We live in an age of maximum arrogance. When you watch companies with some of the most marketable brands in the world torch them on an altar of political correctness, it’s easy to just think them stupid or going with the flow of history.
But they aren’t.
Because not only do we live in an age of maximal arrogance, we also live in the biggest self-created false realities in human history.
It is the height of irony that the biggest brand in storytelling, Disney, has succumbed to its own arrogance and self-delusion, becoming trapped in a false reality that Disney should dictate the direction humanity should accept.
That’s what lies at the heart of Disney’s troubles today. It arrogantly believed it has an obligation to decide what is and is not culturally acceptable to a majority of its customers. It completely misread the room in thinking a large percentage of its business comes from the insufferably woke suburban moms who are just as fucked up as the kids they’ve raised.
The good news is Disney got the message loud and clear that they are not the arbiters of when it’s appropriate to groom children for adulthood. The bad news is they may not have heard it.
Social media, political pressure and simply the massive extended echo chamber that is California politics suffused Disney’s board and its corporate culture with the mind virus of egalitarianism, eschewing any basic faith in humanity itself.
Since they’ve rejected all forms of god, or submission to a higher authority that wasn’t man-made, Disney decided it was time to undermine all of its properties by coming out of the closet, as it were.
Disney chose poorly.
The Phildickian Nightmare Made Real
I’m a huge Philip K. Dick fan.
Dick wrote dozens of short stories and at least half a dozen important novels focusing on this very problem of false realities leading to a crisis in faith. In Dick’s work those false realities were tangible: You could visit them through drugs or meditation, meet your analogue from an alternate Universe or by nearly dying get trapped in a hellish landscape of someone else’s design.
But in reading these tales, we recognize that they exist as metaphor, like all stories do, to teach us lessons about how to navigate our conflicts and emerge transformed into something better. For all of his wacky situations and conceits, Phil Dick’s stories are all about the most important issues we all face: empathy overcoming shame, pride justifying violence, selfishness justifying nihilism.
Dick’s protagonists are all suffering basic crises of faith. The modern world has let them down, led them on a false path experiencing deep mid-life bouts of ennui as their carefully constructed coping strategies to numb their pain are shattered.
And like all great storytellers Dick chose the fantastical and the weird not just to hide real human stories as enticements, but also, I’d argue, to make them far more memorable than they would have been otherwise.
UBIK, for example, has been hailed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century and whose ideas populate hundreds of derivative works of Hollywood. It’s what we will remember him for. By contrast all of his ‘real world’ literature which covered the same topics, couldn’t get published during his lifetime.
The Storyteller’s Apprentice
The alchemy of the fantastic with the mundane is what makes for great storytelling. It’s what made Disney into Disney. It’s what gave Dick’s science-fiction work its heft and power. It’s what makes stories something worth retelling.
Taken to its extreme stories and legends become something larger than individual chapters. In an oral tradition the stories handed down would morph to suit the challenges of the day, their sequels can and would contradict what came before. Continuity wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t important, what was important was the underlying lessons, the underlying truth.
Read any anthology of ancient stories and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.
Dick created novels like UBIK and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch to be purposefully insolvable puzzles of nested realities. They can be seen as examples of modern storytellers submitting to the higher power of stories themselves, knowing that the puzzles they present bring people back to them over and over.
And guess what? You get exposed, again and again, to the deeper message, the deeper meaning. It’s what happened to me. I used to re-read UBIK every June 5th, the day the novel opens, because the book is that important to me.
It’s why we watch beloved movies multiple times. You may have come for the superheroes or the lightsabers but you come back for the story.
The point being is that stories which last have resonance and speak truth. Some become so big they grow beyond their origins into something that cannot be untangled. They become myth, legend. When the stories in the Bible or the Norse myths were being passed down through the ages, there wasn’t any care about continuity, only imparting lessons to the next generation who heard them.
