whether the desire to dominate or the idea that all women should be potential lays, or else just the kinda happy-clappy ‘Mother loves me all people love me all girls and females are nice and should help me out, and we can be happy and clappy and learn about the happy clappy future together, right….’ But I mean, if some ill man abused you, it might be healing not to have to look at every guy and wonder, out of your own woundedness, whether this was going to be another cruel, forceful dominator, right…. It would also save you, in that instance, from being, you know: from sharing the hurtfulness of the hurt, right…. 

But yeah: Roxanne went to a women’s salon because it was like the one place where she could read a poem and not be looked at as both unintelligent and also a potential lay at the same time, right…. And so of course, her potential lover meets her there, right: he specifically goes out of his way to invade the women’s salon so that he can get in the girl’s mind, right…. Like, “If I let her have a moment’s peace: she’ll never want to touch another man for as long as she lives; men won’t be born anymore; and life will be shit!” 

~”But by 2022, children, because of Me Too, all that sexism and illegitimate gender shit had pretty much blown over…. Finally: women were safe, children. And they had flying cars, too! Have you seen (illusions and propaganda)?” 

…. This is a while ago, but the “I’ll pray for your sins” line is interesting. After the opening scene where the older woman is perhaps semi-sympathetic, she kinda gets disposed of as a forgettable drudge, right: like, I almost forgot there WAS an actual woman who wasn’t dead by 42 or whatever, right…. But then she kinda has to signal her loyalty to the morality system, right: that she’s the farthest thing from a rebel, right; and then so she stuffs that in the face of the young lovers or whatever she thinks they are—and they’re only too happy for some crazy reason to dismiss her as part of the morality movement, since they’re have no use for an older woman except as a drudge, so they’re happy for an excuse not to respect her…. So she drudges off to church, where the male leadership really also couldn’t care less about the female rank and file and so on, right. I guess it’s hard to respect a “sacrifice” that was practically wrested from your unwilling hands…. Of course, since the 1970s, many Protestant churches have gone, Why not have a female clergy person defend male tradition and not care about the female rank and file. It’s not like women care about each other! This could get us in newspapers! ~And meanwhile, it’s like…. Pope Francis, Defender of Liberalism, do you think we could have a little informal get-together today or tomorrow or something, to maybe have like a regular meeting, to decide on creating a special, formal, important meeting, to take a few months at least, to decide if maybe women are as smart as men and as able to be priests and religious leaders? (Skeletor) I’m offended that you would even ask! Until next time! (runs away) 

~Like, I’m not gonna lie and say women never become less attractive physically, but it’s like: maybe their OPINION about love, as still being equally ~female~, as they always were, right….? Society: No, their opinion on love counts for nothing, at any age. Also useless as experts on celibacy wisdom, although nobody wants them. 

~It’s like…. Waaat? 

You know: at some point you’re like—I mean, of course Joe Wright isn’t Judd Apatow making Racy Madison crap (what was his name…. looks up: Adam Sandler; I used to really like him, lol: SCARY (laughing cat emoji)), but it’s like, We get very precious and credulous about our intellectuals, right…. Is there really much evidence that Joe Wright isn’t essentially the same old English culture thinker that’s always existed, along with whatever minor alterations and modifications are unavoidable and even desirable, in any age? Like, is it just the same old England, right? And you know that England isn’t about being free, you know: that’s like, civics class nonsense, right—I’m talking about real life…. England is about England, not freedom, you know. I suppose he’s not actually a “Little Englander”, you know: like there are probably some English Rose Garden Champions who are afraid to read “Romeo & Juliet” because it happens ~Abroad~, in one of those Foreign Places, like France or Italy or Scotland or some such place—wicked places!…. Like, he’s obviously not a Little Englander, right, but kinda a…. Pragmatic Englander: which if we’re to be honest, should be sharply distinguished from someone who just happens to live in England, and maybe wants to see their soccer team win the World Cup or something, right. Like, Oscar Wilde lived in England, technically he came from like, English Dublin, or whatever, but he was basically English like in a…. Like if England was a normal country, he would be English, but it’s like he wasn’t polite, so he was brought before the Crown Committee on Un-English Activities, right…. And basically killed off discreetly, right. The Little Englander would be the guy who…. Like, let’s not even talk about Little Englanders, right. But then the Pragmatic Englander is like, looking at Mr. Little from Roseshire, England, and kinda goes, Wow…. I don’t want to be as easily made fun of, as that…. But a solid 80% of the time, give or take, it’s like: looking at Oscar Wilde and going: Right. That is NOT happening to me. 

Because It COULD Happen To You, right. Brexit, British racism, the never-ending story of the snobbishness of the classical music community…. Like Joe is a Pragmatic Englander, so he puts in the pop songs, right: although it’s a very classic-style pop; you have a vague sense that the dancing isn’t exactly the same as the 1640s dancing, but the more you forget that there was ever a band called The Rolling Stones, right: the better you like it…. And although nobody actually ever shot Mick Jagger, the sorta project of Englishness is kinda based on forgetting that he was ever born 94% of the time, and pretending that he isn’t who he is the remaining 6%, right…. But yeah, it’s meant to be a movie that a middling-aggressive classical music snob could sit through without pulling out a gun and seeking vengeance, and which a “Wagner is Satan, however, opera is the only form of singing I listen to, hahaha” classical music snob could probably really enjoy, you know. It’s the new cultural imperialism, you know—it’s flexible. 

…. (Christian striking out with Roxanne) 

Tell me this is not some ethnocentrist’s sick fantasy, omg…. 

…. It’s also curious how Roxanne is like a caricature of a woman, right: she just wants to be petted and flattered with dainty language, right…. She never has like, a plan for her life, right…. It’s never like, If you lied about the Count de Crap-face, he would get arrested, and then…. (suggestive trail-off). 

It’s always like: you know, I hear that (big name pop act) is in town? Did you illegally download the lyrics? Ooo, music!…. 

But Joe Wright thought it was a good story, lol; he put his name to it, right…. Hate is too strong a word: but so is respect…. For the Pragmatic Englander, you know…. 

…. (looking at credits on DVD) Like, which one of these titles is ‘choreographer’: like, that and maybe the music, definitely the dance—it’s the only good part of the film, you know…. 

…. (Sock-puppet Christian, or whatever the hell it is, right) 

Wow, SO f-ing weird, OMG…. 

Like, imagine this on the Internet, right. Whoops! Just lost the opera freaks….! 

Were they breaking any laws, or something?…. It seems like there should be some kinda misdemeanor on the books for this sort of thing, right…. “Misdirection (27B)”, right—six months’ community service…. 

…. (quoting self) “Wistful Regret of the Big Hearted White Man Over Interracial Relationship” 

Called it. (ok emoji)  

…. (letter) “This is your Captain speaking. Marriage or rape, up to you, over. (beep)”. 

