"Narrative trumps argument"

When art serves ideology, it becomes "agitslop":

.... The moment creativity and aesthetics are subordinated to a moral or political orthodoxy, the genius of the artist and his capacity for innovation is fettered and sterilised at the altar of conformity; his talent leeched, his vision gelded, and his work reduced to decorative obedience. The principle holds, whatever the orthodoxy; yet the creaking regime of identity-driven progressivism that dominates the arts still yokes it to moulding a new public character. But they are armed with a more potent medium than any of the 20th century totalitarian ideologies were armed with; the soft, on-demand murmur of television, smuggling ideology directly into living rooms under the guise of entertainment. Welcome to the world of agitslop....

Agitslop is easily defined — it is art made by social workers, not artists; content produced neither to inform, educate or entertain the viewer, but to gently marinade them in moral instruction. Sentimentality and didactic messaging are its hallmarks, along with high production values that allow it to reasonably pass for entertainment.

But the brilliance of agitslop lies in its emotionally manipulative scripts. By focusing on personal narratives — real or imagined — agitslop appeals to the emotional rather than rational part of the viewer’s brain and appeals directly to their sentimentality. Agitslop bypasses inconvenient truths like facts by reframing complex issues as a series of tear-jerking vignettes, each carefully directed to promote a specific emotional response in the viewer.

This strategy is not accidental. As behavioural psychologist Robert Cialdini notes, “people don’t counter-argue stories… if you want to be successful in a post-fact world, you do it by presenting accounts, narratives, stories and images and metaphors.” Narrative trumps argument....

By endlessly spotlighting the exceptional, the sympathetic, or the oppressed, agitslop alters what audiences perceive as typical or morally correct. It doesn’t matter that these portrayals are statistically unrepresentative; what matters is their potency as an agent for change. Agitslop’s role is not to reflect society, but to reshape it. .... (more)

Tom Jones, "The tyranny of agitslop," The Critic, May 1, 2025.

“Whistle While You Work”

Comparing the 2025 Snow White to the one released in 1937, Disney's first full-length animated film:

.... The 2025 film brazenly removes the heart of the original film’s princess. It was dead on arrival.

The 1937 Snow White is the only Disney princess film that includes a literal depiction of prayer. Many age-old stories contain allegories for divine intervention (fairy godmothers, for instance), but in the original Snow White, the princess kneels at her bedside and prays. She prays for the seven dwarves, for Grumpy to like her, and for her dreams to come true—namely, that someday, her “prince will come.” (Lest we forget, the prince was a man she knew and liked from her time at the castle, not a complete stranger.) She prays for safety.

And her prayers are answered. The evil queen is vanquished by a lightning strike from the heavens. Divine help is integral in the 1937 film; the dwarves, the prince, and the princess just participate in it.

In the live-action film, there is no prayer for love and marriage. Not only that, desiring such things is ridiculed. ....

In the classic, Snow White sweeps while singing “Whistle While You Work.” In the remake, she noticeably offloads the broom to one of the dwarves. The filmmakers are clearly trying to remove any insinuation that cooking and cleaning are women’s work. But the Snow White in the original is defined by cheerful acceptance of such duties—performed in gratitude for the dwarves’ hospitality—and hopeful optimism in the face of hardship and persecution. In the new version, Snow White is despondent and worn down by injustice. The impression one is left with is that the filmmakers rewrote the character because they simply do not like Snow White. .... (more)

The illustration is from the 1937 version. I do have the '37 Snow White on Blu-ray. I should watch it again.

Mary Rose Somarriba, "How Disney Killed Snow White," First Things, April 4, 2025.

Humor today

Fawlty Towers is about to reappear, this time on stage. I bought the entire series on DVD some time ago. It's funny. John Cleese on humor:

.... In comedy, context is everything: part of the problem with humour today is that people have lost sight of that. Some people still think “The Germans” is controversial because of the scene in which Basil imitates the Nazi goose-step, but the only people who have never complained about that episode are the Germans themselves. They know the comedy is never at their expense. Those who do take exception to this episode also criticise the moment in the hospital early on when Basil jumps back on encountering a black doctor. I pinched that from WC Fields, because I thought it was funny. The point of that particular moment is that we are all frightened by whatever is unfamiliar. It’s Basil’s naivety that makes you laugh.

