What do Iranian Uranium and White Identity have in common? The two categories are interrelated in current geopolitics dominated by Jewish Power. One might say the Jewish War on whiteness not only predated but set the preconditions for the Jewish War on Iranian nuclear power. Without the Jewish subjugation of the white race(and its doglike servitude to and collaboration with Zion), would the US and the West in general be in this perpetual state of mini-Cold War with Iran?
Just like the Mongols amassed the means for world conquest only after securing rich and populous China as its political and economic base, Jewish Power’s current global dominance owes to having utterly tamed and enslaved the white race as its most obedient dog and reliable horse. Just like Mongols-minus-China would have only amounted to ragtag barbarian marauders, Jewish Power minus the US would be far more constricted, thereby far less effective in its global schemes.

There are striking similarities between the Jewish attitude toward White Identity and the Zionist attitude toward the Iranian nuclear program. Jewish monomania acts on the ethnocentric basis that Jews and only Jews are deserving of identity politics and nuclear weaponry(especially within the Jewish sphere of influence, to which the entire Middle East and North Africa belong because of the global Jewish commitment to Israel’s supremacy, though, to be sure, Jews sought to deny North Korea the nukes on grounds that other states nearer to Israel would likewise be emboldened to defy the commands of Zion). Indeed, many Jews seem to feel that the ONLY way Israel can survive is via hegemonic supremacy over the entire region, i.e. survival and supremacism are interchangeable from the Zionist perspective.

Given the Jewish war on whiteness, the logical white position would be an identification with and sympathy for peoples such as the Iranians and Palestinians. If Jews attack white identity and Iranian uranium, shouldn’t whites and Iranians join together against Jewish ethnocentrists who would deny whites their pride of identity and Iranians their means of defense(and survival)? When Israel aims its nuclear arsenal at Iran, an objective observer would conclude that the latter is most justified in having an nuclear option of its own. After all, if someone owns guns to do you harm, you should think of owning guns as well.

Ironically, white Americans who face the prospect of disarmament(of personal firearms), a policy led by the Jewish Lobby, are more likely than not to side with Zion’s attempt to render Iran utterly defenseless against Jewish Imperialism emanating from Tel Aviv(with the backing of Western metropoles dominated by Jews).
Given that no group other than the Jews has done more to seriously restrict or downright abolish the right to bear arms in the US, one might think whites would have connected the dots and figured out that the Jewish war on Iranian uranium is not unlike the Jewish war on white guns, which is, of course, just another expression of white identity as the two biggest reasons for gun ownership among whites is to resist tyrannical government(currently in the form described by some as Z.O.G., implying that Historical White America is ruled by a hostile tribe) and to fend off black criminality(on grounds that whites will lose out in the contest of muscles with the tougher Negro, thereby needing the gun as the last resort, which is unacceptable to Jewish Power that employs black muscle against whites in the way that the Tsarist government employed the Cossacks against its subjects; total and unconditional white surrender to Jewish brains and black brawn is the ideal arrangement in the current order). As Jews control the institutions, they want statist monopoly on firearms, with the white masses rendered disarmed and defenseless. It’s no different from Israel’s insistence that it be the only country in MENA(Middle East and North Africa) to possess nukes while Iran and others remain forever disarmed. Given the Jewish hostility toward whites and Iran, why are whites always sucking up to Jews?

White behavior is understandable given that Jewish Power has already accomplished with whiteness what it intends to do with the Iranian nuclear program. Whiteness has been totally and utterly discredited, deactivated, decommissioned, defused, and disarmed, and it explains why the white race cucks to Jews in the way that conquered and destroyed Iraq, Libya, and Syria now serve as whore-colonies of Zion.
Even though Jews haven’t yet succeeded in disarming White America, especially in the ‘Red States’, they’ve more or less rendered whiteness inert and impotent. Whites still own guns but not the pride of identity that would lead them to take up firearms against their anti-white tormentors and oppressors.
Whiteness is considered, no less by the majority of whites themselves, as toxic and dangerous radioactive material. In other words, whites mustn’t own or handle whiteness as an identity or interest, let alone an ideology. Instead, Jewish Power must take ownership of whiteness and do with it as it pleases. Under Jewish Control, whiteness is deemed as vile and obscene, an evil that must be denied to the white race as a source of political energy. It must be constantly excoriated and denounced. White people must be denied whiteness as a matter of pride and unity; instead, they must be made to reject and renounce every last vestige of whiteness as akin to the Original Sin.