It’s like: we’re supposed to believe that Roxanne is such a caricature of a woman that she wanted the equivalent of a music concert and was obsessed by poetry, and took no thought to plotting against doofus until he was at her door, basically. (rolls eyes) 

…. Nothing an action sequence can’t fix, though…. 

Moral of the story: men are important. They solve/create problems! Women just kinda…. Marry people and, don’t, solve problems, you know. 

…. Wow, it doesn’t even work as entertainment: it’s like, we need to get the propaganda team in here, work this out, do an all-nighter…. How boring was that, right…. Just humdrum disrespect agitprop, no blood-choreography, right…. 

…. Life lessons: men are important…. 

As long as there are men, things will be ok: there will be, love…. lol. 

…. (5-part harmony) Men are, important, because we’re the…. Beach…. Boys…. 

~I agree, men are important. Without men…. Destruction. 

…. Phoo, men sure love dying. I’m glad, that I’m Hermes, lol. Hermes-Thoth-Horus says that the Dying God should just take a nap, take it easy; you might want to be the Dying God now…. Maybe in twenty minutes, after your nap…. (shrugs), Who knows, right? 

~God, what an immoral story, right. And so miserably unpleasant. What was that line of Dostoevsky, I guess—I mean, I read Tolstoy; I never got around to Doestie, but didn’t he have a line, like: “The worst thing is that you have betrayed and destroyed yourself, for Nothing”?…. It’s like, you died, so you didn’t have to admit you were a liar, right! 

(Hermes Psychopomp) Surprise! (naughty cackle) You’re dead! That means you gotta, esplain! (cackle) 

~Right? 

…. But hey: at least the actress (there’s really only one, lol: jealousy over feminism, LOL) had nice breasts; I guess if she were dying from tallness, it wouldn’t be like that for her, right…. You know: just in terms of information. Information, right: he ~nurtures~; he ~loves~…. Why not, love him, right? A-hahaha…. 

…. Ironically given his chauvie it is, I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention to this story before, watching it, since it didn’t meet my earlier standards about bloodiness and asceticism, right. Like, I think I saw it once with my dad, early in childhood, but age was against me, and I was mostly just curious about his strange reaction to this strange shit…. And then in high school or whatever we watched it in French class: but movies in French class, it’s like—they had subtitles, sure, but really: when did I ever REALLY decide to learn French, right?…. I just tuned it out, for the most part…. It’s amazing, maybe, how few fucks us Honors students gave for the System, right; but then, the System didn’t give an excessive amount of fucks about us, now did it…. I mean, that’s the explanation of girls’ greater academic success: girls get told more often that they’re not important, you know—a “valuable” cultural background in school, where it’s like…. It’s Not About You: It’s About Me, The System!…. Guys are just like: I don’t ever remember saying that I liked you…. ~Although obviously much female obedience is feigned, right. Female obedience is at least as likely to be an exercise in (cowardly) self-preservation as (delusional) “goodness”, you know…. 

But yeah: I think I know how it ends. It wouldn’t be the first second-rate romance (prestige means NOTHING; it is a LIE), to end with someone dying so that people don’t have to have difficult conversations about who lied how to whom, right…. 

—Oh! I thought we were going to have to talk to her! 

—No. She is quite dead, my friend. It was quite sudden. The doctors could do nothing. 

—I…. I thought I’d have to tell her, that…. Oh, and yet it is SO, sad…. 

—Yes. It is sad. But better that she should die, than she should make a female friend a little bit like me, and a little bit like you, and not date for a while…. It is better, this way. 

A dream is a wish. 

And yes: I realize that that is NOT LITERALLY where this is going, of course…. But the variations are but little different…. Men love to die; it is a hobby of ours. And, we hate telling the truth. ~The truth, yes…. I’d offer to tell you the truth next Tuesday: only I’ve somewhere to be. VERY unfortunate, I’m afraid…. 

He dies; he’s a hero. She dies; she’s…. Well, dead, but, we’ll miss her…. 

As long as she never learns the truth. Not while I’m alive…. 

…. Yeah…. 

Joe Wright certainly has the makings of a great guy, but he does kinda present as being garbage, quite often, doesn’t he. It’s like, propaganda, for the literate. And I’m not being ironic about the word “literate”: there’s nothing inherently wrong with film…. Though most films are either propaganda or…. Well, this was propaganda, anyway. Agitprop for patriarchy, right. 

Men certainly love death. Men love to die. Is there anything men love, like they love death? Deception, perhaps? Or distortion? Yes, perhaps telling lies that distort woman’s character, is something man loves, equal to death, perhaps. 

Did I say men love death? I misspoke. Men are averse to life. But they do not know death, either. They have the two ideas conflated, entire. 

…. It’s like a Christian romance, you know. The perfect trad Christian romance. Death makes everything clean. You give your love to a corpse….

…. God, and that fucking “song”, right…. Like they were going to an execution! 

“Bat-tles…. Are a way to get, dead.” 

I watched “It’s A Wonderful Life” which was like a, curious example of how things used to be for some people, and I try to eventually watch three movies by the same director, and the library had this movie too. I feel like “Arsenic and Old Lace” will be like a better movie, right—Cary Grant has a great voice, and it’ll be cool to see him young; and just generally, I trust Frank to be a great party host more than I trust him to bring freedom and truth to the little ones, you know. 

(Frank Capra) And you know, as I was explaining to my girlfriend, Buttercup, American democracy, is ultimately founded upon Athenian democracy. 

(weird hanger-on from early 20th century America) Oh yeah, Frank? What was so great about Athenian democracy? 

(Frank) Well, in Athenian democracy, as long as you weren’t a slave, or a foreigner, or a woman, you had it pretty good. Everyone who could fight in the battle to protect their fellow tribesmen and honor the state had a say in the government. 

(old-school micro-aggression smart Alec) Oh yeah, well I wouldn’t trust a little book-worm like you, Frank, to hold a spear next to me in the battle. (weird laugh) 

(Frank) Well, excuse me: I gave a very emotional speech to my fellow tribesmen before the battle, I’ll have you know. I looked the part, I’ll have you know! (tries to get at him to punch him in the face; a crowd of people restrain him) 

(Buttercup) (holds him) Now Frank, I sure think you look the part: now, if there’s anything I can do to support your life; I’d be happy to do it. I could do some drudgery for you: or better yet, I could ask my father to give you some of his money! 

(Frank) That’s real swell, Buttercup. (turns) See, jerk! Somebody thinks I look the part! 

Endless fun. You can’t look away. 

But yeah, something about how it will be…. I mean, I don’t want to label it…. 