But when people get mired in ideas about comedy and victimhood, they stop thinking. They lose sight of those distinctions of context. I’ve recently been working on a stage show of the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian, which we’re hoping to open in London next year. When we had a read-through in America last year, some of the actors objected to a scene from the film in which Eric Idle’s character says he’s going to become a woman. They said, “We can’t include this scene!” To which I said “Why not? It has amused people for 40 years…” No one was offended until a couple of years ago. ....

These days it’s almost mandatory that everyone gets offended by one thing or another, but it doesn’t breed in you a good state of mental health. A friend of mine who suffered greatly from depression recently underwent cognitive behavioural therapy which is all about reframing negative opinions, changing your mindset. But the extreme woke believe the opposite to this: that whatever you feel about something is entirely valid and should never be questioned. Which basically means Freud was wasting his time. .... (more)

A favorite film of mine starring John Cleese is A Fish Called Wanda.

John Cleese, "Basil Fawlty would be bewildered by the country England has become – and so am I," The Telegraph, April 26, 2024.

Movies

I own a lot of movies. I have always loved movies and once it became affordable, I started buying them, first as videotapes, and then DVDs. Even though I can now stream films online I prefer the physical media because it can't be messed with by corporations "updating" them and because they are always available to me. I have most of the films I really want and consequently, when I do buy, it is usually an upgrade of one I particularly like and am certain to watch again.

Today I received a "Limited Edition" Blu-ray of The Shootist. It is one of my favorite John Wayne movies. It was his last. His character is dying of cancer as was Wayne. It had a great cast in addition to Wayne: Lauren Bacall, a teenage Ron Howard, James Stewart, Richard Boone, Hugh O'Brien, Harry Morgan, John Carradine, and more. The director was Don Siegel.

From the description on the case:

John Bernard Books is the stuff of legend, a renowned 'shootist' whose reputation looms large. But it's 1901, and like the old west, John is dying and a reputation like his draws trouble like an outhouse draws flies. As word spreads that the famous gunfighter is on his last legs, the vultures begin to gather; old enemies, the marshal, newspaper men, an undertaker, all eager to see him dead. Other men might die quietly in bed or take their own lives, but J.B. Books will choose his executioner and face down death with a pistol in each hand.

My program for the evening is set.

"We would have hated each other in middle school"

From Russell Moore on "Us and Them and CCM" (Contemporary Christian Music) responding to a new book:

A friend and I were talking once about the first concerts we ever attended. His was Van Halen; mine was Amy Grant.

"Okay, second concert?" he asked.

Him: Mötley Crüe. Me: Petra.

After a minute or two of silence, he said, "You realize we would have hated each other in middle school, don’t you?"

One of us was part of a sheltered subculture quickly passing away. The other listened to music that was a gateway drug to what some say led to riots and rebellion. Turns out, my musical taste, not his, was the dangerous one. ....

Should conservative Protestant teenagers and college students be rightly equipped for the fact that they will be out of step with their peers in modern American culture? Yes.

The problem, though, is that Augustine’s City of God would not sell very well in a 20th- or 21st-century American Christian market. The nuanced truth that "You will be made to feel strange at times for following Christ, but you’re not under persecution (and, by the way, you’re not nearly strange enough in the ways Jesus actually called you to be)" isn’t nearly as exciting as, "This is the terminal generation. The elites are out to destroy you, and you are the only thing standing between Christian America and the New World Order."

"God wants what you want (for you to be happy and healthy and flush with cash)" sells. So does "You’re the real America and everybody else wants to kill you." Messages of actual cross-bearing and a cruciform life, however, do not sell well at all. ....

To some degree, that’s to be expected. The music business is, after all, a business. But, as Payne points out, some reformers (including my now CT colleague Charlie Peacock) warned of ways the business model could be at cross purposes with the teaching power of music—and many artists (such as the late Rich Mullins and Michael Card) charted a different, more theologically grounded and biblically holistic course.

When the consensus determines what’s acceptable as a Christian and what’s not, one cannot help but end up with what The Guardian identified as a "market-driven approach to truth," in which a group ends up "finding most hateful to God the sins that least tempt its members, while those sins that are most popular become redefined and even sanctified." ....