Jordan Peterson has made the point that it is actually the lack of continuity, the lack of logic, that makes Creation Myths capable of sustaining a culture and a society from falling into chaos and civil war. He frequently uses the example of the Egyptian stories of Osiris, Set and Horus as the big example, which sustained ancient Egypt, apparently, for thousands of years.
Even Christianity can’t claim that…yet.
This is the responsibility Disney took on when it acquired first Pixar Studios, then Marvel Studios and then, most importantly, Lucasfilm. It already owned ESPN and ABC. It was now a story generating conglomerate so large that it owned all the modern mythmaking franchises sans DC Comics.
And with its overtly dipping its wick into the obvious political fray over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law it betrayed that responsibility as a repository and generator of new stories capable of becoming myth to its core.
Disney, who used to stand apart from Hollywood’s descent into depravity and violence, became the ultimate symbol of it overnight.
The War Over the Stars
Star Wars I would argue, is one example of a modern story which is looked on by many today with that same kind of reverence. Star Wars’ inherent weirdness is what makes it so very accessible. The comic mythologies of Marvel and, in particular, DC have these same echoes.
Both have been subverted to serve the ‘Woke’ agenda of the World Economic Forum and their Great Reset of all things human into all things Transhuman, which I’ve discussed at length in the past.
It’s also why I think Zack Snyder’s Justice League {ZSJL} was a major turning point in the culture war, because the fans overrode the studio, exposing their betrayal of good storytelling for personal political gain. They butchered ZSJL and its predecessor on purpose to kill the franchise and create something both incomprehensible (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) and hollow (2017’s Justice League)
That’s how much Warner Bros. executives hate Zack Synder and the basic message of his DCEU films:
Chaos is bad, men need to be strong, and unite against madmen who are irredeemable.
Management are furious by the runaway success {of ZSJL}, across the globe…This movie touched a deep nerve with a lot of people, especially in China (330 million views in the first 7 days), and whose release, in and of itself, feels like an inflection point.
Snyder’s DC films aren’t woke, they are archetypal. The more this story about how Warner Bros’ execs screwing Snyder over gets out, the worse it looks for them and the more momentum the fans have to get stories they want, not the stories the powers want to give them.
… or the stories the powers think we need, which is the fine line between propaganda and art.
With Warner Brothers Discovery now a reality, everything DC in the pipeline is being retooled and all attempts to leave poison pills behind with billions of dollars tied up in bad projects blocked by new CEO David Zaslav, it’s looking like my call about ZSJL being an inflection point in the culture war was prophetic.
Disney hasn’t yet cleaned house and possibly never will.
I stopped referring to Star Wars as a fairy tale years ago, recognizing that it has risen for some to the level of Creation Myth. The bitter divide over the Original Trilogy vs. the Sequel Trilogy is a kind of incel version of the Old Testament/New Testament divide.
It’s not that Star Wars is a good replacement for these far older, richer stories. It is that Star Wars has become that replacement for too many in our world today. As such, we have to recognize the angst surrounding it is real, even if the reality in which that angst was generated is a false one.
They are in need of something more.
This is why The Mandalorian was such a hit with all Star Wars fans. It restored some faith.
Again from last year’s article on this subject:
With two good guys who have deep storytelling chops now effectively running Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni and John Favreau, Star Wars will regain ‘the high ground’ in the culture war over the next decade.
Now, today I’m not as sure of this statement as I was then, because Disney’s leadership has shown itself to be so thoroughly compromised.
But if Star Wars comes back in full it will be despite the internal war within Disney and Lucasfilm. They will have to respond in part because of the competition on the horizon from Warner Discovery and also because burning Disney to the ground will leave it vulnerable to the same forces which led Elon Musk to buy Twitter.
The Way Forward
Embedded to the core of Star Wars is this idea of the power of stories to sustain culture. The mythology of the Jedi’s impartiality helped sustain the Old Republic for “a thousand generations,” even as they became hidebound and dogmatic.