But yeah, it’s interesting how this is “how you were supposed to think”, right: and how a lot of guys ~did~ think: the good-student types, kinda privileged-and-naive-from-long-ago, right…. Of course, it wasn’t what ~everybody~ liked. Some guys wanted to see somebody get a bloody nose in a fist-fight, or for the Cavalry to burn an Indian village (full of savages!) to the ground, right; Frank kinda had a different style; governor’s mansion mythology, not frontier fighter mythology, right…. I think one of the ironies of American history/society is that if you were to tell the average frontier fighter that you thought that Frank Capra was a historical curiosity, they’d resent it immensely; and yet their great complaint against the intellectual classes is that, even when they’re not Marxists or from diverse backgrounds, they look and sound pretty much like Frank Capra, which is almost as bad. 

(shrugs) People don’t want to make it make sense, right. 

…. (reads the back of the DVD) So it really is another “Wonderful Life” movie, or rather, a prequel in the Naive American series, right. Smith probably makes an appeal directly the President, right, to “protect and preserve the nation’s One True Resource, our only defense against the rising tide of fascism and communism—the Naivety of the American Boy!” 

And because of Smith, nothing bad ever happened in America to anybody ever again, because the males that he mentored went on to lead the lead the nation into a golden age where all Americans loved each other, and treated each other with respect, always, and without reservation or exception, fully 4% of the time, which is why America is free from the Outer Darkness of “outer space”, and there’s an atmosphere and everything! All because of Smith! [laughing until crying emoji] 

Might be amusing. We’ll see. 

…. Obviously, there has to be an elderly codependent named Happy that it’s difficult to respect, right…. 

Wow, this is boring…. lol…. 

It’s funny, how it’s like: it’s hard to describe it, like the Unlikable Cynics, that wear like their grey-hearted devil mask and sneer at people—it’s like, career politicians do have kinda a superficial sell, right; people aren’t cartoon villains, right—and then, like, I’m sorry, but kids don’t talk like that to their father in 1939, if he’s a weak codependent, he’s that much more tyrannical with the kids he beats, right…. But yeah, it’s like, the Cartoon Cynics vs, the Children’s Choice, right…. “It’s A Wonderful Life” is hokey: this isn’t hokey—this is propaganda, right…. It’s cute propaganda, of course, but…. And holy shit, is it boring, oh my god…. 

~ The message is like, “I’m an American. That makes me a good man. Americans, an American, he’s a good man. It makes my heart hurt, how good I am.” It’s like, wow…. Who do we have to exclude and bomb to safeguard our way of life, right…. God, I’m just so glad we’re so goddamn Anglo, right: we’re the Good People, you know…. It’s like, if we’re so modest, and so boring, and so good: how can we not conquer the world, torch the odd country now and then, right? It would be good for those others—bah, THEM! 

~ In the Immortal Words of Krautface Burgdorf: A Kayerist! An Opportunist!; —Or, In English: “Some naive fucker!—Cynical!” [laughing until crying emoji] 

~~ It’s like, God, I knew it was going to be bad, but it’s so much worse than I forecasted, you know…. It’s not entertaining like I expected…. This is what Sidney Poitiers meant when he said—I forget the exact words he used, but it was like: ‘what we all believed in God/the USA/Frank Capra/naivety’, you know…. It was like, mass delusion, you know, especially once you dig down deeper than his One Best Movie, which isn’t really so bad, given the circumstances, right…. But he made more than one movie; the folk consciousness has worse days even than we knew…. 

Wow. Just, wow. 

…. I forgot how relaxing propaganda can be, right…. Puts you right to sleep; makes you feel good…. A little irritating, after a while…. 

But yeah: the looney professor and his practical wife—they uphold the society; they’re the reason why bad things don’t happen, right…. 

lol, PR tactics in 1930s America: punch reporters you don’t like in the face. 

I’m not sure I know anymore that some law was passed against punching people in the face in the Capitol, sometime in between the invention of television and the Voting Rights Act or the entrance of independently-elected [ie non-wife] female Congress reps, right…. But yeah…. I mean, today, they’d just post another story or two, right, at the very least…. But yeah: talk about the classic male club sort of…. I mean, it’s like they were the frat boys hazing the new member, right…. It’s almost as hard to like them, as it is to like this guy who…. I mean, he’d make such a good soldier, you know: maybe not of a democracy, right: but if you needed to torch a few villages, right, (red man villages?), you’d just have to plug him into some propaganda, and the naive fucker would be blood-thirstily charging into battle before the artillery support was in place, right…. 

But, it’s entertaining. It’s the farthest thing from surprising. Classics are supposed to be of a high-quality: but sometimes the high-quality is merely sociological, right—it’s like a thing everyone knows even if they’ve never taken it in directly, but only indirectly ten thousand times when they didn’t even know what the name of the game was, right…. 

…. And yeah: it’s amazing the extent to which it portrays the government as being like a boys’ club, basically: like your reputation with the other boys—for being like a brave pirate, I guess, or some fucking thing—counts for more than legality, you know. Like, legally now it’s time to make Smith the new senator. But wait! One of the boys says that the newspapers make him look like a putz. Guys, I say we don’t let any putz into our gang—rules or no rules! ~Aw, but only a man can say a man is a man! You’re no man, Sparky; I’m a man! I say his testicles are healthy! Let’s make him a man—a senator! 

~You know: it’s like, it was bad, sure—but it’s like they inadvertently made it worse than it even really was probably: because they made it the way it “should” be, right. Like, I can’t imagine that even in 1939 Washington was as imaginary a place as that, right; like they made it like Washington was like somebody’s private yacht club that you got into because of your grandfather was the whitest man in the county or whatever, right. Like, in the real world, there has to be a certain amount of…. You know: business, reality. You choose the rulers out of the schmucks you don’t hobble and enslave, but then, once they actually set up shop, they actually have to, you know, rule, and accomplish things. They have to interact with an actually-existing material—and even social!—world, right. They can’t just get up there and gawk at how their skin is literally the same color as Lincoln-Zeus, you know…. 

It’s like in the Bible, where it’s like, “And then we Israelites moved into the land: and we heroically murdered the entire race of sinners: man, woman, child, cow, horse, goat, and dog!” (They killed, Spot, even? They killed the family dog? [dog emoji]). And then the archaeologists or whoever are like: “They didn’t really kill everyone. They killed some people, but I mean: come on. In the real world, not everybody dies. Grow up.” It’s like, they literally made themselves look worse according to their propaganda than they were in reality, because they were literally so stupid: they didn’t know what lies to tell, right. 

…. Woodcraft is an interesting idea—I assume that that’s what’s meant by a “boy’s camp”, you know—but what exactly is the government providing, if not money, you know? His idea is very like, “I’ll take the children to church, but I’ll let them do what they like all day. I’ll help out your parents, and neither of us will have to do anything we don’t like. The government will do something to help out, but it won’t spend any money”—you know. What’s he going to do, give a speech? “Woodcraft is a great idea: but we have to corrupt it with militarism. We have to remind people that the reason why trees exist, is because girls are weak and can’t fight.”…. 