Contemporary Christian music, flawed as any human endeavor is, was a positive force in my life. The music of Amy Grant and Rich Mullins went with me through an adolescent spiritual crisis and are probably part of the reason I came out of it more Christian than I went in. I’m amazed by how much of my incipient theology—convictions I teach to this day—was taught to me by Petra lyrics. I have never, not once in 30 years of ministry, preached Romans 6 without hearing their "Dead Reckoning" song in my mind.

I learned how to read biblical narrative Christologically, how to understand parable and poetry and paradox, from the lyrics of Michael Card. I might be embarrassed to tell you how often, in the middle of dark times, what strengthens me are words like "Where there is faith / There is a voice calling, keep walking / You’re not alone in this world" or "I’ll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough" or "God is in control / We will choose to remember and never be shaken." None of that may be rock-and-roll, but I will die believing that God gave that to me. .... (more)

Russell Moore, "How Contemporary Christian Music Explains American Christianity," Christianity Today, February 15, 2024.

The algorithm

I spend a great deal of time online — too much time. But I do curate what I read. I'm pretty ruthless about blocking or not following Facebook posts that may be amusing but are otherwise pointless, and I avoid participating in controversy because I doubt my ability to persuade in this context. I do sometimes find myself following a string of argumentative comments and that is almost always an annoying waste of time. I do have an RSS feed that links me to articles at sites I have chosen that often take me to good stuff. This review of Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture is a warning about how we can be tempted to "do nothing at all for long periods" online.

In Chayka’s analysis, the end state of an algorithm-driven, competitive media environment is a yearning for oblivion. Burn out the dopamine circuits for long enough and “our natural reaction is to seek out culture that embraces nothingness, that blankets and soothes rather than challenges or surprises, as powerful artwork is meant to do.” This endgame was anticipated by C.S. Lewis more than 80 years ago, when in his Screwtape Letters he had a senior devil instruct a junior tempter to lead his “patient” into something that sounds a lot like doomscrolling:

You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do.... You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return.

In the end, Lewis’s devil says, the patient will realize that “I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.” You don’t have to assume that the internet is operated by literal demons to be worried that its prevailing currents carry us far from our own best intentions. Sometimes, the algorithmic feed coarsens us by interspersing violent images from wars around the world with light jokes for ’90s kids. Other times, we ingrain bad habits when our clicks teach the feed to show us the dumbest, most infuriating thinkers on the other side of a political divide.

But, frequently, what I find myself resisting is the way the algorithm tempts me to let a lower good eclipse a higher good. Once you face the infinity of the global content stream, there’s enough low-quality but decent material out there to fill up your whole day. There’s nothing wrong with a Twitter feed of jokes about the cast of Frasier playing D&D, but the supply of quirky humor exceeds my attention budget. I need to aggressively and actively choose the best, not just passively consume the okay.

But the best operates contrary to the way the algorithms monitor our satisfaction. We pause, close the app, contemplate. Something worth our time provokes friction and demands silence. All of that looks like failure to an uncurious app. Algorithmic feeds are risk-averse. It is easier for them to keep recommending more of what you find satisfying enough than to take a chance with a risky suggestion. ....

Leah Libresco Sargeant, "Escaping the Algorithm," National Review, March, 2024.

"Revolution becomes fond celebration"

Based on several very favorable reviews I just ordered "Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert." From a review in The Spectator: "This recreation of Dylan’s Free Trade Hall concert is supremely good":

In May 1966, Bob Dylan toured the UK with The Band, minus drummer Levon Helm, and abrasively pulled the plug on any lingering notions of his being a mere folk singer. Playing two sets every night – the first acoustic, the second electric – even the solo numbers were wild, lysergic, unraveled. The electric ones whipped through the tweed and tradition like the howl of a strange new language. The crowds booed and one chap famously cried ‘Judas!’ (though presumably many of those present also enjoyed it). Dylan muttered and swore and was unbowed. ....

Last November, American singer Chan Marshall, who performs as Cat Power, recreated the entire Free Trade Hall concert – at the Royal Albert Hall. In other words, her aim was to engage with the mythology of the show as much as the music. A year later, that performance of a performance is being released as an album. ....