George Lucas built Star Wars on this idea, a mythology for a culture losing touch with its old traditions. Early returns are that he was successful. Star Wars will have to last a hundred years as a playground for storytellers to acquire even a smidgen of that power.
Canonically, the collapse of the Jedi and the cynicism of Luke Skywalker as expressed in The Last Jedi is what spurred Favreau and Filoni to create The Mandalorian and heal the divide in the fanbase.
Mando’s story is the opposite of Luke’s: A bad man driven by faith in an ancient creed to protect the innocent Grogu (Baby Yoda). That faith leads him to self-sacrifice but also challenging the creed’s self-negation to plant the seeds of spiritual rebirth in the post-Empire chaos through which hope springs in all of us.
The creed he follows is even older than The Republic, a story of the historical conflicts between Mandalorians and Jedi going back 10,000 years. Those stories have sustained the most faithful even through racial purges, deadly civil wars, and the Empire’s turning Mandalore to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
It is truly powerful stuff, of the type new myths are born from. Mando’s story will be finding a new relationship with his creed that restores Mandalore, just like Luke did with the Jedi creed.
“This is the way,” has joined “May the Force be with you,” as the rallying cry of a generation of people inspired by a story. To bear the burden of rebuilding a fallen world takes both fortitude and faith, hope and strength.
And it shows you just how far Disney has fallen as a company that it succumbed to madness about race, sex and parental rights in service of false realities rather than seek the truth inherent in its own stories.
The way out of the crisis is through it.
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Very good. Very fucking good
What I’ve been wondering about, why would a corporation do something that could jeopardize a large portion of its customer base. Catherine Austin Fitts in a recent interview gave more insight. She said CEOs of these corporations are allowed to cut separate deals for themselves unbeknownst to their shareholders. She also said that these CEOs are ripe for bribery, but mostly ripe for blackmail and threats. Disney has sucked since Fantasia. Hollywood also sucks, hasn’t made a decent movie since Sideways.
“What I’ve been wondering about, why would a corporation do something that could jeopardize a large portion of its customer base.”
One factor are the miniscule shareholdings of company executives. Even though Iger is the largest individual shareholder, his holdings are only 0.06%, while the CFO’s holdings are only 0.01% of outstanding shares.
Aside from losing his cushy job with a nice golden parachute, Bob Chapek essentially has no skin in the game, thus little to lose by screwing DIS to please the ESG wizzes at its two biggest institutional shareholders, Vanguard and Blckrock.
ESG = Essentially Supporting Grifters.
We all go to Disney for the stories. Those have always been some of the best. I grew up on Disney, my wife grew up on Disney, and I thought that my boys would also grow up on Disney. But it didn’t happen. Oh sure we went to the parks, saw the movies, were elated when they bought Marvel and Star Wars (I was also an investor then), but something changed over the last five years. We stopped being invested in Disney movies, parks, and shows. We even cancelled our annual pass to Disneyland. It was the right decision as we weren’t enjoying it and weren’t getting our money’s worth. But you’ll be surprised who fought to keep the ‘magic’ alive. It wasn’t me or the boys; it was my wife. She loved Disneyland and it was her childhood fantasy. We had a fight over the park passes and eventually she saw that it didn’t mean much to the boys. The stories just weren’t there. They weren’t really needed and they didn’t speak to anyone in our family. In hindsight it was all there though. The parks aren’t really catering to children so much as they are catering to singles and childless couples. Attendance is way up, but the demography of attendees has changed dramatically (at least at the California park which is where we go to). This might be where the executives are getting their idea that the people who are into Disney are different than those who where in Walt’s time.
On the face of it they do wholesome movies for families to enjoy. And I often enjoy them too. But just beneath many occult signs and symbols. worrying reports of disney being used as tools in trauma based mind control of young children. ref project monarch.
JUMP IN THE URINAL AND STAND ON YOUR HEAD. I’M THE ONE THAT’S ALIVE. YOU’RE ALL DEAD.
Lean over the bowl and take a dive,
You are all dead, I am alive.