In the Jewish Supremacist Mind, ethnic or racial identity is like nuclear material. It can provide spirit and pride(as the basis of power) to a community of people of shared ethnicity and/or race, not unlike how nuclear technology can be harnessed to provide energy to towns and cities.

Atonement for aiding the German genocide of the Jews is aiding the Jewish genocide of the Palestinians. Lesson from World War II isn’t that no people have the right to do genocide on another people but that Jewish lives are so precious that it’s a crime to kill Jews but not a crime for Jews to kill goyim.

One could make a theoretical case of Marxism or communism as having been opposed to nationalism. After all, Marxism developed as an international movement linking the ‘workers of the world’ against their oppressors, i.e. if capitalists exerted their influence on a global scale, then workers too had to think beyond ‘petty’ national interests. In theory, this was all true.

But in historical practice, communism wasn’t necessarily anti-nationalist. Especially following Josef Stalin’s insistence on developing ‘socialism in one country’ in opposition to Leon Trotsky’s plan for worldwide revolution(that actually focused on Germany as the main engine for socialist revolution), communism began to take on a nationalist character.
Of course, given the multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-cultural makeup of the Soviet Union(essentially an inheritor of the Russian Empire), various nationalities periodically got suppressed or brutalized in service to ideology or Soviet geopolitical interests.

Granted, the early Soviet Union wasn’t a continuation of Russian dominance or hegemony over non-Russian groups but more like a non-Russian revenge on Russia, especially as the top leaders mostly consisted of ethnic minorities; they regarded the pre-Soviet system as one of Great Russian Chauvinism, though, to be sure, the ruling Romanov dynasty and many members of the elites weren’t ethnic Russians themselves.

Ethnic identity and cultural heritage survived, even thrived, under communism for two key reasons. One was pragmatism as the radical agenda of erasing all ethnic and cultural differences in order to create the New Man was a tall order for a nascent political experiment. It was deemed more advantageous to appeal to the various ethnic communities with the promise of communism as their protector and guarantor than abolisher, i.e. even as communism would insist on socioeconomic justice and egalitarianism, it wouldn’t infringe upon the richness of the various cultures.
Besides, even as the Soviet enterprise often decreed the mass movements of populations to fulfill industrial projects, free movement based on individual initiative, a common feature of the American Experience, was curtailed, meaning that the larger proportion of ethnic populations remained more-or-less in their ancestral territories.
Furthermore, the relative suppression of popular culture(in the Western consumerist sense) meant that folk culture & heritage played a prominent role in defining one’s sense of identity and place, whereas the all-pervasive elevation and spread of pop culture led to rapid homogenization in the US, as well as in Western Europe.
For the sake of social stability, the communists found folk culture and ethnic heritage to be less threatening than popular culture that was inseparable from the logic of capitalism. Thus, if capitalist culture sought to make everyone in the US and across Europe(and the entire world) fashion themselves on trendy idols such as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and 007, communism placed greater emphasis on cultures rooted in tradition and folklore.

A big problem with current discussion of politics and world affairs is the sheer misdiagnoses of events and their consequences. Much of this seems willful, mainly out of fear of Jewish Power(and its cucked commissars), though, to be sure, many people seem to genuinely swallow the official or approved line.

For example, take the case of Hungary. Viktor Orban would have us believe that the globalist Sorosian plot to subvert Hungarian nationality, culture, and heritage is somehow linked to his country’s communist past. In other words, the ‘woke’ forces of open borders, anti-white ideology, anti-Christian virulence, and globohomo are merely reiterations of communism. Against this ‘leftist’ threat, Hungarians must be steadfast in remembering the dark days of radical leftist rule and make common cause with Zionists and the European Right(and MAGA) to resist and ultimately prevail. But does this really make any sense?

