Saturday 30 May 2015

Downton Abbey
- Series 2


Also Known As:
Unknown
Version:
Language:
English language…
Length:
452 minutes
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
2011
Countries:
United Kingdom… United States…
Predominant Genre:
Romance
Directors:
Directors…
Outstanding Performances:
Hugh BONNEVILLE… Siobhan FINNERAN…
Premiss:
Chronicle of the lives of English masters and their servants, beginning in the years leading up to World War I.
Themes:
Alienation
Coming-of-age
Corporate Power
Courage
Curative
Destiny
Emotional repression
Family
Grieving
Guilt
Identity
Loneliness
Materialism
Narcissism
Nationality
Nostalgia
Personal
Political
Political Correctness
Preventive
Sadomasochism
Schizophrenia
Sexual Repression
Social class
Snobbery
Solipsism
The State
Stereotyping
Totalitarianism
White culture
White guilt
White supremacy
Similar to:
Année Dernière à Marienbad
Millions Like Us
Upstairs, Downstairs

Noblesse Oblige

Summary: How Whites Wish to See Themselves.

The usual over-warmed nostalgic Caucasian propaganda centered around a single, large and wealthy household standing-in as a metaphor for the United Kingdom.

The White love of war is well to the fore in this depiction of The Great War, but there is no explanation of the reasons for it and few pacifists, conscientious-objectors or cowards leaven the mixture. The contextless-vacuum into which the characters are plunged is a deliberate attempt to evade the fact that White culture is built upon violence; neutering the drama to a Jane Austen-like effort where the source of the great wealth on display is never examined - as if money actually did grow on trees or is given away on street corners to certain families, but not to others.

The odd delusion of Whites that war brings Whites together is never tempered with the realization that this false-camaraderie is only ever going to be temporary, to allow the poor to believe that the rich are worth dying to preserve - the rich have ensured that there aren’t enough rich to fight their own wars, after all. The class-war contempt will, of course, eventually re-instate itself when the wars to keep the rich wealthy are concluded. The servants here remind one of House Negroes, politically-exploited into believing that the interests of their masters and their own somehow, in some transcendent manner, coincide - when there is no way that they ever possibly could. This interdependence, based upon exploitation, is never usefully explored in an interesting or dramatic way.

The most realistic aspect of the drama is the aristocratic view that the poor can be convinced that they owe the rich something for nothing. When this turns out not to be true, the aristocratic fear of Bolshevism becomes all-too-plain.

The socially-limiting nature of White culture is never explored to any real depth and their effectively-arranged marriages are doomed to failure because the characters think more about looking respectable than actually being so; leaving the audience with nothing but predictable and unsurprising clichés to ponder; undercutting any dramatic suspense in its endemic and ultimately-tiresome wishful-thinking.

There is also, here, the White tendency to poke their noses into the lives of others (to ensure they know their birth-determined social place) when it is none of their business - but so much White drama is based upon violating that simple social custom. so there is nothing much different here.

The quality of the actors is variable, the scripting mediocre, the characters little more than facets of a single person (rather than fully-realized and differentiated persons in their own right), the scenes too short to help develop the drama beyond compulsive soap opera and cliff-hanger editing to keep us watching against our better aesthetic judgment. This is the kind of morbid melodrama so common among inbred ethnic-groups more concerned to keep up appearances than to be happy. As with psychopaths, one wonders if there is any real soul or heart to the politically-correct characters depicted. Women who pretend that being pale & interesting is a substitute for passion and living life to the full are the subject of this odd dramatic feast - yet they are not as interesting as they think they are. The actors struggle against the two-dimensional characterization - largely to no avail.

Ultimately, this series is a historically-revisionist and politically-correct celebration of the very emotional-repression it pretends no longer exists, but which reveals that under the surface there is nothing of value being repressed. And it is this that this drama (like the Wizard of Oz’s charlatanism) is trying to conceal.

This BNP-fantasy England is the only social harmony Whites could ever achieve - entirely in their imaginations: A world without the allegedly-troubling presence of non-Whites.