I think it’s a very complex multi dimensional puzzle.The west is being hollowed out from the inside and the outside.One side going up and one side going down and the bullshit narrative keeps crumbling whilst those in power keep telling us it’s all ok👍It’s not meant to make sense.
Speaking of Horselover Fats, A Maze of Death sits in my head.
Through a Scanner Darkly, I see Dr. Bloodmoney and The Game Players of Titan
Have you read Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces? It’s long but I think you’d love it. Campbell and George Lucas were close near the end of Campbell’s life. He’d say we tell the same story over and over; that’s what brings us back. Osiris, Isis and Horus story is the basis for Christianity, via Dionysus and Mithras. The gospels quote the Osiris and Dionysus stories several times to let us know the connection.
I have not, but I know the conceit, and Campbell’s work builds in Jung, etc.
I agree with the power of story, myth as capable of embodying truth (not primitive science), and the priority of the poetic, but Campbell, and Frazier before him, were incredibly sloppy in their comparison between unrelated figures. Christianity is not based on Osiris, Isis, Horus, or Mithras – even if later art appropriates some forms.
Acting in similar lines with ‘woke’ Disney which threatens De Santis and others, today ‘woke’ EU has threatened Elon Musk with ban of Twitter in Europe. All for the sake of protecting “our democracies”. Here we go.
EU Commissioner Bretton: “If [Twitter] does not comply with our law, there are sanctions — 6 per cent of the revenue and, if they continue, banned from operating in Europe.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/eu-puts-elon-musk-notice-over-free-speech-plans-twitter
This is the perfect opportunity for Musk to tell the EU thanks but no thanks, and take Twitter out of The EU and let them deal with the outrage
How would the third world get the data on which EU country has the best benefits and easiest entry? Maybe the genius Ukie programmers can offer a Twitter alternative to the EU as their thanks for all the support.
Musk might be a trojan horse. He is fully into transhumanism. Additionally planning to make you authenticate your twitter account as a human which could be viewed as another step to social credit systems and all that bullshit. it is fun watching woke lefties squirm over free speech but he (Musk) is not to be trusted.
Of course he isn’t to be trusted, but id he delivers with Twitter then praise it. The reality is no one is all good or all bad, and the reality may be that Musk is only on board with some of the Davos agenda and became repulsed by the totality of it at some point.
Cheer him on but remain skeptical. Pass the popcorn, would ya’?
Tom, you beat me too it! EU is not our friend, at least not the Tyrannical leadership. They want to bring US too our knees with Russia so they can own both as their vassals. Don’t let the bribed politicians and useful idiots sell us down!
The thing that gets me about all these studios is the way they infantalise the audience. Return of the Jedi introduced fluffy teddies! Blade Runner (since you mentioned Philip K Dick) had a theatre release with over dubbing because , apparently, US audiences didn’t understand the plot oh and they threw in the happy ending driving into the sunset….sheesh!!!. Eventually the undubbed, origami unicorn and closing of the lift door ended the film properly, for the thinking audience.
The Mandalorin is great, loved it. But they have started to ruin it by merging it with Boba Fett where we have teenagers driving “hot speeders” in various flashy colours….please stop with the appealing to a group of teenagers who probably are not watching it ! That scene where rebellious teenagers were introduced had me shaking my head in disbelief. Who the eff is writing this stuff. Most people who saw Star Wars when it first came out are pensioners, almost, like me.
Oh and don’t start me with Netflix which is almost totally woke teenager material. Even my 28yr old gay son is sick of it all!
Can I have a related moan with all this ageism in the media : Being over 60 I can seriously kick many people people up the a-hole who seem to think people my age don’t use computers or play games and instead play golf. I hate golf and cricket even though I’m a Yorkshireman. I love VR on my PS5! My son has a boxed cellophane wrapped cassette tape as an ornament (yes seriously) of my Virgin Games game I wrote for the BBC B…..and yet I don’t understand computers or tech! Hmmm.
