One windfall of the Star Wars sequel trilogy fiasco is that it clued millions of ordinary people in to what folks in the counterculture have known for years: Hollywood isn’t in the business of producing entertainment for a profit. Instead, the movie industry has become a propaganda factory for the Death Cult that’s seized control of the culture.
A common topic of conversation in dissident circles, especially among dissenting creatives, is how to use their talents to counter the dominant narrative. Taking the established industry back looks like a nonstarter since Hollywood is on the verge of falling to China.
Creating a parallel dissident cinema scene might be a more feasible idea. I’ve written before about how it’s easier and cheaper than ever to make your own movie. An enterprising director could put together the necessary crew and equipment to make a sharp little indie film with a budget equivalent to the average novel or comic book crowdfunder. Pro quality editing software, and even high-end hardware like a RED cam, is within an upstart production’s means.
The real question to ask is how to craft movies that effectively counter the Death Cult’s message. Two wrinkles usually arise to derail the discussion at this point.
First, those of a more Libertarian bent will argue that right-wing message fiction is just as bad as left-wing message fiction, and it’s incumbent upon film makers to simply tell an entertaining story.
This objection misses the point because it assumes that the Death Cult successfully spread its message via heavy-handed message peddling. People who make this argument overlook the fact that they themselves were increasingly put off Hollywood’s offerings the more overtly the studios pushed their message. If message fic worked, Hollywood wouldn’t be floundering. But the Cult’s conditioning did work on most people, so the message fic must be a symptom of the conditioning, not the cause.
That brings us to the second mistake that often fouls up countercultural art. This error is more common among Conservative artists who likewise start from the false premise that overt message fic is how the Cult delivers its propaganda. They then rush headlong into the equal and opposite error of purposefully trying to make their own message fic, but Conservative.
Both groups of dissenting artists fail to understand how the enemy managed to indoctrinate several generations with their victims none the wiser. The genderswapping and blackwashing on full display now are just victory laps. Hollywood got to where it is now by using subtle storytelling techniques to break down audiences’ resistance.
A detailed examination of these techniques is beyond the scope of this blog post. What can be explained within the confines of this piece is the simplest and most effect means of influencing how movie viewers think.
To understand this method, one need only understand the archetypal role of the protagonist. This is the character who drives the story by setting out on a quest to achieve a concrete goal against opposition.
Hollywood learned through long trial and error to make the protagonist as likeable and relatable to audiences as possible. The idea is to make audiences identify with the hero.
Nowadays, the studios have turned this approach on its head. The contemporary movie protagonist is an utterly inhuman Mary Sue with no compelling reason to pursue a goal since she’s already said to be perfect. Instead, she uses her screen time to deliver a series of lectures on Death Cult pieties.
Again, that is not the conditioning. That is a humiliation ritual meant to rub the remaining fans’ noses in it.
The conditioning came before that. And the way it happened was by Hollywood churning out decades of movies wherein heroes whom audiences identified with achieved their goals by acting according to the Death Cult’s morals.
That point bears repeating. To bring movie audiences around to your way of thinking, show characters they like being successful by acting in line with your moral standard.
Contrary to what anti-message fic purists say, this method does not have to involve hamfisted preaching. In fact, the subtler the delivery is, the better.
Ironically, the last movies to even halfway subtly counter the Death Cult’s conditioning were 80s slasher flicks. Contemporary feminist types love to gripe about how anybody who fornicated or lit up a joint received a death sentence, while only the virginal girl survived.
The slasher genre died out in the early 90s. If you look at teen sex and drug use statistics, both declined from their peak in 1980 and only started rising again in the 90s. That’s not to give all the credit for the reduction in degeneracy to slasher flicks, but it’s undeniable that those movies exerted considerable influence on the youth culture of the time.
To renew the culture, tell stories with appealing heroes who win using Christian moral principles. For more in-depth tips on how to write your own books and make your own movies, read my best selling book:
You can see it happen to comedy very easily. The explosion of raunchy comedies that led into the American Pie teen gross-out "revival" (which had little to do with what made those movies successful) turned comedy from being about normal people caught in crazy situations into everyone being a pervert/loser/jerk with one character trait who needed to learn a "lesson" by the end.