Friday 29 May 2015

Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson


Also Known As:
Unknown ()…
Version:
Language:
English language…
Length:
118 minutes
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
1976
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Comedy
Director:
Robert ALTMAN…
Outstanding Performances:
Geraldine CHAPLIN… John CONSIDINE… Shelley DUVALL… Joel GREY… Frank “Sitting Wind” KAQUITTS… Harvey KEITEL… Burt LANCASTER… Kevin McCARTHY… Pat McCORMICK… Paul NEWMAN… Noelle ROGERS… Will SAMPSON…
Premiss:
Buffalo Bill exploits Sitting Bull to add credibility to the historical distortions presented in his Wild West Show.
Themes:
Advertising | Alienation | Compassion | Corporate Power | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Ethnicity | Friendship | Genocide | Identity | Loneliness | Loyalty | Materialism | Narcissism | Personal | Political | Political Correctness | Schizophrenia | Self-Esteem | Solipsism | Stereotyping | White culture | White Privilege | White supremacy
Similar to:
Little Big Man (1970)… Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)…

History is nothing more than disrespect for the dead.

I will sleep out on the prairie underneath the moon and listen to the lullaby of the coyotes.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Summary: The birth of modern show-business in the West - and all the self-delusion that this entails.

Superb comedy-western about westerns and the attendant cultural myths and self-delusions that fuel White culture and keep it from achieving greatness - outside of fantasies of already-achieved greatness at the expense of People of Color (POC). It also takes a satirical stab at White entertainments that do exactly the same - specifically Hollywood westerns of the John Wayne, dreaming out-loud variety.

The pomposity, arrogance and vanity of White bullshit-artists is well to the fore here in it leading Whites to a strong sense of culturelessness and never having anything like a fixed sense of identity. The resultant thin-skin, so common among Whites, leads them to also pretend that the superficial is more real than anything else: Tinsel being more valued than gold.

This is best exemplified with the arrival of Chief Sitting Bull (of Little Bighorn fame) as an important new guest-star in Buffalo Bill Cody’s grand illusion. Much to Cody’s annoyance, Sitting Bull proves not to be a murdering savage, but a genuine embodiment of what Whites desperately-believe about themselves: Quietly heroic and morally pure. He refuses to portray Custer’s Last Stand as a cowardly sneak-attack - because it wasn’t. Instead, he asks Cody to act out the massacre of a peaceful Hunkpapa Sioux village by murderous US Cavalry.

Via a revisionist Western, the director skewers an American historical myth of heroism, in this case the notion that noble white men, fighting bloodthirsty savages, won the West. Here, the blustering Indian fighter (of legend) becomes a show-biz creation who can no longer separate his invented image from reality. Altman’s Cody is a loud-mouthed buffoon, a man who claims to be at-one with the Wild West but lives in luxury; play-acting in a western circus of his own making. Cody’s long blond hair is a wig, he cannot shoot straight nor track anyone any more - and all his staged circus battles are rigged in his favor.

Apart from sharpshooter Annie Oakley and her friend, the Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull, the show is populated by phonies and opportunists. Biggest phony of all is Cody, himself, whose fame has been based more on the penny-dreadful scribblings of Ned Buntline than on any real accomplishments. But none of this keeps him from acting as if his triumphs are real - or of plaguing his entourage with endless monologues about himself.

However, despite the superb performances from all concerned, the major fault of this film lies in its being too long for its material; making it a little self-indulgent and something of a smirking in-joke - especially given the fact that characterization takes second-place to the political argument that America is a nation based more on show business, hucksterism & performance than on any substantive ethical or cultural values.

Thursday 28 May 2015

Joy Ride

Also Known As:
Unknown
Version:
Language:
English language…
Length:
97 minutes
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
2001
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Thriller
Director:
John DAHL…
Outstanding Performance:
Steve ZAHN…
Premiss:
Three young Whites on a road trip antagonize a trucker via their CB radio, then must run for their lives when he seeks vengeance.
Themes:
Alienation
Christianity
Coming-of-age
Compassion
Corporate Power
Courage
Curative
Destiny
Emotional repression
Empathy
Erotophobia
Ethnicity
Family
Free Speech
Friendship
Gynophobia
Humanity
Identity
Individualism
Justice
Loneliness
Love
Loyalty
Mankind
Materialism
Narcissism
Nationality
Nostalgia
Personal
Personal change
Political
Political Correctness
Preventive
Redemption
Republicanism
Role modeling
Sadomasochism
Schizophrenia
Sexism
Sexual Repression
Snobbery
Solipsism
Stereotyping
Totalitarianism
White culture
White guilt
White Privilege
White supremacy
Similar to:
Duel

Pandora’s Box

Caucasians Hold Grudges Forever Because they Have no Other Emotional Outlet

Summary: What happens when Whites believe that the emotions of others do not matter.