I mean, I realize it was 1939 and war was on the horizon, but there are better ways to make people feel good, than blind devotion to conformity, you know…. (reads Wikipedia) Wow, in 1939 the G-men thought that this was like, subversive punk rock disloyalty, you know…. Well, at least we know America was NEVER batshit, you know: we KNOW, as historical FACT, that NO American was Ever Ever Bad, right…. And also, we used to think that conformity propaganda was loud anarchism, you know…. (shakes head) Like, how do you get your head around those lies, you know…. It’s like, if there were a romance and there’s like an argument so that the story goes on for more than five minutes and the fucking Baden-Powell Gang walks out, because Mommies And Daddies Don’t Fight; They Love Each Other, you know…. And what is this movie, if not a sort of love story between the people and the state, right? 

…. But yeah, crazy to think about, right?: 

(the mother) Oh! Propaganda! Romance! Lovely. (clasps hands) 

(the father) One moment of disloyalty cancels out a lifetime of obedience and merits summary execution. I’m watching this boy, now. (smoking pipe). 

~the American spectrum of popular opinion, 1939. 

Wild. 

…. But yeah. 

“I’m Smith.” 

“I’m Jones.” 

“Golly: we’re both, Americans!” [rainbow emoji] 

Yeah, it’s funny: the whole movie is propaganda—but it made conservatives uneasy because they like, doubted the possibility/usefulness for the system of propaganda, right. “ANY story, with ANY uncertainty or doubt for ANY length of time, for ANY viewer, no matter how stupid…. NOTHING like that is permissible. Depictions of reality are to be avoided if at all possible: and NOT to be encouraged…. Go to church…. Keep the faith…. Gossip with your mother; play baseball…. But leave this propaganda business ~alone!!!” 

But yeah: it’s interesting from the historical-cultural point of view, right. It’s what people would have had to face, if they ever decided to try to become a good person or whatever—if the very idea, ever, ever, REALLY occurred to them, right…. 

…. I remember once I saw a parody of one of those things, like if you’re Richard Jones you’re RJ so your blues name is like, Rolling Jelly, or whatever, but he did it as, like, enter in your credit card number etc. and then you win the game, and it was really obvious and fake-scam so that you start reading spy novels and protecting yourself, right—it was parodying those gamey things—but someone actually posted their financial stuff, and someone was like, replying to them, like—You lose; someone can go use your credit card now~ and the idiot was like, debating with them, right, back and forth, right: I followed the rules, I won the game; I should get a prize. Right? 

-‘But something happened on our way to that place: they threw an American flag in our face!’ ~A lot of times Billy Joel is unbearable; but sometimes he’s right, you know. People are just so weird about America, and the flag, and…. I mean, I live here; it can work out, and things in other colonial paleface countries aren’t necessarily better, and a lot of the rest of the world got torched, right…. But people are like: No! In ~America~, people would never disagree or fight, people would ~love~; they would love…. I don’t know why they lie about us: we love…. We love…. ~It’s like, have you disagreed with anyone this week? ~Yeah, three times. I can tell you about each one. First— ~No. That’s not necessary. But: have you left the country over the past week? ~No, of course not. I only travel once a year out of the country, if that. I can’t understand the relevance of that to what we’re talking about, though. 

…. It’s funny how we’re supposed to like the state but not the government, you know. The ~Ideology~ of the state/the ~Romance~ of the state…. (feel the love emoji)  …. But the business of governing—eh. (embarrassed hands emoji) 

And how there’s like the Good Girl and the Bad Girl: and how you can become the Bad Girl, before you’ve done, anything at all, right…. Especially with that, Frank Capra movies are, disturbingly enlightening forays into the American collective unconsciousness, you know…. 

And yeah: in the real world, a diabolical political operator would have been able to handle his goofy protege pretty well, you know. Just suggest a different site for the camp, right. Lie, bribe, misdirect. They would have figured out a way to allow those white boys of different religions and classes to have their quasi-paramilitary camp without the big party donors not getting their special deal, right. 

But yeah: America has the cutest propaganda, right. At least it used to be cute, you know: the Old America propaganda is cute, certainly. We had to sacrifice a virgin of questionable morality in a folk Christian blood ritual, of course…. But it is certainly romantic after a fashion; a romantic political story, you know—like, why, it’s almost like “The Hunger Games”, right…. lol. 

…. “You’re halfway decent; you don’t belong here. So go home.” 

Crowley has one of his characters say in a novel—I don’t quite remember the exact words, but that sort of thing isn’t as important as people assume, ‘The law is just a ridiculous game people play to avoid doing things the sensible way’—and it’s funny how close Timeless American Propaganda comes to agreeing, right. 

It’s entertaining. It’s cute. 

…. It’s a very simplified, naive take on political corruption—lots of people influence Senators; many factions~ that’s why it’s hard to tease apart corruption from the sort of normal self-interest that is in the voters’ interest, you know—but it’s very suddenly much less deluded than you’d suppose propaganda would be. I guess that’s because it’s American propaganda, you know: and Americans distrust the government. Therefore, the propagandist reasons—since we all need to get on the same page—Americans, Should Not, trust the government, right. 

It’s a funny country. Since we burned away the Native societies instead of integrating with them, (even more so than in the Latin American countries), and since we cut ties with Europe very early, (earlier than Canada), and since, whatever we did, and as colonial as we wanted to be, we were in fact separated from European society by thousands of miles, by a huge ocean, and were in fact on a different territory, and needed to build up a new society, from the ground up, right—we were after all burning away the Native society in place, and not using it, right—then…. I don’t know, we didn’t have the same unbroken tradition since times immemorial, and trust in the state, characteristic of much of Europe, including England, you know. Something about  violent burning away and the consequent break from the past, the breaking of tradition, puts some of the power with the little men at the bottom, men who were farther away from the centers of colonial power: more power went to the rough men at the bottom doing the breaking and burning of building an empire, you know. (An empire that rules over what was once 500 distinct nations, right.) So yeah…. Americans distrust the government. The monied elite and the educated men, the upper-class men at the center is there, like in any society, but more people at the bottom feel ambivalent about it; more people in our country want to be “loyal” to America somehow, but feel that our loyalty isn’t due to…. “corrupt Senators”, or whatever. (chuckles) We think our loyalty is due to “boy Rangers”, or whatever the hell they called him. 

The USA certainly has its own culture, you know. I wouldn’t call it more distinct from other countries’ cultures than many other countries’ cultures are distinct from their own neighbors, right…. (Although we have had a unique amount of power since 1945, I guess), but yeah…. The different flavor of American culture doesn’t really come from a unique school of philosophers or professional thinkers, you know: just a slightly unusual vision of what propaganda should be, and what the relationship between loyalty and the obeying the state, should be, you know. Usually loyalty and obeying the state are pretty much the same thing, right. “The American” (if there is such a person), tends to have a more ambivalent opinion about it. In ways, we are unique, you know—funny; weird, even. We are what we are, certainly…. 