This album is on the one hand simply a souvenir of a historic recreation. The same songs played in the same order; even the same cry of ‘Judas!’ ringing out from the audience, this time to guffaws rather than uproar. ‘Jesus,’ Marshall responds.

But it is also an act of creative reimagination. Marshall possesses the same still, stoned, mesmeric quality in her presence as Dylan (sometimes) did at the time, but she also brings a deep devotional energy to the songs that wholly changes them. Her phrasing is as idiosyncratic as Dylan’s, only more nuanced. She has great musicians backing her – on acoustic guitar and harmonica in the first half, and a full electric band on the second half.

The acoustic set is slow and beautiful, a reminder of how deeply strange and yet brilliantly crafted songs such as ‘Desolation Row’ and ‘Visions of Johanna’ are. If this part feels as though Marshall is trying to tiptoe back inside venerated history, the second set is more raucous and good-hearted. It lacks any whiff of the rancour of the 1966 show, which means the original play is shorn of much of its contemporary drama. That piledriving rock’n’roll swirl – new and shocking at the time – long ago became the cultural default. Revolution becomes fond celebration. ....

Graeme Thomson, "This recreation of Dylan’s Free Trade Hall concert is supremely good," The Spectator, November 11, 2023.

John Ford

I have twelve films in my DVD collection directed by John Ford. Hitchcock is the only director with more. About Ford at Wikipedia:

He received six Academy Awards including a record four wins for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). He is renowned for Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

I have all of those except The Informer. Others I have and enjoy include Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Mr. Roberts (1955), Rio Grand (1950), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Young Mr. Lincoln (1939).

Last night on YouTube I came across an excellent TCM documentary about Ford's films with interviews of actors he directed, contemporary directors appreciating his style, Ford himself, with many excerpts from his films, narrated by Orson Welles, and written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich. If you have ever enjoyed a Ford film I think you will like this, too. It motivates me to want to revisit several of the movies. Today is Veterans' Day, maybe Mr. Roberts.

Lawman

I'm looking forward to "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" (Paramount+). From The Wall Street Journal review:

The real Bass Reeves (played by David Oyelowo) is a great story and the miniseries—the first in a proposed string of biographical adventures called “Lawmen”—is a sturdy, moralistic, traditionalist’s western, in which a conflicted hero guns his way through an entire population of frontier felons. .... Reeves...was born into slavery and became America’s first black deputy marshal west of the Mississippi. Reeves may not be as famous as, say, Wyatt Earp, but he has been a recurring presence in Wild West folklore. “Lawmen” sticks pretty firmly to the truth as it is known, though not everything is known. ....

How Bass Reeves becomes Bass Reeves, and why he comes to the attention of Isaac Parker (Donald Sutherland), the real-life federal judge for what was known as the Indian Territory, involves Bass’s time among the Choctaw. There, he learns their language and becomes a lethal marksman as well as something of a diplomat. Parker admits to Bass that he wanted a black man for the marshal’s job—to better deal with the Native American areas from which he’d have to extract fugitives. But Parker also wanted Bass, and the exchanges between Messrs. Sutherland and Oyelowo are composed of some of the better acting in the series. ....

“Lawmen: Bass Reeves” is an action series that applies moral questions to its action. This doesn’t make the gunplay any less enjoyable, but it does make it seem more intelligent. And if this reviewer seems to be rationalizing, it probably says something about the show’s entertainment value, and the solid performance by Mr. Oyelowo, from whom no black American biopic is safe....

John Anderson, "‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves’ Review: Freedom on the Frontier," The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2023.

A dark and unwholesome turn

This weekend Halloween is being celebrated here. The celebration is a bit more subdued than it once was but still, the proprietor of the establishment where I often lunch dreads the drunken revelers that he expects tonight. On television, in movies, and on the street, it has become something much different than it was decades ago. I have come to feel about it much as Barton Swaim:

.... In recent years, as celebrations have become darker and more gruesome, I’ve started to dread its onset.

Part of my aversion arises from my own hidebound premodern Calvinist outlook, in which death is no laughing matter and necromancy is forbidden by God (see Deuteronomy 18:9-13). Forgive my Puritan sensibility, but I find the whole spectacle ugly and offensive and vaguely sinister. What sort of “holiday” deliberately terrifies children with images of murder and ruin and treats torture and death as a joke? ....