If I had a nickel for every movie that was "in the spirit of John Hughes" I'd have a million dollars. Hint: None of them were.
In my internet travels I chanced upon the last unproduced script by John Hughes. Written shortly before his death, the story took place over the course of one night, largely in a single setting: a ticket line for a niche band's farewell tour on a cold night in Chicago.
The main characters were a group of Gen-X friends looking down the barrel of the big 5-0. The dialogue and themes were darker than Hughes' prior work. There was a tone of finality, aptly framed by the characters gathering to reminisce about their antics in the 80s while awaiting the last performance of by band that furnished the soundtrack of their teen years.
You have to wonder if Hughes glimpsed his own final curtain call while writing that script.
John Candy's death changed him to the point where I can imagine his priorities changed.
But he could only get work with Baby's Day Out and Home Alone 3 level fare, so that's what he ended up doing before cashing out.
The man had his flaws but he was the last comedy director that felt like a normal human being.
And I think it may have propagated into sitcoms as well, with the caveat that they aren't allowed to learn lessons until the end of the series, if ever.
I'm going off secondhand knowledge here. The only post-90s sitcom I have any familiarity with is The Big Bang Theory, which I watched for a while before realizing "I don't really like any of these people" and dropping it cold turkey.
Yeah, it's not that characters with flat arcs are necessarily boring; screenwriters just don't know how to make them interesting anymore.
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"To renew the culture, tell stories with appealing heroes who win using Christian moral principles"
My memory of Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins is hazy, but I seem to recall the blundering, womanizing protagonist thwarts an evil plot by praying to St. Thomas More.
That'll do it, alright.
That book is amazing in how Walker Percy predicted every single thing that is happening today.
I'd have to wonder if there was a reason he was as memoryholed as Chesterton for that reason.
I’m a little hazy in the plot too, but he’s more sane than the others and is rescued by heading off with a sane woman. So I think his choosing sanity over debauchery was part of the “winning by Christian moral principles” part… he was more hapless than sinful, and chose what little he knew if God. Would that most films did even that much.
Or have your appealing characters retain their courage, prudence, loyalty and straight-dealing despite indulging in one of the Narratives preferred vices.
I love both Heinlein and Dick Francis, but I'm finding it impossible to reread about 1/3 of the former, and the latter's book tracks the progress of the sexual revolution most depressingly.
The latter was a more honest chronicler though, in that he didn't allow his sympathy with the free(ish) love ideal to stop him accurately describing how it could play out for people in the long run.
James Bond is another good example. At first glance, his life is the ultimate power fantasy – exciting job, cool car, unlimited booze and sex, you name it. But it's not hard to see him as a tragic figure: a man who's done horrible things for a government that won't think twice about cutting him loose the minute he's no longer useful, and who's sacrificed any chance of living a normal life. Viewed that way, Bond's lifestyle looks much less like a perk, and much more like the only coping mechanism he's got.
I would recommend a number of Clint Eastwood films as examples good ol fashion stories with a conservative message that's organic to the story and not stuck on like a billboard. Particularly Grand Torino and Richard Jewell. Another approach is emulating the underground comics and "trash" cinema of the 70s. Sexy stuff that appeals to men (the male gaze) is now pretty much banned nearly as tightly as it was during the 50s and 60s. Playboy ran against those mores by camouflaging itself as an intellectual magazine with girly pics. In essence, men and their tastes are now being "oppressed" and a media that appeals to to those tastes but can operate outside the social media/google censorship bubble – perhaps through Musk's new internet sats – can attract a paying audience while dispersing "hidden wads of truth" to quote a Vaughn Bode character.
"I would recommend a number of Clint Eastwood films as examples good ol fashion stories with a conservative message that's organic to the story and not stuck on like a billboard."
You'll get no argument on that from me.
"Another approach is emulating the underground comics and "trash" cinema of the 70s. Sexy stuff that appeals to men (the male gaze) is now pretty much banned nearly as tightly as it was during the 50s and 60s."
OK coomer