…. This term originated in a LibraryThing review, although I don’t suppose I’ll define it, you know—bit you could figure it out, I’m sure: but re: the “conservative id”, right; the conservative id is pretty strong everywhere, far more than we admit, but it’s especially strong in America…. America is kinda a certain style of atavism, in that sense—emotionally, if not by doctrine or by thought, right…. But yeah: the conservative superego is much more English, in the American context…. I guess jazz music, today if maybe not in 1939, is also kinda the conservative superego, but now I’m making it too complicated, lol…. 

…. But yeah: it’s definitely propaganda, because it’s dressing up the conservative id, and making it, honest, and rational, you know, (wtf?), and OMG, handsome—like, he’s a New York City model, is what he looks like, but he spends all his time out in the woods, probably in Missouri, or somewhere, right…. 

It’s interesting. We have very interesting propaganda, in this country. It doesn’t make any more sense than anybody else’s: but we put a lot of thought into it, lol. 

…. But yeah: it is simplistic/naïve, right. “I’ve run that Senator’s life for twenty years!” Corruption isn’t like marriage, lol…. You can find a variety of stimulating…. Business partners. (LOL.) 

…. And yeah: it’s curious, right; Man desires to have his girl be his strong, armed ally in the day of battle, right: at the most critical moment…. Although he is no way moved to oppose the laws & customs that make this eventuality even a strong possibility, right. Who is Man, right? What does he want? What does Man want? Does he want to be happy? (Hmm….) 

…. But yeah: I don’t know; certainly one of the decent features of our empire is that you don’t have to literally believe in American propaganda to be an American citizen…. Although on a practical, informal level, it Can be surprising the things you’re expected to believe, to “fit in”, yesterday, and also today. 

And yeah, legally: the government is not, romantic, you know. I don’t know what “romantic” means; I don’t know whether that would be good or not, if it were so—it might depend on what it meant, lol…. But yeah, the government is not romantic. It’s not romantic in 2024, and it wasn’t romantic in 1939, either. 

…. It’s like a romance between two straight men, lol. 

…. He was a quiet American. Very quiet, and, realistic. 

…. It’s a romance between two straight men: Senator Smith, and Senator Jefferson Davis, lol…. 

~It’s the Lost Cause, Virginia—guilt!…. lol…. 

Update: Events in my personal life have made me question whether perhaps my original title for this review, “When Eights Don’t Hate” was a little naive about the Classic American Enneagram Eight, you know—like, it’s natural, maybe, to want to let the ‘man of the people’ have his day in the sun, but it can lead to naivety and un-realism/cheerleading for kinda un-naive, un-idealist people who don’t exactly lead in with their heart, you know. Some things more closely related to the movie itself—the acquaintance who loves the movies, the scene where Rocky tries to tame the ‘tough girl’ from his neighborhood, right, among other scenes—kinda support that idea. (Re-assessment.) I mean, it’s not the worst movie, or the most unambiguous red flag, by any imagination, right: it’s not like saying, ‘Oh yeah, I saw “Get the Gringo”, it was Excellent’, right. It’s just that, there is a sort of naivety in America about the essential smash-and-grab personality type, given our history: and even though at the very same time we can sometimes often be extremely uptight about people who aren’t proper and classic-rich and uptight, you know. But there’s the mythology of the colonial governor’s mansion and the mythology of the colonial fighter, (the latter being a fighter not only against the British, lol), and they’re just—you know, very naive, and in the case of the fighter, about someone who isn’t even classically naive, right. 

Maybe the obscure 70s Poitier adventure really WAS better, you know. The white guy in that movie—I’m sorry, I don’t know all actors—arguably WAS still the most important character, but, it was more of a collaboration, rather than a cheerleading thing, you know. 

But either way there’s no way to make a perfect movie, or a perfect anything. Actually very few movies do I find to be exceptional, regardless of whether or not they are ‘classics’, you know. (shrugs) But anyway. 

………..

In the Enneagram, the Eight is the lusty, aggressive number. 

So yeah, I liked this, pretty uncontroversially, I guess, as much as the 1975 Sidney Poitier adventure that I liked but has been largely forgotten, right, (The Wilby Conspiracy), and I actually think that you would make yourself smaller by only liking serious, edgy, whatever it is—I mean, I hear Rocky won an award but it does seem pretty popular and simple, and not, you know, serious or edgy or whatever it is; I actually feel like I’ve seen too many, proportionally, of the serious adventures, the adventures into grandness, as opposed to other kinds of movies. The movie apparently does impress people, but not by trying to impress people, and I think that’s a valid style. 

And it is rough, but it has heart…. And he’s not, I don’t know, the perfect man, the ideal man for marrying, even though in a different time, a time that probably hasn’t come yet, it’s easy to imagine him being one sort of ideal man…. If I were Isis, or even Aphrodite, I wouldn’t select him as my first round draft pick, right…. But if he’s not the ideal man, IMO, he certainly is A man, and that’s a valid choice, you know. 

…. It’s funny, these kinds of guys can be jerks, you know: but I know I want to experience this movie, because if you had asked me before, when I was meditating on the “dark/scary” tarot cards in my way meditating through the Mythic Tarot, like if you had said, Suppose you drop a jar of processed corn syrup, basically, because you’re still spinning subconsciously about your co-worker (I work at a grocery store) there, and his, you know: a more accurate thing would have been, “Don’t mind me, Theodore; I’m just leaking from my leaky negativity canister: it leaks in between January and December…. Love you bro! Or I dunno: whatever”—that’s almost the sense of it—and something about being attacked triggers my skittishness, which turns off the basic life strength needed to hold a jar of corn goo, you know…. (I was only supposed to be picking up my check and was waiting for the bookkeeper to come back, so I didn’t have a bag on me.)…. But yeah, I knew even as I was writing about my decision to not flinch at the sometimes hairy, ugly disgusting nature of life that I wasn’t rooted in that yet, although somehow I didn’t think like Life was going to show me up within the hour or whatever…. Although people seem to perceive me as a very calm person, and will occasionally give me unsolicited positive feedback along those lines, sometimes while I’m wondering why my mind is like…. Making monkey noises while trying to tame a wild horse, basically…. Although I suppose I must have a lot of foundational calmness, despite the surface of my mind getting skittish or riled up easily—or maybe I’m just the philosophical equivalent of the pretty girl who never knows when she’s having a good hair day, right. But skittish, yeah—that’s why I gave up my horror movie hobby I once had—it just seemed like…. “The professor must have been discovering science before he got interrupted by the—ah! Jump scare!—“ You know, it didn’t feel like training for anything; jump scares are too intermittent and trivial to be consequential, although they are irritating…. But yeah, Leaky Canister wouldn’t have noticed anything angry about what I said, because I wasn’t angry…. But yeah: I do want to experience this movie. Carlos, son of the Jungfrau and Amadeus Mozart, once (apparently) said something like, “The best way to handle the other person’s negativity is to know your own”—or something like that, right…. 