I am of course speaking only of the way in which All Hallows’ Eve, or All Saints’ Eve, is celebrated by Americans in the 21^st century. I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s, when Halloween consisted of trick-or-treating, jack-o’-lanterns, apple-bobbing and maybe a viewing of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

Halloween has since become a kind of industrial cartoon death cult. ....

Nobody likes a scold, and I want to state clearly that I am pro-jack-o’-lantern and trick-or-treating.... But the yearly observance that used to be Halloween has taken a dark and unwholesome turn. My fear is that ironic celebrations of death are becoming less and less ironic.

Barton Swaim, "Down With Halloween’s Ironic Death Cult," Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2023.

'The Chosen'

I haven't watched The Chosen primarily because I'm a bit cynical about films that intend to send a message. (Samuel Goldwyn supposedly said, "If You Have a Message, Send It by Western Union.") Perhaps I should reconsider. Kevin Williamson writes "The Chosen Is ‘Message’ Entertainment Done Right":

There isn’t any way to make a series about the life and career of Jesus that keeps religion at arm’s length (it would be a mistake even to try, I think) but what The Chosen gets right is that what it communicates is a Christian sensibility rather than dogma, theology, or other subjects best left to formal religious instruction per se. It begins with a Jesus and a Jesus movement that are distinctly Jewish and distinctly more than Jewish, a Jesus and an emerging faith that often do not solve followers’ here-and-now problems but instead add significantly to them, putting them at odds with political power, civic and religious authorities, their own friends and families, their own material and social self-interests. Set aside the religious significance of that for the moment and appreciate that this is why The Chosen works as drama rather than as evangelism or apologetics. The Chosen is in fact at its best when it is at its least sentimental and its least comforting. And at its best, The Chosen is very good. (more)

Kevin D. Williamson, "‘The Chosen’ Is ‘Message’ Entertainment Done Right," The Dispatch, Sept. 13, 2023.

Leaving Twitter

Alan Jacobs has deactivated his X (formerly Twitter) account for reasons I find persuasive. I just did too. Nick Catoggio writing at The Dispatch explains at greater length:

“Musk is just a guy who says things,” writes Jonathan Last. “Sometimes for attention. Sometimes because he’s mad. Sometimes because he’s high. None of it means anything. Don’t take him literally or seriously.” I think that’s almost right.

Not taking him seriously is the part that’s wrong. The erratic way in which Musk rules his empire, replete with his suspicious solicitousness toward some of the worst people on earth, turns out to have real consequences for our empire. To some extent, we’re all prisoners of his caprice.

There’s now reason to believe innocent people have died needlessly because of it. .... (more)

“Truth, Justice and the American Way”

From "The death of Superman: How Hollywood killed the American hero":

Something has been absent in recent times in the adaptation of film and art — the idea of a fundamentally American hero. Superman, as a character, is ultimately about why America is good, and Hollywood simply does not believe America is a force for good. ....

Americans do not think of themselves as sharing a common enemy, as they did during the Cold War. Hollywood won’t portray radical Islam in film due to cultural and media sensitivities. China fills a natural role, but thanks to the growing market overseas for films, Hollywood is capitulating to them politically by offering alternative edits to their films and even going as far as having Chinese state officials on set, as Marvel did with Iron Man 3 and others. On issues of race, policing, gender and politics, Hollywood takes a progressive posture. ....

...Hollywood has the very idea of Superman backwards. Superman knows what American exceptionalism is; Hollywood and our media struggle with accepting the same idea. Instead they view him as a symbol of imperialistic and misguided patriotic propaganda, and therefore, he must be reinvented, re-imagined and rewritten. ....

...[T]o ignore the American propaganda aspect of Superman and similar comic heroes is to betray their entire reason for being. The character’s co-creator Jerry Siegel enlisted in the United States military in 1943. He was trained as both a skilled mechanic and as a reporter for Stars and Stripes. The character of Superman himself was published primarily as American military propaganda, with the character routinely foiling Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

The world may have changed around him, but Superman is constant, and should be understood as the quintessential American hero. It is not Superman who struggles with his identity. He knows what his purpose is. Despite its failings, America is a global force for good, like Superman. We struggle, we falter, but our ideals remain a constant. They are everlasting. It’s not Superman and America who need to be re-imagined. It’s Hollywood. (more)

Stephen L. Miller, "The death of Superman," The Spectator, August 30, 2023.

