Category: Culture

Art, music, literature and thespianism

Snowflake Warnings

Culture, Entertainment

One of my most treasured memories is watching the late Frank Zappa tearing into that foul scold Tipper Gore during Congressional hearings.  Gore, you may remember, thought that rock music lyrics were eeeevil and caused kids to become mass murderers or Satanists or something, and Zappa just took her precious little thesis and trashed it with a wonderful mixture of scorn, opprobrium and educated analysis of her silly, nonsensical fears and creeping Puritanism.

I was taken back to those good times when reading this piece of utter bullshit:

Old favorites, outdated attitudes: Can entertainment expire?

They exist throughout society’s pop-culture canon, from movies to TV to music and beyond:  pieces of work that have withstood time’s passage but that contain actions, words and depictions about race, gender and sexual orientation that we now find questionable at best.
Whether it’s blackface minstrel routines from Bing Crosby’s “Holiday Inn,” Apu’s accent in “The Simpsons,” bullying scenes in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the arguably rapey coercion of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and “Sixteen Candles” or the simplistically clunky gender interactions of “Mr. Mom,” Americans have amassed a catalog of entertainment across the decades that now raises a series of contentious but never-more-relevant questions:
What, exactly, do we do with this stuff today? Do we simply discard it? Give it a free pass as the product of a less-enlightened age? Or is there some way to both acknowledge its value yet still view it with a more critical eye?

I have a better idea.  Treat it all as entertainment.  And in the manner of Tipper Gore and her ilk, feel free to pepper the covers with all sorts of “parental advisories” or better still, my favorite all-purpose warning that one’s childish sensibilities may be offended by the contents thereof (number to increase with the frightfulness of the content):

  

At least a “10-” warning will announce that I’m about to really enjoy myself.

But for the love of Jupiter’s throbbing headache, leave the classics alone for us grownups to enjoy for the fabulous bits of entertainment they are.   Frankly, there’s absolutely fuck-all about the classics which should frighten anyone, whether it’s Mark Twain using the word “nigger” so freely in Huckleberry Finn  (which novel, lest we forget, did more to change attitudes about race than a dozen Jesse Jacksons) or Gary Cooper taking Claudette Colbert in hand in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938):

At the end of the brilliant movie Thank You For Smoking (2006), there’s a scene where the foul Senator protagonist talks about going back into all the classic movies and digitally removing all traces of smoking, thereby “improving” them.  The man’s unctuous smugness coupled with his utter conviction is so creepy it makes your skin crawl.

And that’s what these pricks are talking about now.  And make no mistake, there’s absolutely no end to it.  If a treasured classic like Baby, It’s Cold Outside can be interpreted to containing “rapey coercion”, then let me assure you all of one thing: nothing is safe.

I have a simple solution to this nonsense:  every time some asshole indulges in some censorship dream like the above, the nearest person should horsewhip them.  Literally.  They get “triggered” by the suggestion of stalking in The Police’s Every Breath You Take ?  Well, I get triggered by their wanting to change the whole fucking world to accommodate their tender sensibilities.

Just remember:  this wonderful, sexy scene in Tom Jones is one day going to disappear forever because some fucking vegan got triggered.

I am getting so sick of people trying to tell me what I should or should not do, or what I may or may not eat, or what entertainment I may or may not enjoy, that there may well come a time when you’ll read about some snowflake getting flogged for trying to bowdlerize the lyrics of Run For Your Life.

And the flogger’s name will be mine.  Which reminds me:  I need to oil the old sjambok, just in case.

As I Said

Culture, Two-Minute Hate

Longtime Readers will know of my loathing for modernist architecture — the squared-off, ugly and unfriendly style which resembles nothing as much as large cubes of concrete stacked on top of each other.  Specifically, my ire has been directed towards the brutalist works of Swiss designer Le Corbusier who, if there is any justice in the world, is spending eternity revolving slowly on a spit in a room where the temperature has been set to “Broil”.

But lest anyone think I’m just being petulant about this asshole, allow me to point you to an older article by Theodore Dalrymple, who lays out Le Corbusier’s works and his philosophy about society.  Here’s an excerpt:

I spoke of the horrors of Le Corbusier’s favorite material, reinforced concrete, which does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays. A single one of his buildings, or one inspired by him, could ruin the harmony of an entire townscape, I insisted. A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself.