While there was plenty that was wrong about communism, did it ever pose an existential threat to Hungarian nationhood, identity, and culture? Did communism seek to fling open Hungary’s borders to endless waves of foreigners, especially non-Europeans? Did it promote cultural degeneracy such as the celebration of sodomy and other quasi-sexual perversions? Were Hungarians made ashamed of being Hungarian? Were Hungarians denied their history or heritage?
Now, the power of the Church was surely repressed in Hungary, but Hungarians had the right to worship at the personal level. At the very least, no one would have even entertained the idea of festooning churches with symbols of sexual degeneracy, a phenomenon that has engulfed the Capitalist West where churches with symbols of ‘wokeness’, usually Negrolatry or Globohomo, is a common sight.

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While communism in Hungary was economically restrictive and suppressive of private enterprise, in no shape or form did it attempt to erase the Hungarian nation — its people, culture, and history — and replace it with hordes of foreigners. And even though Jews were, as in the Soviet Union, prominent in the early stages of communist rule, the government later was largely one of the Hungarian state ruled by ethnic Hungarians.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Soviet Union allowed, even encouraged, a kind of vassal-nationalism, i.e. Hungarian nationalism was no problem as long as it remained loyal to the Soviet Bloc. While vassal-nationalism wasn’t the most preferable form of nationalism, which ideally should be sovereign, it still allowed for patriotism and national preservation, albeit within the larger framework of empire. Unlike Japan that propped up the puppet regime in Manchuria in order for the Japanese to colonize and take over, the Soviets had no plan of colonizing and taking over their Eastern Bloc vassals. The USSR tolerated nationalism in those nations as long as it wasn’t anti-Soviet.

Soviet domination was partly ideological but also geopolitical, as the Soviets(or Russians) feared, correctly as it turned out in the post-Cold War reality, that a loss of one of their Eastern European vassals didn’t so much signal national independence than another pawn for the anti-Soviet(or anti-Russian) West. Indeed, the Russians discovered this in the aftermath of the Cold War when the Soviet Union in a state of rapid dissolution, opted to let its former Eastern European allies go their own ways. If anything, the Russians went even further and presided over the breakup of the Soviet Union, with each former Soviet Republic choosing its own system of government and national agenda.

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Every year has its yield of worthy movies. A casual viewer can list ten(or even more) good works in any given year, but the great films are few and far between. In most years, there are maybe one to three films of greatness. There are also dry spells, bereft of not even one great film for the entire year, and the rare bumper harvests of several great ones.

The biggest movie buzz at the year’s end is, of course, about the Oscar ceremony, which still commands attention(even if largely manufactured by the legacy media) though its impact has diminished over the years, though not necessarily for the right reasons. The oft-heard complaint, especially from conservative types, is that ‘obscure’ independent or even foreign films are sometimes favored over movie-movies with broad popular appeal, but some of the most interesting and/or innovative films belong in the category of the Art Film. Therefore, the real problem isn’t the shift in industry attitudes per se but the often stupid ideological reasons behind it. The problem isn’t an independent or foreign film winning the prize but doing so for all the wrong reasons: Not for artistic merit but for its fashionable themes, usually centered around Negrolatry, Homomania, or Holocaustianity.

The Oscars haven’t been merely off but way way off when it comes to artistic merit. Most Best Picture winners have been totally forgotten, having little appeal for cinephiles and nostalgists alike.
If anything, the Academy Awards’ main benefit has been the incentivization of producing something other than commercial fare as, other than profit and glitz, the vanity of respectability has been a key driver in the industry. Among such works, the ones overlooked by the Academy often turn out to be superior to the ones that are nominated/awarded. Still, the very reason for their existence may owe to some studio having banked on them as potential Oscar gold.

The exceptions notwithstanding, most Best Picture winners have been rather lackluster, to say the least. Cineastes never took the Oscars seriously as a benchmark of quality but nevertheless found them useful as a barometer of industry standards, cultural fashions, generational differences, professional recognition, and who’s hot & who’s not. The Cannes Film Festival, more international in scope and ‘auteur’-minded, has been only marginally better in its artistic judgments.

