The "Arts Community"Count Me Out
Tuesday, July 5, 2022 12:14 am
There are many reasons I did not become an illustrator or painter. Oh, I had the talent. I truly did. I just needed the development.
But I couldn't stand the
artists.
They're such a degenerate bunch. And even when I was a teenager, I felt it in my bones: These people aren't right. And as I aged, I wondered why art should arise from such a sorry lot of people. True enough, most of their "art" is, as I often say, Art with a capital F. Even so, why were — why are! — the "arts" so populated with leftists, deviants, and perverts?
The leftists, deviants, and perverts like to pretend that it is only their kind that can even create art; that of course they dominate, because they are necessary. But I have realized something else, something not really that profound but worth remembering.
The leftists, deviants, and perverts have no other home. The "arts community" arises because its denizens revile the true communities of family, neighborhood, nation, and church. For them it is all about the alternate family, the family that has nothing to do with parents and siblings. The artists who are not oikophobes nor freaks blend with the population of the normal world. The "arts community" is just a trap in a greasy drain.
Even then, it does seem that LDPs dominate the production of "art." This is an illusion. Among LDPs there are genuine artists, just as there are among the rest of us, and no more than among the rest of us; but the genuinely talented LDP sets the tone for the "arts community," and that community is profoundly conformist.
We do not have a multitude of LDP artists; we have a handful of such artists and a horde desperately mimicking them. The lowly LDP needs affirmation from his alternate family. The NPC is as much a reality in the arts as in politics.
And, of course, as far as "dominance" is concerned, the "arts community" actively suppresses, or seeks to appropriate and corrupt, any non-LDP art. Their family, not yours, is all and only! They revile that which birthed and nurtured them, and us who represent the communities they have forsaken.
How to Tell If Your Story Is WokeTry This One Simple Test!
Thursday, July 22, 2021 10:46 pm
Beware! Colossal spoilers for "Black Sails." Among the many irritating traits of the SJW is
obtuseness. She really doesn't understand your objections to her antics. She believes that all she is doing is
providing representation to the Blessed Marginalized. Her face shrunken in petulance, she shrieks: "I'm just putting a gay man in this TV show! What do you have against gays, you hateful homophobe?"
Well, against their behavior, my dear, a few things; but that is not the issue.
I have no objection to the fictional depiction of a man who is attracted to men. I have no objection even to the sympathetic depiction of such a man. Such men exist, such men are human, such men are fodder for literature.
What I object to is your haranguing me on their behalf. What I object to is your sour attempt to disseminate the moralistic shibboleths of your ilk.
Consider the TV show Black Sails.
I love this show. Yeah, whatever, I have my complaints about it; but not one of my complaints is that the central motive of the central character is his love for another man. Indeed, I would argue that Black Sails is so well written, so humanly written, that I would not even want the writers to have done otherwise.
I wish, however, that they hadn't been woke.
Note I am about to make a distinction between telling a tale about a homosexual and being woke. This is what the SJW cannot fathom: That there is a distinction.
There is a book that was given by Thomas Hamilton to Captain Flint. Hamilton and Flint were lovers. Flint's piratical rage was born from the fatal mistreatment of Hamilton. The book is an important prop in the narrative.
There is an inscription in the book. Here it is.
The name of him to whom this love is directed is, as you can see, obscured; earlier, the viewer supposes it says "Miranda," the name of Hamilton's (public) wife, but in fact it says "James," Flint's true first name.
This inscription is a great example of intrusive wokeness.
If it had said only, "James, My truest love, T.H.", it would have been powerful. With that line, "Know no shame," it becomes propaganda. We hear in it all the bleating about pride and escaping closets; we see the fingers wagging at us — we who might shame the homosexual — telling us to eat our unbigoted spinach.
This is not the only woke moment in the show. The "shame" motif comes up several times. But this example is so stark and compact! One little line. Keep it, and the moment is woke. Remove it, and the moment is human.
Which do you prefer?
P.S. Yes, the very fact that they made Flint a homosexual at all is rather typical of woke approaches to fiction. It's the usual erasure of the hetero. I think we can be confident that Robert Louis Stevenson did not imagine Flint that way. Still, it's a fair change, considering Black Sails only toys with Treasure Island. And it is merited by the good narrative use made of it.
P.P.S. Huh. With that attitude, I should probably return my membership card for the He-Man Poofter-Haters Club.
The Two-Moms ProofThe Wisdom of the Trans Tweeter
Sunday, March 3, 2019 7:42 pm
I don't normally blog about social or political issues; not directly, in any event. This is meant to be a blog about art and philosophy, science fiction and writing. But today I'm
really annoyed.
So I caught this YouTube video by Tim Pool talking about how Terry Crews, the actor, is in trouble for saying that a child who grows up without a parent — most pointedly, without a father — will be "malnourished." Of course our gynarchy, recognizing this as a defense of the distinctive necessity of men, is now condemning Crews.
One of my favorite tweets against Crews said this:I was adopted by two moms. And when I was 12, I came out as a trans guy. I didn't have a "father figure," but I had many examples of positive and healthy masculinity from people [of] all genders.
Remember. This tweeter means somehow to counter Crews. Having been raised by Two Moms, the tweeter now longs to be the sex he is not, and is no doubt working towards mutilating his body to remove his genitals. See? There is nothing wrong with our tweeter! Father-free, he received exactly the upbringing he needed to become a perfectly normal man.
Our tweeter claims he had many examples of "positive and healthy masculinity." If he did, he ignored them. He did not develop into a man; the disorder in his mind prevailed. There were probably no genuine examples anyhow. Most likely he is using "positive masculinity" in the feminist sense: i.e., soyboy submission to female aggrandizement.