And:

Le Corbusier wanted architecture to be the same the world over because he believed that there was a “correct” way to build and that only he knew what it was.
…
A terminal inhumanity—what one might almost call “ahumanity”—characterizes Le Corbusier’s thought and writing, notwithstanding his declarations of fraternity with mankind. This manifests itself in several ways, including in his thousands of architectural photos and drawings, in which it is rare indeed that a human figure ever appears, and then always as a kind of distant ant, unfortunately spoiling an otherwise immaculate, Platonic townscape. Thanks to his high-rise buildings, Le Corbusier says, 95 percent of the city surface shall become parkland—and he then shows a picture of a wooded park without a single human figure present. Presumably, the humans will be where they should be, out of sight and out of mind (the architect’s mind, anyway), in their machines for living in (as he so charmingly termed houses), sitting on machines for sitting on (as he defined chairs).
This ahumanity explains Le Corbusier’s often-expressed hatred of streets and love of roads. Roads were impressive thoroughfares for rushing along at the highest possible speed (he had an obsession with fast cars and airplanes), which therefore had a defined purpose and gave rise to no disorderly human interactions. The street, by contrast, was unpredictable, incalculable, and deeply social. Le Corbusier wanted to be to the city what pasteurization is to cheese.

The only possible reaction to this monstrous philosophy should be horror.  That is hasn’t been, and instead has fostered a long line of copycat architects and town planners, is the reason Le Corbusier should be roasting.

Earlier on, Dalrymple compares Le Corbusier to Lenin in his malevolence towards humanity in general;  I would say that while Lenin killed more actual people, Le Corbusier has  destroyed the souls of more cities and the spirits of the people who live and work in them.

It says much about UNESCO that seventeen of his buildings have been designated World Heritage Sites by that foul organization.  Here’s one, by way of illustration:

Pass me the dynamite, Sheldon.

And speaking of dynamite, I should save a little for the Huffington Post  if for no other reason than because of their breathless lionization of this monster.  Not that anyone should ever read anything in HuffPo, but should you want to see more architectural monstrosities, said article contains lots of examples of his work, all of which should make you recoil in horror.  I couldn’t bear to publish more than one;  they’re not so discriminating, the poxy little Marxists.  Huffpo marvels at Le Corbusier’s influence on the modern world;  so do I, but I regard it more in the same perspective as that of the Black Plague on the medieval period.

Hidden Depths

Culture, Men & Women

Like many of my contemporaries — people who grew up in a British colony — my childhood literary upbringing was primarily that of the Mother Country:  Rudyard Kipling, Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis and so on.

Another was a female author, E. (Edith) Nesbit, who wrote Victorian-era children’s classics such as The Railway Children and The Story Of The Treasure-Seekers.  As a child, I remember my parents reading both to me at bedtime.

One always thinks of the authors of children’s literature — especially female authors — as quiet, spinsterly or even virginal.  In the case of Edith Nesbit, it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth.

So far, Edith had been rather a passive participant in ‘free love’, but she now began to even the score with Hubert, embarking on a series of romantic affairs with young writers whom she mentored. Some of these relationships may have been platonic rather than passionate, such as her fling with George Bernard Shaw, who she met through the Fabian Society.
…
It’s likely her other lovers were less reserved.  The young poet Richard Le Gallienne was captivated by Edith’s beauty and unconventional style – she refused to wear a corset and cut her hair boyishly short, drifting around in flowing robes, her wrists jangling with bangles – and she contemplated leaving Hubert for him.
A young accountant, Noel Griffith, was the next to be dazzled by her, although he found her ménage à trois with Alice and Hubert bizarre, observing that Alice seemed uncomfortable and that Edith found Alice irritating.  The only real beneficiary was Hubert, who was ‘very hot-blooded’ and ‘abnormally sexual’ – which didn’t stop him moralising about the importance of fidelity in his newspaper columns.  Meanwhile, Edith let her children run wild, playing on the railway, and turned a blind eye to domestic chaos.

Sounds positively 21st-century, dunnit?

Fallout

Culture, Men & Women

I begin this post by offering up a quote from Megan Fox, talking about the feministical anti-Kavanaugh protesters:

“What employers will hire women now?  If I were one, I wouldn’t.  What kind of sado-masochist do you have to be to want to take a chance on hiring one of these women who think accusations are enough to hang a man?”

That particular bullet, it seems to me, has long since passed through the church.  I am pretty sure that but for the presence of the (largely female-staffed) Human Resources departments in business today, most men would probably not hire young women unless forced to do so.  Hell, I’m not even sure that female managers would hire that many young women either.  Because this is the kind of employee you’re likely to get:

Here’s a quick question for a prospective employer:  assuming you weren’t paying attention and hired one or two of these mopes by accident, about how long do you think you’d have before they started disrupting your workplace, taking time off to attend protests, or filing protests against male coworkers for imagined grievances?

If you answered anything other than “Days, maybe even just hours”  to the above question, you’re deluding yourself.  And as for these prospective Yale attorneys:

…well, I’m pretty sure that few law firms (other than the neo-Stalinist ones) would give them a look, but the nice thing about getting a law degree from Yale is that there’ll always be a job for you at pinko outfits like the ACLU, SPLC, Greenpeace and the like.  Hell, you’d be a shoo-in as a staffer for some Democrat congressman, so no worries there.

In the real world, however, I’m predicting that all the ones at the top are going to have to get used to filling orders at Starbucks or waiting tables at Applebee’s, because #patriarchy.