Generally speaking, popular taste, industry biases, and academic/intellectual theories have all conspired against art. The masses go for the lowest common denominator and the industry obsesses over competition & rank, while academic/intellectual types tend to favor fashionable theories(made even stupider by DEI) over aesthetic appreciation. (Why else did all those over-educated idiots elevate JEANNE DIELMAN, the worst film ever made, as the best ever in the Sight and Sounds magazine poll? Such intellectual corruption is proof that Time isn’t always the best judge, though, to be sure, Enough Time will likely dispense with the sick Chantal Akerman cult — incidentally, intellectual corruption may be more dangerous than financial corruption because its lack of material rewards may be mistaken for integrity, a virtue it has no understanding of. Even though JEANNE DIELMAN is 50 yrs old, its apotheosis is an expression of The Current Year, a culmination of the worst delusions of the ‘radical’ critics and academics.) The best criterion for the evaluation of arts & culture is a combination of experience, cultivation of aesthetic sensibility, and basic good sense balancing liberal curiosity with moral compass.

What follows is an attempt to list the Best Film of the Year, beginning in the second half of the 20th century. Why 1950 at the starting point? Several reasons. My knowledge(and interest) in cinema is more extensive in regards to the post-war era. While aware of the many great works from the Silent Era to the end of World War II, my overall knowledge of this period is spotty, partly due to a general lack of enthusiasm for the so-called Classic Hollywood with its factory studio system. Personal filmmaking in the first half of the century was the exception than the rule. Granted, plenty of these Hollywood movies were entertaining enough and would make for fun viewing even today. And, the outstanding works of this period transcended the studio system and earned their positions in the 20th century cultural pantheon.

In Europe, the great era of German cinema ended rather abruptly under National Socialism, not so much due to censorship but the discouragement of bold imagination that had distinguished German cinema from Hollywood that played it safer(with less regard for personal vision). While Mussolini invested heavily in the Film Industry, the Fascist Era in Italy wasn’t a golden age of cinema either. Ironically, contrary to the Western Democratic narrative, the primary reason for the artistic doldrums of National Socialist and Italian Fascist cinema owed to their cultural norms being rather similar to that of Hollywood. Just like in the US, most products were made for mass appeal.
Italy, France, and other countries later became game-changers in cinema precisely because they went against the Hollywood grain: Their encouragement of film-makers as personal artists.
As for Soviet cinema, it started with a bang and continued to produce interesting, even groundbreaking, works, but they were relatively few and far between due to mounting repression and other priorities of the state(that also controlled the film industry); and then came the cataclysmic destruction of World War II.

It was after World War II, especially beginning in the 1950s, that cinema took hold as a personal artform, gaining completion in the 1960s. It was also a time when film, instead of serving as extensions of the established arts, more seriously explored its unique possibilities, which had been the promise of Silent Cinema before the onset of the Talkies that favored conventional storytelling, rendering films more like moveable theater or novels-brought-to-life.
The most original filmmakers of the Silent Era, in the absence of audible dialogue, were free to(and forced to) explore the dynamics of the moving image for its own sake. The modernists, especially in the Sixties, rekindled an interest in cinema for cinema’s sake, using film not as a moving painting, outdoor theatre, or visual novel but an artform with its own mysteries to unravel.

If cinema was the most important medium in the first half of the 20th century(though some may argue for radio), it was the most important artform of the second half of the 20th century. If one were to list the greatest artists of the first half of the 20th Century, the majority would be authors, painters, architects, and musicians, men like William Faulkner, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and Frank Lloyd Wright. There were great film artists to be sure, especially the early Soviets and the Germans(and some French), but cinema mostly triumphed as great entertainment than as serious art.
However, in the second half of the 20th century, filmmakers-as-artists dominated the Zeitgeist, with writers just hanging in there but most others fading into the background, with the exception of musicians of course(especially as Rock music was increasingly taken seriously with the advent of Bob Dylan).
That said, while cinema became the premium artform in the decades following World War II, it lost the stature as the most important medium to Television that was both a threat and a benefit to cinema. A threat for obvious reasons, with more people preferring to stay home than attend the movies. On the other hand, the replays of old movies on TV gave them a second life, inspiring a whole generation of ‘film brats’ who came to appreciate the classics by Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many others.

