A reader on Twitter asks:
Starting a parallel cinema scene is becoming an ever-more feasible option for conservatives and dissidents. It’s easier and cheaper than ever to make your own movie. An enterprising director could crowdfund a slick little indie film. Professional grade editing software; even high-end hardware like a RED cam, is within a guerrilla production’s budget.
The real question is how to craft movies that effectively counter the Cult’s message.
Some will argue that right-wing message fic is no different than left-wing message fic, and it’s film makers’ duty to simply tell a fun story.
This objection misses the point because it assumes that the Death Cult spread its message through heavy-handed propagandizing. That’s just the frog finally noticing the water is boiling. Hollywood has been a Death Cult vector since at least the late 60s, yet most people are only being turned off now.
The second mistake that thwarts counterculture art is more common among Conservatives. They likewise start from the false premise that overt message fic is how the Cult delivers its propaganda. Then they rush straight into the equal but opposite error of deliberately making their own message fic.
Both camps fail to understand how the enemy indoctrinated multiple generations without anyone noticing till it was too late. Their current overt skinsuiting is just a victory lap. Hollywood reached this point by using subtle storytelling techniques to erode audiences’ defenses.
To understand this method, one need only understand the archetypal trope 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:
When Twitter asks how conservatives should go about making movies, my answer is, “Don’t.” State of the art editing software, cinematography classes, handsome actors, balanced budgets, and well-planned logistics will never hide their conservatarded misunderstandings of human beings.
To Christian creatives who aren’t conservatives, however, I will remark that Wes Anderson’s style of cinematography greatly appeals to me. It’s easy to shoot and easy to follow, and it gently reminds media-damaged Millennials that they are, in fact, watching a movie.
I second the vote of confidence in Wes Anderson’s style.
There is also the role of deconstructionism being baked into their understanding of art. I’ve seen countless numbers of people write off any story the second it looks like they know the theme isn’t subversive filth. By the same token they faun all over it the moment it looks to remind them of the subversive trash they watched in the late ’90s and early ’00s. They aren’t looking for stories: they’re looking to have their worldviews validated, and their worldviews are very shallow.
Take the recent terrible Castlevania cartoon, for instance. It is objectively poorly written with terrible motivations and flat writing, the characters are all cardboard clichés (Bad Churchman, Misunderstood Beta Villain, Anti-Hero Badass) with nothing else to them, but it is great because it supposedly isn’t woke by 21st century standards and the designs aren’t modern Toon Boom nonsense.
They aren’t looking for stories to be entertained or to see the world as it is; they want their stories to reflect the world as they see it and validate their views. Not that there is anything out of the ordinary with that, but asking how you can “reach” such people is missing the forest for the trees. They do not want to be reached, they want to live in *insert year here* again.
The issue is that the year they want to return to will always eventually lead back to where they are right now. It’s not enough.
That is the “conservative” creator’s biggest challenge. Rolling it back to an earlier state of modernity is not enough, and neither is using the current broken system of today to advertise your non-Current Year ideology going to work. It requires a complete overhaul of how things are.
Yesteryear’s heroes were aspirational or inspirational. Today’s heroes are confirmational. We’ve got a nation of people who refuse to acknowledge there is any way they could be better.
And, as always, the “other side” remained laser focused on the wrong issues. Take children’s media, for one. The moral guardians focused on violence (usually tame and slapstick), which was always a non-issue, while completely ignoring, for example, the sheer number of children’s heroes who succeed by defying parental and other authority.
Harry Potter is the perfect example. Those books/movies are virtually incapable of corrupting Christian youth into the ranks of actual witches, but they do teach them that they should defy authority if they think that authority is wrong.
For more adult examples, check out the rise of divorce. Writers said married people were boring (is Dick Van Dyke as joke to you?), so they wrote happy, relatable people who were happy they got divorced with no negative effects on anyone.
Even before the battle against explicit sex was largely lost, while the guardians were focusing on nudity, the cultists were busy making sure everyone knew it was perfectly normal for an unmarried couple to regularly fornicate if they were attracted to one another, as if become one flesh were no more consequential than a declaration of ‘going steady’ or an exchange of class rings and letterman jackets.
Now, they want us focused on obvious woke propaganda nobody watches instead of the ‘good movies’ like Spiderman and Shazaam that are entertaining and also promote a twisted worldview.
Good article, yes the more obvious the less influential re: propaganda.
A good book is “A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child’s Mind” by painter and novelist Michael O’Brien. A major theme is the inversion of symbols that have been used for countless generations to teach us about evil in the world, ie dragons and vampires etc, and how parents need to know such inversion leaves their child vulnerable to moral corruption. Monsters are just misunderstood- our friends even.
Relates to similar material covered by the inimitable E. Michael Jones in “Sex with Monsters”. His thesis: we live in the upside-down version of the 50s, where what was good then is evil now and vice versa, tracked through two movies, “Creature From the Black Lagoon” and “The Shape of Water”. For civilization to advance, as per Gilgamesh or the Minotaur or countless other myths, you have to slay the monster, which represents our bestial animal nature, unleashing Logos. Now, however, (in full EMJ bombasto-speak) “You’re supposed to have sex with the monster!”
Dennis discovers the furry fandom.
“Take the recent terrible Castlevania cartoon, for instance. It is objectively poorly written with terrible motivations and flat writing, the characters are all cardboard clichés (Bad Churchman, Misunderstood Beta Villain, Anti-Hero Badass) with nothing else to them, but it is great because it supposedly isn’t woke by 21st century standards and the designs aren’t modern Toon Boom nonsense.”
It took me about three episodes, but I recognized it for how terrible it really is – enough is enough with the pedantry of “subversive” content – it’s mind-blowingly stupid and insulting. The best option on Netflix? Down rate it and ignore it. Ask your friends who praise it _why_ they like it. Ask them to explain their rationale.
“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.”
Could you illustrate this with some specific examples?