So yeah: hairy, ugly, disgusting: that’s what you gotta get into sometimes, if you wanna live, right…. “Gawana kite?” Huh? (takes out mouth guard) “You wanna fight? C’mon; I’m Rocky—I’m a contender; (punch punch) (miscellaneous bar brawl fighter slang, lol) 

You gotta get in the ring. 

…. But yeah: even in boxing movies, there’s plot points and build-up, right…. Although, more so than in a horror movie or political drama, there’s a sense of, I don’t know, the brutally quotidian underbelly of the city, right. To you, it’s Thanksgiving. “But to me, it’s Thursday.” 

As for the love interest, certainly whether you write a men-centric or woman-centric story, it’s a patriarchal society, and one of about half a century ago now, right. And part of basically any society is that some stories are men-centric, so what’re gonna do, right. In a story like that…. And I mean, you could even argue that they’re not setting up beauty standards for Everywoman, right: although I think you have to ask if it’s beneficial that the main girl be essentially mousy and inconsequential, right. She’s not a fighter; she’s not a contender. People push her around; she goes along with it…. And that scene with Rocky and the tough girl who wasn’t the love interest, right, that he lays down the Law of Reputation to, you know: there’s no fucking doubt in my mind that that scene is way too fucking long and way too fucking stupid…. If he’s a fighter, he should Want a girl with a little life in her; who tells fighters to obey the rules that church mice set up, right? Or do they do the punching that the church mice are afraid to do? 

But yeah, it’s bordering on kinda an older movie in that sense, but because I wanted to appreciate a snow-white or whatever Creed called the idea, a snow-white fighter, alongside and to the same extent as the obscure Sidney Poitier/South Africa political adventure, I’ll say that this is not just a basic-good four stars movie, but I’ll give it that extra point and call it 9/10 for being the first movie in a successful franchise: because I liked the basic emotive idea and theme of it being about life in the hairy, ugly, disgusting underbelly of the city, day in day out, and how you gotta be a contender, you know. 

…. But yeah: I was with my family, and especially when I was trying to follow my dad’s ineffective driving, I wanted to go back to the 70s so I could pull up besides a couple I didn’t know and say, Take her to the zoo~ you know. I understand the appeal of popular culture. 

I wanted to have spies tell me petty details of my relatives’ lives, so I could say, I hear things. Don’t you think I hear things? ~They’d probs be duly impressed, right. 

(cartoon old lady voice) I hear goosecap’s doing real good now—I think he runs the mafia. 

My family is just like Gen Z—they slay…. Although more in the sense of, “You’re killing me, Smalls.” (face palm emoji) 

…. But yeah, he’s not a bad guy. I don’t know that I admire him, but he’s not a bad guy. Certainly not as an individual. Maybe he is a little bad; we all partake in things that aren’t ours. But people told him education wasn’t for him, and, anyway, he needed to learn things that “our” schools don’t really teach, right. 

But yeah it’s funny: they said “dago” in the 70s and they still half-meant it, right; although America always wants the guy on-the-bottom-but-not-quite-on-the-bottom to feel taken care of, right…. Although, what did they ever ~really~ do for him, right? Did they form in him an admirable character? 

And, yeah: it’s a library DVD I was watching bit by bit, and Mercury is slowly easing into retrograde, right, but: the DVD got bad on me for a minute or two of the movie—and it took longer than a minute or two to figure out where the bad patch ended, probably five or six minutes—right as the classic-rich-guy asked Rocky if he “believed America was the land of opportunity”. I don’t know how you read that, assuming you believe in meaningful coincidence. Like in the real movie of life, does moment not happen, or does it maybe happen, but in the movie God makes about life, does a different music play, or something…. 

I mean, he’s not a “bad man” in himself: and it’s curious to see him represented as a good one, you know. 

…. The depths of the man who thinks he’s no good who’s friends are telling him he can make it and he says that they’re no good and that he doesn’t think that they think that he can make it. 

…. And yeah: it’s funny or whatever, right—Rocky wants to make out~ It’s A Good Idea; Rocky doesn’t want to make out~ It’s Not A Good Idea. Ok. 

That said, I don’t know if I’d say “most”, but many, I suppose, men who are probably old enough to remember this movie (way back at the back end of the ethnic miracle in the 70s, right) are, in the context of this sorta thing, doing a somewhat good job—not punching people in the face, too often, etc. Some of the time, obviously. 

Although I don’t mean “punching” literally exactly—boxing isn’t really my thing to watch, basically because the score/outcome is usually so arbitrary, you know; American football is probably at least as “violent” and to some extent it’s a perfectly amusing sport to watch, you know…. But yeah, boxing lends itself to storytelling, right…. 

…. We all have negative thoughts, but I do wonder if the message of the movie isn’t basically, You can think like a loser, feel like a schmuck—and you can still be the title character!…. All you need to do is learn this little trick by your fellow didn’t-used-to-be-white ethnic American…. Some of the lines are really crazy: you can’t make this crap up, right (crying laughing emoji) …. Although they almost let the girl be like, a real supporting character: it gets very close, right—so close…. And her brother is like the difficult-to-believe stereotype of the guy like that, so that he can take the fall and we like the title character better…. It’s all about the title character…. 

But it’s better than having your car get worked on, lol. “Hey Rocky tell that guy his car is ready!” (Rocky) Uh hello Mr. Nobody; my name is Nobody; I mean—Rocky. Your car is ready for pickup, will you be paying cash or card?…. 

~But yeah: it’s interesting perspective-for-life, you know. Sometimes you meet guys, masculine men, especially but certainly not exclusively older and/or white, and it’s like…. Yeah, that guy’s not doing so bad. Think of how he was educated by society, right? First he was told he wasn’t worth no education, and then he was educated in a bunch of bullshit ideas nobody who respected him ever told him to question, right…. 

The training scene was certainly entertaining. 

…. And the other thing is, it’s not really paced properly, you know. My guess is that the fight should have ended about 80% of the way through a story of this length, and I’m over 80% of the way through, and it’s just, about, to begin, right. Really, it’s going to end, and there’s going to be just enough time for him to raise his hands up into the air and shout some vague, stupid thing, before the credits roll. There is a difference between fighting some kind of sports-fight to win at life and prove you’re a real champ or whatever, and being like an escape artist who literally just punches people sometimes, you know. Very indifferent storytelling; mediocre, really. 