Actually, it was indeed Zionist but it wasn’t Communist by any stretch of the imagination.

The underlying structures of political psychology are more or less the same across the board. Some societies lean toward secularity while others toward religiosity. Some are labeled ‘liberal democratic’ while others are deemed ‘autocratic’. Granted, it depends on the perspective as an order claiming to represent the will of the majority may be criticized as tyrannical by its opponents. Some may even argue that the will of the majority, though democratic in the crudest sense, could violate the rights of minorities, e.g. Hungary is ‘autocratic’ for favoring the Christian Hungarian majority over the migrant-invaders and their Sorosian-globalist enablers. Israel claims to be ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ while its critics condemn it as a ‘fascist’ or ‘terrorist’ state; some call it an ‘apartheid state’, which goes to show democracy and race-centrism can co-exist side by side, as also demonstrated by the bulk of American History defined by both democratic elections and Euro(especially Anglo)centrism. The US has gone from favoring the white race over nonwhites to now favoring Jews over goyim, especially whites and Palestinians(who’ve been bombed back to the Stone Age by the Israeli war machine supplied by the US), and favoring blacks over non-blacks(as the official narrative endlessly reminds us of Emmett Till while ignoring the countless victims of black savagery).

In any given society, regardless of its prevailing ideology or credo, most matters remain within the domain of objectivity. Whether the ‘liberal democratic’ West, Islamic Iran, Stalinist Soviet Union, National Socialist Germany, communist East Germany, totalitarian North Korea, Ottoman Turkey, or Shinto-Militarist Japan, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would have gotten worked up over studies on a particular shellfish or a species of trees. It would have been regarded as a matter of scientific observation or personal hobby, inoffensive regardless of the findings or conclusions. Even in the most repressive societies, most topics can be approached empirically, rationally, and even critically. Most are deemed self-contained domains of knowledge independent of the values and principles of the prevailing order. Whether a society is capitalist or communist, the botanical facts about flowers are what they are, neither ‘Marxist’ nor ‘bourgeois’.

Scientific observation may face backlash if a certain discovery runs counter to the official cosmology, perhaps the most famous example being Galileo’s troubles with the Church over the issue of Heliocentrism. Back then, Geo-centrism wasn’t merely the reigning scientific theory in astronomy but a sacrosanct truth based on the Holy Book. Of course, some orders have gone much further and rejected the very notion of scientific endeavor as running counter to fundamentalist faith, i.e. the only truth worth knowing is by divine revelation(as recorded in sacred canonical texts). But such total suppression of knowledge has been rare among complex civilizations.

According to Ray Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451, a junior-level rehashing of Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD and George Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR, or a kind of dystopian-satire-for-dummies, modernity is no guarantee for the free flow of knowledge and imagination as his fictional world is anti-intellectual, anti-creative, and ‘bibliophobic’ — people are functionally literate but anti-literary. Ironically, the system is the product of intellectual utopianism that believes humanity will be happier and healthier devoid of the neuroses resulting from excessive engagements with arts and letters, i.e. contradictory ideas and dangerous fantasies foster trouble minds that create troubled times.
Even as Bradbury’s novel is directed against anti-intellectualism, it is also an indictment of intellectualism, i.e. intellectual types are often less engaged with the real world than obsessed with their mental-lab model of the world. Only intellectualism could have conceived of the anti-intellectual utopia of the novel. The anti-intellectual worlds of BRAVE NEW WORLD and NINETY-EIGHTY FOUR were also constructed by intellectuals. While plenty of intellectuals appreciate and admire other intellectuals, even in disagreement, there have always been a category of intellectuals who, believing themselves to be so right, seek to devour all others. If monomaniacal intellectuals(Karl Marx or Ayn Rand) claim logic and facts as ‘scientific’ or ‘objective’ validation of their project, totalitarian spiritualists(usually of the monotheistic school, such as Moses and Muhammad) claim prophetic vision, i.e. the one and only true God revealed to them what was revealed to no other man.