I wonder how many people have put away their Disney merch, never to wear or display it again.
I have often heard of comparisons of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle to Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. One person even claims it’s like Neuschwanstein cut in half and reversed or something. I’d like to see more info on that theory.
I don’t think in terms of studios so much as directors and actors. It was quite interesting when I saw Tarantino state that he didn’t make movies for a particular country, but rather for the whole world, or words like that. Anyway, The Mandalorian did feature what appears to be an old German Army (perhaps WW1 to WW2 era) style gas mask holder, wonder how many people noticed that.
I’m not going to dish out praise to Elon. i trust him as much as I trust Bill Gates. which is not at all.
However much praise to this Gold Goats and Guns blog. Been lurking for a long time.First class work
Thank you sir.
We need a purging of woke ideology from Disney. Mr Walt Disney would roll over in his grave if he knew what wokeness has done to his company. What gave Disney credibility with families was its wholesome nature. Lose credibility and you lose everything. Disney has lost its credibility.
Think about this, WOKE is doing all possible to destroy the so called ‘nuclear family’, thus it makes sense that Disney no longer caters to the ‘family’, but to the cause, where Disneyland is now a ‘woke place’, and not a ‘family place’
They ‘management’ could have gotten ahead of themselves on this they still might win, but as many have pointed out, USSA lost its ‘spirituality’ a long time ago, and it doesn’t appear to be coming back
Disney attracts pervert role players. The reality is perverts are less than 1% of the market.
You should read the book “Creativity” by Ed Catmull about Pixar… specifically the part when Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney. Executive summary: Jobs figured Disney would screw Pixar up if given half a chance.
Its not just current CEO Chapek or his predecessor Bob Iger. Despite the cult of personality, neither of them runs Disney alone.
Its not just the left leaning California garbage. Steve Jobs was California and leaned left.
The whole corporate culture of Disney is seriously messed up and has been for a long time.
Jobs predicted that the corporate culture of Disney would quickly destroy Pixar, and he negotiated as much sovereignty and independence into the acquisition as possible. Even then, it wasn’t long before the crazies at Disney created a story to railroad out all of Jobs’ proteges including Ed Catmull – who allegedly was mean to women / woke nonsense. As outsiders, we will never know what Catmull did or didn’t do – only the PR releases written by Disney. Even if Catmull did the things he was accused of, the cold reality is that he wasn’t Disney enough.
Sorry to burst your fantasy Tom, but its only a matter of time before Disney wrecks your beloved Star Wars franchise. Yeah, they already tried with the prequels etc. But give them time; they will wreck Star Wars too.
Disney parks, other than California and Florida, are a mess. Now the Florida park will get hit with property tax hikes (no homestead exemption / 3% hike limit on business properties). The park and hotels will have to come up to code. Non Disney hotels will be allowed equal access. The massive cross subsidies from the park to TV show development will evaporate.
ESPN is a loss leader unless cable TV subscribers are forced to pay – check the cord cutting stats. Cable TV can’t prop up ESPN even if they wanted to, and they don’t want to.
The corporate culture of Disney was a well known mess back when Jobs sold Pixar. It hasn’t improved in the years since.
Remember when photography was synonymous with Kodak? It was a cash cow. Kodak invented the digital camera and had a 20 year head start on any competitor.
Disney is the next Kodak.
Musk isn’t woke. Trying to reduce air pollution by moving to electric cars makes sense. Musk even advocates for increasing electricity production from nuclear reactors. Its also clear that he supports freedom of speech.
But electric cars are made from materials created using fossil fuels in factories constructed with materials created using fossil fuels. Has anyone worked out the amortisation of these vehicles, or even have a methodology that can do this? This with only a passing mention of the lithium Musk was happy to loot from Bolivia following the murderous short lived coup.
There are no heroes or angels coming to save us, all we have are some flawed people (we all are) with some good ideas and principles. Focus on those, ideas or principles which might help change direction, and put us on a better course. Multiple such micro and macro deflections from the current tyrannical path WILL get us to a better destination.