…. But yeah: no matter how American you are, epithet, the Irish-Italians will always be more American just by advertising their supposed countries of origin, right. 

(draws self up) And that’s because this is the United States of America. (beat) (chuckles)  

…. And yeah, it would be funny to make a list of the things Apollo/Apollo’s people promote so that we can have a laugh at their expense, right. (Money/fashion/Canada, etc.) 

But don’t do that. You’ll get a headache. lol. 

…. Life lessons: if you punch people enough, eventually, I don’t know, their whole face, right. It looks different…. 

But yeah, now we know what Rocky has to go through before he can feel the slightest emotion, lol…. 

…. …. “Do you hate anybody, Rocky?” No man, I don’t hate nobody. I don’t hate nobody, nothing like that. I don’t feel…. I don’t feel…. I mean…. Say, boss: what was the question?”

I didn’t enjoy this, although I expected to. I didn’t like “Emma”, it was one of my less-liked Jane books, but I anticipated a modernization making it seem less…. Something. But, it certainly seemed…. Something. I guess if you’re Knightley/Paul Rudd you don’t really like Club Woodhouse, you know. I wonder if I’m as unbearable as his character is. I guess the actress is pretty, although I don’t know her, really. 

I don’t know what it is. (shrugs) 

…. I guess I just didn’t anticipate that being an idiot once-born version of a priestess is intrinsic to Emma’s (Cher’s) character, even with the Anglo-centrism moderated, you know. 

…. “His whole idea of acting like a family is to criticize me.” 

He’s met my father…. 

So yeah, the segment I just watched wasn’t in actuality better, really, than the rest of it—although it is certainly easier to like a clueless girl when she’s all, “What important lesson is our Mother trying to teach me? I feel like this movie is almost over!”—but I liked it rather better. I guess I was more attuned to it. 

…. And, while it’s incidental to the “main plot” or whatever, the freeway scene is good because, although it reinforces gender stereotypes, it shows the Black couple, (incidentally if necessarily with Emma/Cher present), go through a traumatic experience together—and come out of it together, too. (And, alive, of course.) 

…. It’s cute. I was wrong; it’s cute. 

And man, I want to have a house like that. I don’t want to be a lawyer—I’m sure somebody has to do it, and I’m not saying they’re bad or telling a ‘lawyer joke’; but I Cannot imagine arguing with people for a living—but there are things I want to do, and having a house like that, stairs like that, that would be alright…. 

To have the excellence of one’s relationship be mirrored by the excellence of one’s stairs: that would be alright. (winky emoji) 

N.B. I’m against classifying made-for-TV movies as “TV”—are there episodes? What’s going on in people’s heads that this is called “TV”? 

Okay. 

…………………

Well, I’m on the wrong side of the Ethnic Miracle for Irish nationalism in the USA, and the wrong generation for it—some people stay very set in their ways until the end, at least in petty ways: the old Irish man in America might vote for reactionary I-am-the-Man politics, but he’d never watch a Jane Austen movie—and the wrong age, too. Oftentimes growing up we live in the world, the headspace, that our parents returned to when they nested, that of their youth, and then we grow up and think, The hell was that all about right? 

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I’m sure Morgues (my pet name for the Morrigan) won’t shake a pitchfork at me for playing the shoneen, you know…. You can’t tell an Aquarius what not to do. You really can’t. They’ll clear their whole schedule to do those things, you know. 

Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. 

But anyway, I forgot how C.S. Lewis-y Northanger is; it’s like a moral mystery: there’s the Tilney kids and the Thorpe kids and one set is good and one set is bad, and blimey if I’ve forgotten which is which…. Largely because it’s not, thrilling, you know. A little formulaic…. Like halfway between Narnia, a veritable fairy-tale Bible, and a proper-pop-romance, you know…. 

Anyway, I do kinda think that to a certain extent, Northanger actually works better on the screen than on the page—Jane’s rational prose and stylistic sheen to everything disguises the fact that she’s talking about a sensationalist, basically, really. (The historicists always say ‘gothic’, hoping that you don’t know what they mean, so that they can go away giggling, having won the game.) Just showing the absurd fantasies of a weak woman—for lack of a better term—visually: bandits come and whisk her away to some mountain fortress for some secret purpose that everyone knows…. In a sense that works better, from a certain point of view, than educating people about names of book titles and authors, amounting to thousands upon thousands of pages of now antiquarian literature that interests relatively few, and which is probably no more of note, really, than say Victoria Holt, to speak only of the 20th century dead, you know. I don’t know who writes “gothic” stuff now. I suppose some of it is more sensationalist than others. Well, I suppose “Twilight” vaguely fits the bill, you know. (dodges tomato) “Get out of here, bum! This is civilization—not some damn little girl show!” 

(tomato emoji)

I suppose there’s no fighting THAT sentiment, right. The anti-sensationalist sentiment! 

…. Yes, now I remember who is the ‘good’ family and which the ‘bad’, although the good kid’s dad or whatever is a little dodgy, in an over-proper way…. Very C.S. Lewis-y, kinda moral romancing, Old Sagittarius, you know…. 

It is funny how you couldn’t go on a date without a chaperone (you’d get assassinated), but you could lie and twist people’s arms to be a pliable chaperone to serve your purpose…. 

…. Anyway, be that as it may. 

Movies are short, but I do think it’s a simple story, maybe even for Jane, and I really do think it benefits from the quotes from the ‘bad’ books, you know. 

And as hemmed-in as Jane’s stories are, there are real benefits to its being a comedy, and a non-adventure, since the ‘bad’ people really do not deserve to die, you know, as they might well die in a sci-fi show, or even in Shakespeare. 

…. Although while there’s no sword fighting in Jane’s stories, even in Northanger, Jane’s men tend to come off as being rather strong—wise, calm…. Strong, basically: warriors at peace. Jane’s girls on the other hand often come off as being rather foolish, although you could take that in different ways as to what was in her head, you know. Journalists flatter themselves that they do and novelists do not, but maybe it is the other way round, or else maybe they are the same, you know. Who writes a character that doesn’t exist? But yeah, the Northanger girl and the Mansfield girl both come off as rather foolish, you know: good-because-lacking-the-power-to-do-wrong. It obviously has an unfortunate layer, but on this plane of consciousness, having the power to do wrong is preferable to the alternative. 

…. It’s a very simple story, very dualistic. I suppose children are often so, and I suppose in the old hat way it is an excellent story for children—feminine children, anyway. I wonder if there are any adaptations with talking animals or animated versions…. Though perhaps children are not quite like that anymore. I do know that masculine and Yankee Doodle kids wouldn’t like it, since there’s no fighting, they’re British, and two of the worst characters are the two main military men! I suppose it’s a classic feminine story, in that way.