Robbie Robertson (1943-2023)

On Robbie Robertson and The Band:

.... Musically, what he achieved with The Band dominates his legacy (though he composed many movie soundtracks later in life, including the one for 1980’s Raging Bull) and was a key subsequent influence on the alt-country genre. But poetically, what Robertson achieved — with such studied craft, imbued with such intelligence and lived empathy that it transcended imitation and became the authentic article — was to touch the purest soul of American myth and legend and bring it to life in his deceptively folksy lyrics and subtle music with such delicacy and preternatural grace that it is only fitting that this most American of songwriters (along with most of his bandmates) was Canadian. ....

The story of how Levon and the Hawks, gigging with little profile around Ontario, managed to become Bob Dylan’s backing band is itself the stuff of cosmic fortune. Dylan’s manager’s secretary (that’s thrice removed, mind you) happened to be from the Toronto area and familiar with the band, and her tip made its way to Dylan when he decided he wanted to go “electric” on tour and needed a working group. The rest is history: the stuff of rock legend, musical awe, and multiple award-winning documentaries (only one of which was directed by Martin Scorsese). The Hawks slowly transformed into The Band over the years 1965–1967; their association with Dylan during the freewheeling and controversial tours of his albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde led to their constantly being referred to in press accounts as “the band” behind him....

The critical years spent under Dylan’s tutelage — the so called “Big Pink” era, named for the amusingly painted rural New York practice space that resulted in Dylan’s own legendary Basement Tapes, but which properly began in terms of songwriting and mutual influence during late 1966 — transformed Robertson. The artistic leap he took during this period is almost shocking: The man last seen writing such fare as “Uh Uh Uh” would reemerge in late 1967 after two years of steeping in Bob Dylan’s sensibility and the deepest reaches of the American folk songbook with songs like the Buñuel-influenced “The Weight.” ....

And “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is the most stunning act of them all, so bracingly successful in its attempt to put you inside the shoes of The Other that I can still remember, as a kid, catching my breath conflictedly over the gut twinge of empathy I felt for people whose defeat was absolutely necessary. Robertson turned to his bandmate Helm (the only American in the group) for some tonal advice and then wrote a song about a no-name dirt-farming soldier from southwestern Virginia who fought for the Confederacy because that’s just the thing you did back then — for family, for honor, for your state — and lost, hard. At every step of the way through this song we know that he had to lose, that it was good and just and proper that the Confederacy and slavery were extinguished. And yet the crushing reality of actual loss — loss of family, loss of pride, loss of self-understanding or any sense of where you will fit in the world to come — is at the forefront. Which is precisely why, when Robertson — with Levon Helm singing his words as only a southerner could — gets to the chorus (“where all the people were singing”) it is a transcendent act of empathy. No words are needed, only a wordless wail, both lullabye and lament, and all for American history’s most deserved losers. .... (more)

Jeffrey Blehar, "Robbie Robertson 1943–2023: The Band’s Leader Finally Rests the Weight," National Review, August10, 2023.

A streak of terrible remakes

Madeleine Kearns on "How to Ruin a Fairy Tale":

.... Like all fairy tales, the story of Snow White communicates certain timeless moral messages: the destructiveness of vanity; the evil of envy; the virtues of kindness, gentleness, and hard work; the triumph of good over evil, love over hate. What it doesn’t communicate is our more modern priorities and sensibilities, such as defeating the patriarchy and being sensitive to minority groups.

These omissions appear to be what filmmakers seek to rectify in the new live-action remake of Snow White, coming to theaters next year. Rachel Zegler, who plays Snow White, said in a resurfaced interview from 2022 that Snow White is “not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love.” Rather, she’ll be “dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave, and true.”

The attempt to mix things up is also evident in the casting. Snow White is named thus on account of her “skin as white as snow.” Zegler, meanwhile, is tanned. This is sort of like having Little Red Riding Hood appear in a blue baseball cap or having a brunette play Goldilocks. And in service of what point, exactly?