The other absurdity is that he thinks there can be examples of masculinity from "all" genders. First, it's cute that he says "all" rather than "both." The madness of this world! Second, masculinity cannot be exemplified by women. Masculinity is what men are. A woman may exhibit one or another trait that is normally exhibited by men; but should she embody so many such traits that one might call her "masculine," then she has simply failed as a woman. She is an example of nothing but disorder.
Try to explain this to our tweeter. It won't work. I'm sure he thinks "masculine" and "feminine" are things we humans just made up. Masks available to anyone! He can't even see that his being a "trans guy" proves Crews's point. Our tweeter is too busy affirming himself to face himself.
Ageless Ideals, Not Outworn MachineryWhat The Crown Neglects to Tell
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 1:15 pm
Whenever you watch a historical drama, of course you wonder, "What is true in this?" Especially when you see the bend of the narrative, you wonder what has been left out as unhelpful or distracting. Now, there is nothing wrong with editing history for the sake of a tale; it's just best to treat any historical drama as fiction.
The Crown, the Netflix series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, definitely has a bend. It is firmly on the side of "the modern" — that is, the Modern as worshiped these past many decades: the casting aside of all acquired wisdom because, well, we're not stuffy and oppressive anymore.
In particular it goes on and on about how the prohibition against divorce, and the disdain for divorced persons, is just so cruel. Never once does it explain why the prohibition exists or why people might think it a good thing. For The Crown, the prohibition is just a manifestation of adherence to outdated thinking.
In general, The Crown is all about the modernization of the monarchy. One could say: the steady erosion of its dignity. The royals, especially Elizabeth, are shown as people beset and powerless. She is a Queen with no constitutional power who, because of the supremacy of the Modern, finds herself bowing to every modernization.
As drama, The Crown is actually really good. And it is not disdainful, as such, of the actual dignity of the monarchy itself. By and large, especially with its honest (if agnostic) acknowledgement of the place of the Divine in the whole scheme, it avoids caricaturing the monarchy as merely some gilded vestige. Elizabeth is presented quite sympathetically. And yet, its greatest praise for her comes when she modernizes; not when she awkwardly tries to protect the monarchy as it has been.
And I think that, in adhering to its bend, it shows Elizabeth as weaker than she truly was. While there is no question that this second Elizabethan age has been a disaster and Britain is truly dead now (frankly, because of its descent into the Modern and, of late, its actual contempt for actual Britons), the real Elizabeth may have tried a little harder to resist.
In one episode (and in reality), Elizabeth concedes that there is something distant about the monarchy and agrees to the televising of her Christmas message. In the broadcast she says the following:Twenty-five years ago my grandfather broadcast the first of these Christmas messages. Today is another landmark because television has made it possible for many of you to see me in your homes on Christmas Day. My own family often gather round to watch television as they are this moment, and that is how I imagine you now.
I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct.
It is inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you. A successor to the Kings and Queens of history; someone whose face may be familiar in newspapers and films but who never really touches your personal lives. But now at least for a few minutes I welcome you to the peace of my own home.
That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us.
To this point her speech has been identical to her actual speech in 1957; at this point, she then goes into a reading of a passage from Pilgrim's Progress, the same passage she read in reality.
However, in reality, there was much else between "all around us" and Pilgrim's Progress. I wouldn't expect The Crown to repeat the entire broadcast, not least because it included some dull state-of-the-Commonwealth stuff. But some rather meaty content was excluded. Here is how the speech actually went:That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. Because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old.
But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery.
They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.
At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth.
Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.
It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.
The Elizabeth in The Crown would not say this. If she did, she would be resisting the narrative itself. Note especially how she calls out those who would have "morality in personal and public life made meaningless [...] and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint;" those who, in other words, would commit their adulteries, fornications, and divorces and then get all tetchy about any objections to or consequences for their actions.
I think it sad that the show did not depict this Elizabeth, the one who at least cried out as she was being struck down. But The Crown doesn't want to engage the arguments of the real Elizabeth. Rather it accepts submission to the Modern as inevitable and decides simply to depict the human drama of the Crown's submission.
P.S. A silly thing The Crown does is reckon Elizabeth's sex as a rationale for the modernization. You know: Women are breaking free of so much in this glorious new age! And now even the Monarch is a wahman! As if the monarchy had no provision for a female Monarch; as if two of England's greatest Monarchs were not women; as if only a half century before Elizabeth there had not been Victoria. Very silly.
When Only Corruption Is AuthenticThe "True" Self, Revealed
Saturday, July 29, 2006 9:44 pm
There is a conceit that most of day-to-day life is a lie and, underneath it all, seething darkly, lives the truth. Thus, when a good man says or does something bad, we thereby learn what he is "really" like. But have we so learned? Bad acts or words are bad precisely because they present a failure; they signal a corruption. The man who, especially when drunk, does or says disreputable things has not lost his mask; he has succumbed to his corruption. When he is sober and does and says reputable things, he is not being a hypocrite nor a traitor to his "authentic" self; he is rising above the sins to which we are all subject. Our authentic selves are the uncorrupted, sinless selves, what we would have been had not the Fall occurred. No matter the terrible thoughts that beset a man, they do not represent him truly, unless he pertinaciously and characteristically indulges them. A man's character, after all, is what he wills of himself. When his will is crippled, especially by drink, his character has been set aside and he fails himself. It is a shame, really, that when someone is kind to us one moment and unkind the next, we think the kindness was false and the unkindness true. It is uncharitable, really, to allow a bad act to trump a good. Yes, a single bad act, absent repentance, can be decisive; but only absent repentance. Isn't that what God has told us, after all?
The Crown, the Netflix series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, definitely has a bend. It is firmly on the side of "the modern" — that is, the Modern as worshiped these past many decades: the casting aside of all acquired wisdom because, well, we're not stuffy and oppressive anymore.