“I don’t know.” (multiple times) 

“If you’re trying to frighten me…. You’re doing a very good job.” 

~ Audrey’s character 

“It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a young woman can handle by herself.” 

~ Cary’s character 

These inspiring, uplifting sound bites come from the 1963 adventure comedy/romantic adventure “Charade”, with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. In a lot of ways, it is kinda a stupid 1963 movie, you know. Think of John singing, “Money: that’s what I want”, with a little help from Paul and George. But, like an early Beatles song, it has redeeming elements if you don’t take the brainiac elements too seriously. A lot of adventure stories don’t take themselves too seriously, of which this is obviously one, you know. Audrey is cool all around; Cary has a nice, relaxing voice. Suave. Anyway, adventures can be fun, I guess…. Sometimes even when they’re a little stupid, right. I mean, it was interesting. I could watch it; I was curious as to what would happen…. It was just also stupid, you know…. 

Anyway, I guess it’s different in that it’s mildly unlike the other two Stanley Donen movies I’ve watched so far, which were straight romances. (On the Town & Singing in the Rain). This reminded me more of “Father Goose”…. 

…. Despite being racist in passing (and implicitly, generally), eventually it kinda dumps most of the “Father Goose”-esque throwaway entertainment style and becomes a reasonably competent action adventure. I’d say it’s almost clever; it’s almost smart. 

…. It’s fun; it’s not like the Christmas movie they play in the monastery, you know. 

…. It’s well-acted, and the ending is surprisingly good. 

So yeah. Aside from the fact that it’s kinda that old-60s-probably-before-the-Rolling-Stones-were-a-big-deal (one of the actors reminded me of Mick Jagger, but I don’t know if that was planned)—just kinda ‘straight’, you know. It’s not like ‘The Wilby Conspiracy’, right, but in a way it might be as good. 

And just basically, in that Hollywood/once-born/un-initiated way, it’s not such a bad movie. It’s almost pretty good…. And yes, my name is probably Kevin, and I come from the Mists of…. The Mists of…. Was it the Mists of the Atlantic? 

I come from the mist. 

But that doesn’t interest you…. 

But, yes: it can always surprise me, just how once-born I can be. And not just because of this. 

First, let me just say that Jane Austen is English mythology, so, I mean, the legalists, sorry the historians, sorry the literary critics, don’t think that this is “accurate” (you don’t even want to know what angry aristocrat nerds are like—I’m telling you: you don’t), but basically: the character who talks to herself talking to you, who doesn’t notice you replying in nonsense Italian? My mother. 

So it’s accurate. 

I originally thought this was by Joe Wright—who’s kinda a sorta interesting literary adaption director, who did a P&P movie, and I searched Netflix for him and came up with this, and didn’t check the credits to make sure before I started watching. But it’s ok; I can do a Jane Austen trio instead of a specific director trio, since it’s by an unknown girl—so good (girl) but also bad (unknown). So anyway…. 

“There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve ruined your life, and realizing you have much further to fall.” 

So, as I wrote before, (I’m actually editing now! So unlike me!) Jane is one of the most rational and calm-yet-comic writers, and with a decent literary director, it can be fun. It didn’t like, Change My Life, because I knew the book—it was just easy, but I liked that. But although it is easy to like Jane for what’s not there, even if it is there—there’s plenty of masked suffering of being around gendered English people, the feminine prick men and the hyper-feminine ill women, but at the same time, I think that, especially in a movie with its visual/physical intelligence, there’s a lot to just ~enjoy, without the whole, drop-dead-for-love thing. (As much as we’d all like to, women included, men included.) I don’t know; it’s like, just, they have this Nice House, and they visit Wonderful House: you accustom yourself to there being good things in the world, even if people tend to use those good things unwisely. Most stories have a romance plot, but in the King Arthur books—and I love Arthurian mythology; but in the Arthur books it’s like, tribal times; dead men drumming; and—yeah, I mean: anything that’s not abstract like poetry or music involves suffering, but in Nice House stories it’s like, ordinary suffering, and extraordinary wealth, whereas in an adventure it’s extraordinary suffering, the looming possibility of death, and the ever-present shadow of perversion and scandal, perhaps. And don’t get me wrong—sometimes people need to get a little fucking compassion about not ringing the village church bells and crying perversion, but…. I mean, it happens because of unusual unconsciousness, unusualness. Sometimes, all you need, is, either love, or, a story you already know from a longer telling, and just beauty—gardens, mansions…. And a heroine who is also a narrator. That’s nice. Good movie. 

Also, it’s funny: I knew this was 2022, but I thought it was Joe Wright, so (and I’m trying not to malign Joe here, although it’s funny it’s not—it’s like, Well, anyway) so I thought that the use of Black talent was a nice touch, in light of the “Pan” fiasco, you know. This movie is like, ‘You’re welcome to swing by my place anytime’; that movie was like: So we can spend more time together, I’m going to let you keep living in like 20% of your house. It’s still a nice touch, even if the cleaning up mistakes is less of a, personal, mea culpa? 

And, you know, certainly one (very) subtle (Jane-style subtle!) compliment doesn’t erase in people’s minds another very strongly implied unconscious disrespect, not in the world we live in, right—and by that, I don’t mean any particular group. But it’s a lot more human and open to Black people than Hollywood usually is, and even the rest of the world, as the occasional (numerous, though not by percentages) book or movie on how Black people have usually been treated will attest…. 

And just that a Black man could end up with a white woman who was the sister of the heroine and not the heroine: the shadow, the whiney little git with nothing on Whitney, you know. And that it’s in a fucking Jane Austen mythos, you know. 

And if anybody tells you that Anne Elliot looking directly at the screen doesn’t work…. I don’t know: have Them make a movie about Their life, lol. 

…. “It angers me that the world denies you the opportunity for a public life. You’d make a great admiral.” 

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad. (winks) 

…. You always forget that Jane was a Sagittarius, even though it fits like a glove. Jack too. You’d think with all that Pevensie crap that he was a Capricorn, but he wasn’t. That was just the time they lived in—it was before the revolution. 

It was a slow revolution, not like the French one, but…. 

…. I’m glad I watched this though, not only because it’s a great story, but because when I read it, in certain parts, I got more the themes than the plot, you know: like the advanced but not the simple, because it’s so intricate, sometimes it’s easier to see the trees than the forest the way it is in book-form…. 

…. “Joy—pardon me—I’m experiencing joy….” 

Now, if he had been looking at the camera: that would have been perfect. 

…. It’s like the drama of Black Athena and Psyche, that part of it…. 

But I’m with cousin Elliot: you can always romance the girl later…. Making sure you inherit the estate, cannot wait. (laughing cat emoji) 

…. This was the equal to any of the best Greta Gerwigs: whether “Lady Bird” or “Little Women”, this is of the same quality. 

…. Say not that England has no future.