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In our world, plenty of intellectuals(and second-rank intellectuals as commissars) are at the forefront of enforcing certain orthodoxies, effectively censoring certain views & ideas as ‘too dangerous’. Their views are picked up by the trained seals of journalism and academia who never had an original thought or independent idea in their life.
These intellectuals claim the ideas are simply wrong(and have been ‘debunked’), therefore ranging from utterly useless to downright dangerous. Granted, certain more honest intellectuals concede that the ideas/views may contain a measure of truth or even be essentially true BUT nevertheless must be suppressed because they’re too undermining of the consensus that holds the order together. Every order is maintained by authority justified in power and prestige by a set of ideas, icons, and narratives, which, if threatened, could undo the authority, whereby the order itself can come undone. In the end, the Catholic Church was less appalled than anxious in regards to Galileo as Heliocentrism threatened the foundational authority of the Church as the final arbiter of truth.
Likewise, plenty of Jews must know that the official Holocaust Narrative is incomplete, distorted, and/or exaggerated. Yet, what they fear most is not so much the truth per se but its impact on Jewish power/influence that, since the end of World War II, owed a good deal to its ability to silence or destroy critics and rivals on the basis of Holocaust-Guilt-and-Redemption. While Jews, given their high IQ and drive, would have made great gains even without the Holocaust Cult, there would have been greater pushback and check on their influence and agenda. Intoxicated with megalomaniacal hegemony, Jews sense that mounting criticism may threaten their world order; and therefore, the Holocaust Card is still their best bet for suppressing their critics and enemies.

Things get more complicated when, intentionally or not, certain shibboleths come to be threatened in unexpected ways. It can be a veritable minefield for the unwitting scholar who believed himself to be only doing his job as an objective observer or researcher. Just like it’s easier to detect the odors of others than of oneself, such hazards are more detectable of other societies/cultures than of one’s own.

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There are celebrity news stories and then there are CELEBRITY NEWS STORIES. Many people can’t get enough gossip on movie stars, pop stars, athletes, and of course the British Royal Family. Celebrity culture even spawned an entire genre of celebrities who are famous for being famous, like the now faded Paris Hilton and the indefatigable Kardashians(or Kartrashians), in a way America’s counterpart to the Royal Family.
And, politicians like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and especially Donald Trump owed their success to celebrity appeal(and even notoriety, not necessarily a bad thing in our time).
And many opinion-makers over the years attained bigger-than-life, folksy or glitzy, celebrity personalities. Think of Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken(who went from comedy to politics), Ann Coulter, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and others. And the most popular ‘influencers’, the product of the internet, rely more on personality than insight.

While many people, especially females and homosexual men, must have their daily fix of celebrity gossip, others(perhaps the great majority) don’t care what Taylor Swift or Vin Diesel is up to these days(and have no interest in the much diminished Royal Family). Most celebrity gossip has to be sought after in tabloids(and their counterparts or extensions on the internet), but once in a while a story blows up big time and enters the 24 hr news cycle, sparing no one of its usually sordid details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKmtl0JGih4

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Surely, one of the biggest was over the accusations of child molestation against Michael Jackson(which had a sequel of sorts). Another big one, equally funny and pathetic, was the Woody Allen vs Mia Farrow saga involving Soon-Yi and Dylan Farrow(which resurfaced in the #MeToo era).
Generally, the biggest stories involve crime, which can be deemed as news-worthy. Think of the O.J. Simpson trial. And the Harvey Weinstein case that went from allegations of sexual improprieties to even rape. The Weinstein controversy gained in traction thanks to the (largely manufactured) #MeToo movement, probably engineered by Jewish elites against ‘sexist’ Trump and ‘white males’(as indeed the likes of Bob Packwood were targeted in years past, though by the very people who circled the wagons around Bill Clinton), only to blow back on the Portnoic Jews. Jews urged on the women in media and entertainment to expose all those ‘rapey’ White Males, only to realize to their horror that the fingers were pointed at them. (Likewise, even though the mad hounds of BLM were unleashed on MAGA-world, they mostly mauled the ‘blue’ urban areas, making it a living hell for many ‘liberals’ and Jews.)