The seven dwarves, meanwhile, have been reimagined as “magical creatures.” Disney explained that it consulted with members of the dwarfism community and wanted to “avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film.” This is one of those situations where you can’t win. Cast people with dwarfism as the seven dwarves and you’re stereotyping. Cast people of a normal height (then make them look shorter through CGI, as was done in Snow White and the Huntsmen in 2012), and you’re insulting those with the condition through appropriation. Alternatively, remove the focus from dwarfism entirely — as in this case — and you’re erasing the disability altogether. Better, then, to just stick with the seven dwarves, and cast the best actors for the roles. .... (more)

Madeleine Kearns, "How to Ruin a Fairy Tale," National Review, July 30, 2023.

Gram Parsons

I discovered Emmylou Harris in the '70s and at some point became aware that she was influenced by Gram Parsons. I had—of course—known the groups he performed with and influenced, but not him. I learned a lot from this:

The joke goes that if you play a country song backward, the singer’s wife returns to him, his dog comes back to life, his employer rehires him, and he gets out of prison. Traditional country music was made by those who ached and suffered. For Parsons, they were kindred spirits. ....

Every musician has influences, but Parsons was deliberate about synthesizing his. He wanted to combine the country music he loved with the modern, poetic lyrics he wrote, and the rock-star persona he embodied. .... The goal was to create a geographically, racially, and generationally desegregated sound. ....

In 1968...his life changed in a Los Angeles bank. There, he ran into Chris Hillman, cofounder of the Byrds—a band that had pioneered its own hybrid genre, folk rock, with their hit “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man.” As luck would have it, they needed someone to fill in on keyboard. Parsons wasn’t much of a pianist, but he floored the group with his original songs. ....

With Parsons in the mix, the Byrds brought the undercurrent of country music in their earlier work to the surface. The Sweetheart of the Rodeo album featured two Parsons originals, including “Hickory Wind,” in which the protagonist yearns for his Southern childhood. On lead vocals, Parsons sang sadness: “It’s hard to find a way out / the trouble is real / in a faraway city / with a faraway feel / But it makes me feel better / each time it begins / callin’ me home / hickory wind.” ....

A testament to Parsons’s talent, and perhaps his charm, Chris Hillman agreed to start a band with him just a few months after his dramatic Byrds exit. “Since Gram and I shared a common vision to bring real country music to a rock audience with a hip sensibility, we agreed it would make sense for us to join forces and carry on from where Sweetheart left off,” he remembered. Together, they formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, a band whose name was outdone in peculiarity only by its music. ....

As his drug addiction worsened, Hillman felt he had no choice but to fire Parsons from the Flying Burrito Brothers. Gram made his next album in 1973, featuring harmonies by the then-unknown singer Emmylou Harris. With Parsons as her guide, “My ears and my heart opened up to country music,” she told Dan Rather. “I really heard the genius of George Jones, the beauty of Louvin Brothers harmonies, the poetry of country music, the stuff that’s deep in the weeds, the washed-in-the-blood stuff.” ....

He was mercurial, conceited, and reckless, and sometimes he broke his friends’ hearts. He was also extremely bright, funny, a perceptive songwriter, and a devoted brother. Perhaps there’s only so much one can extrapolate about who Parsons really was. There’s only so much room for a redemptive arc when a person dies at 26. .... (more)

Nancy Kathryn Walecki, "Sound as Ever," Harvard Magazine, July-August 2023.

Mocking the "man-god"

Carl Trueman uses the newest controversy about Monty Python's The Life of Bryan, to illustrate "Blasphemy Then and Now":

The original movie was controversial because it mocked the God-man, the central truth of the Christian faith. Now it is controversial because it mocks the man-god, the central truth of our contemporary world. That it is “Loretta,” not Brian, who is now the most offensive character in the story is indicative of a sea-change in our cultural understanding of what is holy and what laws must therefore not be transgressed.

Opponents of blasphemy then and of blasphemy now share something in common: a concern to protect that which is sacred. But that is where the similarity begins and ends. Old-style blasphemy involved desecrating God because it was God who was sacred. Today’s blasphemy involves suggesting that man is not all-powerful, that he cannot create himself in any way he chooses, that he is subject to limits beyond his choice and beyond his control. That such blasphemy is obviously and undeniably true does not make it less offensive to the modern secular priests and priestesses whose power depends upon guarding our culture from reality. Ironically, John Cleese has now been indicted for blasphemy under both regimes. Regardless of where one stands on the merits of Life of Brian, his constant state of disfavor would perhaps suggest that he is actually an exceptionally competent comedian. (more)

Carl R. Trueman, "Blasphemy Then and Now," First Things, June 8, 2023.