T

hese kinds of stories work well in White culture and, so, are an accurate reflection of the problems that Whites, and those who wish to be accepted by them, possess. The violence inherent in such a culture is well to the fore here - as is the response to it; a cycle of violence with no end in sight.

Whites are so obsessed with hiding their emotions from others - and themselves - that even among their friends they are required to conceal what they really feel or be mocked for being too much like the so-called lower races. This results in the inevitable political stereotyping that results in viewing people as members of social groups - rather than as individuals - since the latter becomes impossible when one eschews ones own emotions along with everybody else’s. Whites then act surprised when a backlash occurs - as here - and imagine a simple apology will suffice.

Emotional repression is, ultimately, the basis of the story here as we witness Whites mocking each other for being both repressed and for being emotionally-expressive - an oxymoronic worldview that can only lead to the mental illness and catastrophic emotional rage displayed here.

Mocking others is an activity undertaken by those who have no real, inner, emotional life and/or who are as immature as they are defensive. It does not fill the time, but merely passes it in the hope that the effort involved in taking responsibility for ones actions represents a time in ones life that will never occur.

Like all the best thrillers, a strong vein of humor runs through this and helps both to underscore the action and to necessarily-relieve some of the well-crafted suspense. The comedy helps compensate for the lack of a proper exploration of the moral can-of-worms the script begins to open in favor of eventual plot-heaviness; feeling a little unnatural in its eventual abandonment of character-development.


Sunday 24 May 2015

Blazing Saddles


Also Known As:
Unknown
Version:
Language:
English language…
Length:
89 minutes
Review Format:
Cinema
Year:
1974
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Comedy
Director:
Mel BROOKS…
Outstanding Performances:
Count BASIE… Mel BROOKS… Burton GILLIAM… Robyn HILTON… Madeline KAHN… Harvey KORMAN… Cleavon LITTLE… Slim PICKENS… Gene WILDER…
Premiss:
To ruin a White supremacist frontier town (whose land he wants to buy cheaply), a corrupt State Attorney General appoints a Black sheriff, who promptly becomes his most formidable adversary.
Themes:
Advertising | Alienation | Christianity | Compassion | Corporate Power | Courage | Curative | Emotional repression | Empathy | Ethnicity | Friendship | Genocide | Guilt | Humanity | Identity | Justice | Loneliness | Loyalty | Materialism | Narcissism | Personal | Political | Preventive | Republicanism | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Sex | Sexual Repression | Social class | Snobbery | Solipsism | Stereotyping | White culture | White supremacy
Similar to:
Carry on Cowboy (1965)… Cat Ballou (1965)… Destry Rides Again (1939)… High Plains Drifter (1972)… Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)…

Authentic Frontier Gibberish

Summary: Western movie-spoof set in 1974.

Clever and astute satire on both Hollywood westerns - the racism obscured by White myth-making accounts of the American West - and White supremacy, that fully explores the White tendency to use others to aggrandize themselves by stereotyping those they wish to exploit.

The film’s open contempt for stupid White people is hopelessly funny in exposing typical White superficiality in their only being able to judge others by their appearance - along with inevitable White inbreeding caused by only breeding with people who look alike (all of the townspeople are surnamed Johnson). There is also much talk of the White propensity for using psychopathic violence to solve any and all problems.

All the clichés of nearly all the westerns you have ever seen are on show here: Town drunk, cowardly-citizens needing a brave man to protect them, pork ‘n’ beans, racist wagon trains filled with conquistadors pretending to be settlers, the fastest gunslingers in the West - all interspersed with stealing Indian lands, the inevitable hatred of Black people, Sinophobia & the usual White, emotionally-repressed sex-obsession. There are also many digs at unhealthy White attachments to their parents and the way in which Whites deflect attention from their exploitation of poor Whites by blaming the social position of the latter on the presence of Black people.

Anachronistic and avant-garde gags aplenty make it obvious that it is contemporary race-relations which are at stake here - not those of 1874 - which have, in fact, remained unchanged; especially the White fear of Black men having sex with White women - with the joyful consent of the latter.

Cleavon LITTLE (relishing the opportunity to parody the racist tropes of Gone with the Wind) and the rest of the cast are all superb in a film with an eclectic script that covers so many topics it could not possibly fail to amuse at least all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time.

Easily the best movie-spoof ever made, as well as a celebration of basic humanity fighting the good fight against systemic racism, wherein Black people are offered tolerance in lieu of hatred - but only if Blacks are politically-useful to Whites.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.