Personally, I don’t thrust the Musk/twitter arrangement. I think it is a setup. And Musk may not be aware he is being set-up to fail. Musk only survives because the SEC and other governmental agencies have decided to look away, for now. But at any moment he can be neutralized.
If Musk can be brought down by a simple change in government oversight, then sadly free speech is not now in stronger hands.
A test.
Apparently (accroding to zerohedge), Twitter banned climate denial advertising 2 days before deal closed. Many established and well credentialed scientists argue against the ” man-made-climate-change-is-a-mega-crisis” narrative, and have suffered decades of censorship, long before even “white-privilege”, systemic racism, personal prenouns, etc, etc,.. became “The New Thing”. This ban allows marketing (propaganda) for one side of a debate whilst excluding the other.
So, Mr Elon Musk , “the free-speech-absolutist” when will you undo this ban and allow the oil industry advertise again on Twitter?
This post is not about opinion pro or contra the actuality of climate change. But it is absolutely about the absolutists position on free speech, which I am absolutely one.
Tom, Excellent article by the way, it dragged me out of the wood-work, it was that good. Well done. Being stalking you “intellectually” for many years. Keep up the good work.
Great point about Musk and the man-made climate change fraud. His entire business model is based on this lie. He actually said on the Joe Rogan podcast that the problem with carbon based fuels is that it’s easy to pull carbon out of the earth, but very difficult to put it back. Not easy to put carbon back in the Earth?? Really?? That’s done automatically 24/7 with photosynthesis. It’s been the basis of all life on the planet a billion years. Surely he isn’t that stupid. He must know this climate nonsense is all a scam, but that’s how he makes his money. I think it’s 100% probability that Musk is a piece of shit; but so was Trump and it doesn’t hurt to infuriate these disgusting Marxists that populate every Western society, like they both do.
Comment from a European gay
What the f*** is wrong with this world? Yes, those Disney people are losing their minds, and so are the doctors, politicians, some religious people, the media and so on and on. Oh yeah, ever seen the likeness with Hitler and uncle Walt? The world has been f*** up for a very long time, only now it starts to show on a big scale. Why? Because it’s the end game. Now that robots are becoming better as we speak, they don’t need us anymore. They only used some part of the world to get them where they wanted to be. They are trying to mess with everyone’s head so they can start WO III . The only thing we can do about it, is doing absolutely nothing. Not going to work, not going to the store’s, not using the internet and so on. Then they will lose. But hey, let’s face it, humanity is unable to do so. While doing nothing should be the easiest thing of them all, for humans it’s not. And yes Musk isn’t to be trusted, talking to Zelensky, who is. But maybe he’ll bring the AI to another level. And that will be their end too! With all that is going on, humans still are not standing up! What does it take? Do you still have faith in that? By the way, the truth is out there. But what does that really mean?
Speaking of robots, musk has been a UBI proponent for years, and it makes perfect sense because these tech dorks who are mostly on the spectrum, are incapable of thinking any other way. I’m beginning to think it’s all a ruse, they know must know there aren’t nearly enough resources or energy capacity to swap out 500 million cars for electrical ones. There’s a chance they’re just going through the motions, waiting for the culling and maiming to have their full affects. I have no expectations of musk, but I did like that he roasted Bill Gates. It wasn’t as good as that pie in his face many years back, but it was pretty…pretty….pretty…good.
“We live in an age of maximum arrogance.”
😆😅🤣
Great article from my favorite site online. Keep up the good work.
Perhaps one in a million – perhaps one in a thousand
Started your article and could quickly see it was diminished by vulgarity which took it from what might be useful and interesting, to a trip not worth taking. Can’t help but wonder why and what purpose is served.
Edward,
I use profanity in my writing sometimes for the purpose as stated in this article, because it focuses your attention.
In the same way that Phil Dick used weirdness to create a memorable framework for his stories about redemption, a little profanity, used properly can be quite effective.