Brer Rabbit

I only have a couple of DVDs that are probably pirated. One of them is Disney's "Song of the South." It is completely understandable why Disney now considers the film objectionable — happy plantation field workers. Unlikely. But the cartoons are pretty good and they can be found on YouTube.

Own it

A post at NRO explains why I will always buy DVDs and books and CDs:

Always buy your favorite movies or television series in physical media. To rely upon streaming services is to be prey to the whims of vast, impersonal corporations whose profit calculations (or internal political oscillations) will inevitably triumph over any considerations of art or authenticity. Your favorite movie may be edited! It may be altered by CGI against your wishes. It may simply be suppressed altogether. And you will have no recourse. For lovers of the art of cinema and television, remember this above all else: If you rely upon an umbilical connection to the internet to provide you with something, you do not truly own it, and never did.

Jeff Blehar, "Steven Spielberg Regrets Adulterating Steven Spielberg’s Legacy," NRO, April 26, 2023.

“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings..."

I don't watch cable (or network) news much, but I do watch Bret Baier's Special Report (5:00 pm CST) on Fox News most days. I intentionally avoid Fox's evening opinion programming (Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham). (I avoid MSNBC, too.) That kind of programming seems to have been what made necessary Fox's $787 million dollar settlement with Dominion yesterday. National Review's Jim Geraghty drew some conclusions:

One: There can be catastrophic financial consequences for adopting and repeating the lies of the former president.

If you choose to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, you must also believe that there is a compelling pile of verifiable evidence that, for some inexplicable reason, was never presented by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in its myriad post-election lawsuits in November and December 2020. Furthermore, you must believe that when facing a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion, Fox News never presented any of this evidence as a defense in this defamation lawsuit. Truth, or substantial truth, is an absolute defense in a defamation case.

If you choose to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, you must believe Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion in a settlement, rather than present any of that evidence. You must believe that Fox News had a quick and easy way to win this lawsuit and simply refused to use it — even though the news distributor had more than 700 million good reasons to point to this evidence, if it existed.

But Fox News did not present that evidence; in fact, Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch said under oath that he believes the 2020 presidential election was free, fair, and not stolen. Fox News did not present any evidence contending that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen, because the 2020 presidential election was not stolen, and there is no compelling evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Period, full stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Some of you might be thinking, “That’s not much of a hard lesson.” No, the hard lesson is that a CNN poll last month asked 1,045 Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, “Thinking about the results of the 2020 presidential election, do you think that Joe Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency, or not?” The survey found just 37 percent of these Republicans or Republican-leaning independents believe that Biden legitimately won; 63 percent believe “Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency.” ....

This is going to make covering former president Trump potentially litigious matter going forward, as Trump is unlikely to ever back down from his conspiracy theories and could repeat his false and defamatory claims about any of the voting-machine companies at any time. Any television network covering Trump will feel a need to push back against those claims, early and often, and on-air. .... (more)

Geraghty notes:

...[I]t wasn’t Bret Baier, Dana Perino, or Howard Kurtz who got Fox News in trouble. In fact, the network’s news division and reporters are barely mentioned at all in the Dominion lawsuit. The news division, by and large, exercised appropriate skepticism about the lack of evidence for the outrageous claims of Giuliani and Powell. No, it was the prime-time opinion hosts — some would call them the “entertainment” hosts — who turned their studios into platforms for Trump-campaign surrogates to offer every nutty conspiracy theory they could think of, with minimal pushback or skepticism. ....

A loose-cannon host who is unpredictable and capable of saying anything — and Fox News is not the only network with on-air talent who fits this description — can end up costing his network hundreds of millions of dollars. .... The cost-benefit analysis of cable-news personalities is about to change — and the market for “you never know what he’s going to say next” is about to crash. ....

Jim Geraghty, "Three Hard Lessons from the Dominion Defamation Lawsuit against Fox," NRO, April 19, 2023.