That’s the beauty of being one of the Permanently Aggrieved, you see:  it’s always someone else’s fault.

Fucking children.

Actually, No

Culture

From some SJW / Millennial ingenue named Hannah Yasharoff:

National Lampoon’s raunchy frat house comedy “Animal House,” which celebrates its 40th anniversary Saturday, is widely regarded as an all-time great movie.  But four decades later, it feels less like a comedy classic and more like a toxic showcase of racism, homophobia and jokes about sexual assault.

As the title of this post suggests, Animal House actually feels more and more (not less) like a comedy classic precisely because it does make fun of racism and jokes about sexual assault*.  (Remember that Dean Wormer’s the mayor’s 13-year-old daughter is the one who comes to the toga party and gets pass-out drunk — and then much later, only after she finally has sex with Larry Kroger, does she shockingly admit her true age.  That’s what was so goddamn funny, you pearl-clutching asswipe.)

Animal House aimed at so many sacred cows it’s difficult to know where to start.  Now that the Left has created its own sacred cows, however, they’ve decreed somehow that while it’s perfectly okay to make fun of (say) religion or patriotism, heaven forbid that anyone make fun of (say) transgenderism (despite the latter’s self-identified social deviancy).

And duh!  National Lampoon’s entire raison d’être was toxic comedy in that they skewered and made fun of everything.  (The word “lampoon” right up there in the title should be sufficient warning, but clearly our SJW children’s liberal education never got that far in the lexicon.)

Good grief.  I need a gin & tonic.  Oh wait:  my love of booze would make me future SCOTUS Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s spiritual [sic] sidekick.

Excellent.

*I don’t recall any homophobic jokes in Animal House, but I could be wrong.

Why Not?

Culture, Men & Women, Seen On Campus

So here’s the thing.  William F. Buckley once characterized conservatives as people “standing astride the course of history, shouting STOP!”  I, on the other hand, prefer to think of myself as someone standing astride the course of history, but instead of shouting “STOP!”, I prefer to shout, “GO BACK TEN STEPS!”

Yes, I have always preferred to go back to an earlier (and better) time, when things made sense (e.g. two genders — male and female — instead of the fifty-six flavors now apparently on offer).

Of late, however, I must confess to finding secret glee in not being so reactionary.  Nowadays, I seem to find pleasure in urging on The Great Insanity rather than attempting to fight it.  Here’s an example.

A British university has recently come under fire for allowing a rather different kind of career option in a recent jobs’ fair:

A university has been slammed after its freshers’ fair had a stand that advised new undergraduates on how to be sex workers.
Brighton University’s freshers’ fair last week had a stand run by the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project, Sussex.
SWOP describes itself as ‘A discreet and confidential trans inclusive service for women working in the sex industry who live or work in Sussex’,
Before the fair, the group tweeted: ‘1 in 6 students does sex work or thinks about turning to sex work. We can help.’
On A Level Results day, the group invited students to visit their stands for advice and information on sex work.
At the Brighton freshers’ fair, the group offered free condoms and lubricants for all students and invited to ‘play on our wheel of sexual wellbeing’.
Prizes from the wheel included underwear.

Amazingly (in today’s world), this has caused something of a negative reaction in social media:

One user commented: ‘Saddened to see this. Students should not be encouraged into prostitution.’
Another added: ‘What the f***? Are you seriously encouraging young people to sell their bodies to fund university? “Sex work”? Do you mention this to prospective parents at open days?’
A third simply said: ‘This is grotesque beyond words.’

Unsurprisingly, SWOP responded with the “If they’re going to do it anyway…”  liberal trope (see also:  handing out condoms to, and discussing anal sex techniques with preteens in Sex Ed classes):

‘Rising living and tuition costs mean that more students than ever are turning to sex work and SWOP believe that they deserve our help as well.
‘Sex work is work.’
‘SWOP have never idealised sex work. However, we understand why students may turn to sex work, and navigating the legal precariousness as well as potential danger mean that students are extra vulnerable and we will help.’

As I said earlier, this whole thing would once have brought from me a thundering denunciation of the decline of morality and the liberal-mindset catalyst that has enabled and encouraged it.

Now?  I shrug.  Because whenever I and other conservatives have have had this kind of attitude in the past, the response has often been that we’re being too judgmental, too harsh and too unforgiving.

So now I say:  Go on.  Tell these young girls that prostitution is a reasonable option towards funding their university education;  tell them how to set up “client lists” and draw up “business plans” for the exploitation of their vaginas, and tell them how best to advertise their wares vaginas and where best to set up operations.  Hell, given what’s being taught here, make it part of a business degree — it’s pretty much what’s taught in business schools these days, except that instead of using the hypothetical “widgets” so beloved of business-school professors, they can use real-life vaginas — their own vaginas withal, so there’s not even a need to set up a product manufacturing process!

I know this sounds cynical, and it is.  But my cynicism pales by comparison to that of the people who have re-labeled “fucking strangers for money” as “sex work”.