You can disagree certainly, but you asked why. That’s why.
I would ask you then to examine why you are so triggered by one word. If that word made my trip not worth taking then perhaps the problem lies with you not me.
Sometimes men who are asleep need to be bitch slapped
Our era of political correctness has created this ‘safe space’ mentality
I too over-educated quite often use the ‘fuck’ word, for its shock value; Besides only a cuck is afraid of saying ‘fuck’ in public or online.
I guess tom could put a PG-13 on his material, hell even KUNSTLER has the balls to say kluster-fuck, which is what it is, and kunstler used to be a far left liberal, not long ago
@Edward,
First of all FUCK Joe Biden.
Second, FUCK YOU for trying to censor Tom or anyone else. You need to put on your big boy underpants and stop acting like a woke sissy. Adults curse, and it you don’t give people a “nice” way to vent their anger, you only encourage violence expression instead. Un-American censors like you are the problem.
Third, FUCK Google for their Orwellian nightmare document editor that injects woke crap into user documents. Yeah, Google suspended the program (suspended, not canceled). But if Google was a functioning organization, that stupidity never would have seen the light of day.
But most of all FUCK JOE BIDEN and all those who prop up his regime.
I don’t know if Trump won or not, but I am 100% certain that Joe did not legitimately get more votes than Barack Obama did.
No problem. Triggered is a bit strong.
You did answer my question.
Thanks for the reply.
You are welcome. I do think you’ll like the rest of the article, btw.
You know, Tom, I really love your ideas, your podcasts and writing, and have learned a lot since I discovered this place, but I think Edward has a point. I understand your rationale, and it’s not like I haven’t gone and don’t still go there myself sometimes, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the coarsening of the culture is a real problem, an aspect of the nihilism that we’re all fighting, and that it’s best for me not to contribute to it. Just my two cents.
Hey Tom, Great article. Great comment section. Something is working!
Great article Tom, thought provoking as usual. Disney and all their subsidiaries are toxic.
As a child I watched and thoroughly enjoyed the original three Star Wars films. However, I never returned for any of the modern ones as I didn’t want to possibly taint my memories of the originals. Is it worth revisiting and viewing them all or possibly just Mandolorian?
Nothing can take those memories away. You’re a different person today. The new material is designed to reflect the conflicts of the times they were produced in. Watch them that way and you’ll see things in them that are of value. Eps 1 to 3, are a tough watch though… they are very uneven.
7 through 9 are betrayed by poor editing (ep.7 and 9) and some ambitious plotting in Ep.8 which many can take or leave.
regardless, you will love Rogue One and possibly Solo.
great piece, thanks. the Roman Empire never ended.
For fucks sake, these comments ended up talking about fuck as a vulgar word.
Fuck is one of the most expressive words in the english language. Language evolves; the “peasants” vernacular usually ends up with a dictionary reference? Does that mean it is accepted or quasi-accepted ? I bet you find fuck in all dictionaries, perhaps listed as “vulgar” in some, but not all references -adjective or verb. In fact it is one of those magic words that derives so much meaning beyond itself. Interpretation depends on the delivery, situation, emotion, personalities and relationships.
Fuck is one of those powerful human words that will defeat the AI bots. The Metaverse can never get fuck, or in fact thankfully to-fuck. Fuck said in anger is hard, I admit, if it precedes a bar brawl, but fuck in exasperation as your computer crashes for the 5th time, or in pain if your diy-hammer hits your thumb instead of the nail is perfectly acceptable, and for anybody observing, sort of funny. “let’s fuck” said to your intimate partner normally starts something good. “Fuck-you” may be a good warning that somebody has crossed a line, better to be said in advance as warning, and perhaps avoid escalation. “holy fuck” in shock, etc… So lets not start cancelling the word fuck. God knows we cancelled so much already. Let’s not fuck with fuck. I am fuckin’ outta here……..
Fuckin’ A!