Having zero interest in celebrity-dom, only the biggest scandals appear on my radar. I hardly know most pop stars or bands since the early 90s. Most movie actors and actresses of the past 20 yrs are a blur.
I haven’t seen a single PIRATES OF CARIBBEAN movie and avoided most spandex action-hero movies(though a few, like ANT-MAN, were good). I haven’t seen an Oscar show since Clint Eastwood won for UNFORGIVEN and even then only a snippet.

So, when a celebrity news story enters the 24/7 news cycle, I usually have no idea who’s who and what’s what. There was the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard fiasco not long ago. I knew Depp but not Heard, though I recognized her face as she was in John Carpenter’s box office flop THE WARD, which I rather liked.

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The buzz surrounding the Justin Baldoni vs Blake Lively feud is now much bigger than the Depp-Heard clown show ever was. Also, it’s more interesting in having pushed certain hot topic buttons and ensnared other big names in showbiz. If the Depp-Heard show was essentially a he-said-she-said case of mud-slinging(and bed-pooping), an ugly side of private lives of celebrities exposed, the Baldoni-Lively case involves a rather complicated power play and intersects with various issues and themes that define current culture and politics.

By coincidence a few weeks back, I checked out a film called IT ENDS WITH US from the library thinking it might be interesting. The opening scene presented a most appalling character, a woman who arrives at her father’s funeral and then blithely walks out during the ceremony. Just appalling, but then the world is full of appalling people, and art should reflect reality, right? Besides, perhaps her behavior could be understood within the larger context of her family experience. So, I kept watching with an open mind. Second scene had her perched over the railing of a high-rise rooftop, soon to be joined by some doctor with whom she engages in the most insipid conversation imaginable. It was utterly shallow but presented as true-to-life and complicated. That was enough. No way I was going to waste two hours watching these two, a man-child and a woman-child. If art wants to dwell on mankind’s imperfections & failures and examine why, that’s one thing, but when vapid idiots are presented as characters worthy of our time and attention, forget it.

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Nothing about the film registered(except as an annoyance and headache), and I would have forgotten about it but for the explosive scandal with Lively the actress hurling accusations at the actor-director Baldoni who, depressed and panic-stricken, decided to hurl them back. Reportedly, the film, based on a popular novel, has a serious message — it’s about DOMESTIC ABUSE — , and its actor-director Baldoni, a kind of male feminist, threw his heart and soul into the project. It seems Lively did as well, leading to a tussle over the rights over the novel. If Baldoni was likely fueled by the vanity of moral rectitude — “Look ma, I’m a male feminist exposing violence against women” — , Lively’s actions seem purely career-driven, i.e. she saw the film as her entry into serious acting and coveted complete ownership of the project by any means necessary.

It’s probably not a good idea to have such a thoroughly unsympathetic character at the center of a message about domestic abuse. More often than not, viewers may come away with the feeling that the stupid bitch got what she deserved, not that the abuser is necessarily any better — based on the rooftop scene, the guy seems like a jerk. (There’s a saying, “physiognomy is real”, to which we might add, “personagnomy is real” as the mere personality of Lively, on-screen and off, is a tell-tale sign of what a conniving wench she is.)
The issue of domestic-abuse is far more complicated than feminist types would have us believe. Given that the male is stronger than the female, the man can obviously do more harm; therefore, the man must be more mindful of his violent urges. That much, most people can agree with. But the man being stronger doesn’t make him innately worse than the woman. It’s like a wolf can kill a coyote that can kill a fox, but that doesn’t make the coyote any less of a predator and killer. If a man and a woman are equally vile & nasty and get violent, the man will likely hurt the woman more, but she too was responsible. Indeed, if a good-hearted man is provoked into violence by a vicious woman, the former will beat the latter, but can you blame him who didn’t want things to spiral out of control?
Perhaps, IT END US WITH US isn’t so simpleminded and places blame on the woman as well, but the first two scenes left me with zero sympathy for the cretinous woman(or for that matter the cretinous man). If a meteor hit those two and blew them to smithereens, who’d care?

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