> "in extolling the virtues of an absolute monarchy tempered only by the right of other princes of the royal blood to challenge the king to a duel to the death, [Black Panther] was perhaps the most reactionary movie of the decade."
Is there really any distinct difference between a “racial loyalist” and a racist? Don’t they both have a sharp preference for their own race and believe in the superiority of their race? Is using the term “racial loyalist” just a kinder, gentler way of calling Coogler a racist?
I appreciate your response Mr. Sailer, but I kind of find it wanting at the same time. Kendi, TNC and NHJ are all explicit black racists but Coogler is mildly less so???
So when exactly would this “racial loyalist“ excuse work for a mildly, less racist white person??? Never.
But that wasn't *right-wing* until recently. Mulder's political views weren't clearly defined (though obviously he was anti-authority) until the revival episodes where he winds up working with a right-wing talk show host and he doesn't like the guy's politics, implying he's on the left.
I was going to jump in about that, but you beat me to it.
The coding has switched a lot since the 90s when that show came out. Conspiracies used to be just as much about the government colluding with corporations as they were about Communists or fluoride or whatever. Liberals had all kinds of theories about Nixon or the CIA assassinating JFK. UFO groups weren't strongly political and leaned left if anything--there was a lot of overlap with hippies.
Now that the left has completely taken over the existing academic and media institutions (at least through 2024) it's unseemly to spread too much disdain about medical experts on that side of the aisle--but conspiracy theories about vaccines were a thing of the hippie-crunchy left at least as late as 2019.
I'm going deep nerd here, but the pretty left-wing RPG company Pagan Publishing (and later Arc Dream) had a whole RPG which was basically X-Files meets the Cthulhu Mythos, where secret government strike teams were covering up incursions of extradimensional monsters.
Conspiracy theories weren't strongly right-coded until 2020 and COVID.
Right. In the 1970s conspiracy theories were mostly left wing: JFK, RFK, MLK (although oddly there are fewer MLK conspiracy theories than you'd think), Warren Beatty and Robert Redford movies, etc.
As I've often said, the turning point came in 1991-1992 when Oliver Stone's "JFK" looked like it would sweep the Oscars, but then the serious news media pushed back hard against the cultural news media's liking for conspiracy theories.
I'm so glad Steve said. I like old blues but mostly as an origin story. Like everyone I tried to like the old stuff and see it as superior to led zeppelin et al. Eventually I had to admit I had been gaslit by critics.
Even the stuff they were cribbing from more directly like Howlin' Wolf, is okay but nowhere near as good at what the rock generation did with it. Those original guys were innovative and great song writers but their performances and recording just don't hold up.
It seems to me that far to many (almost all?) explicitly black movies inevitably fall into some lazy racist white plot points. Accordingly, I basically skip all of them even when I know the director, like Coogler or Peele, is a genuinely talented guy. I cannot decide how sincere they are in this belief or how much of it is because they have a subconscious impulse to include it because it garners approval from whatever studio and audience they pitch their ideas to. It could also be black nerd trying to show he's still a conscious brother so don't pick on me, which is basically TNC's disease.
As a brief anecdotal aside on the blues in response to Steve's lack of interest, I have a black friend who is an amateur musician with a broad range of artistic/genre interests and he absolutely cannot stand the blues either because he considers it boring. I personally do enjoy it a bit because it reminds me of a long-dead uncle that I loved hanging out with when I was a young adult, and I remember many summer nights walking up to his house and hearing John Lee Hooker or Buddy Guy drifting out into the street through his screen door. I wish I could still do that.
John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy are better than most. To me Buddy Guy sounds like a lot of the great guitar players of the prime rock era.
No one in Hollywood gets to make the movie he wants. Those tacked on racists plot points likely were not the writer/director's choice. It's the white people doing the financing. Ironically it's like minstrel show stuff for the woke. It's what the film execs want to see from a 'black film'. If I were a good black movie maker it would piss me off to have to include it in everything. What if I don't want to tell a specifically black story?
I was making fun of someone on Twitter recently by facetiously comparing them to Alan Greenspan. I then thought that I don't remember him dying, and sure enough, he is still alive, having turned 99 in March!
This interesting Jewish guy and father of a friend lived to 99. Note that he anglicized his surname but his brother did not:
DAVID SQUIRE Obituary
SQUIRE--David F. Died peacefully at home on February 22nd, age 99. Born in Holyoke, MA, and raised in Brookline, he was an indefatigable go-getter with a big heart and an irrepressible zest for life. While a student at Dartmouth College, David pledged that he would devote himself to public service by the time he turned 40. He also wanted to raise a family and provide them with a comfortable life while still acquiring all the 100-percent-pima-cotton shirts he desired.
So he raised enough cash to buy a small, bankrupt textile mill, and over the next 15 years built it into a profitable company. In 1965, he sold it --a few months shy of his 40th birthday. He then accepted a government position as deputy director of the Job Corps, followed by a stint as senior advisor to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. In 1969, he ditched diplomacy for academia to become vice president of Brandeis University.
He retired eleven years later in order to focus on philanthropic causes such as the American Jewish Committee and the U.N. Global Advisory board, among others. David achieved pretty much everything he set his mind to--and remained a fiercely competitive tennis player into his late 80s.
He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Patricia; his brother, Alan Skvirsky; three children; four stepchildren; nine grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; and the Boston Red Sox. If you wish to honor him, please make a donation to the Heller School at Brandeis or the ACLU.
If Steve wants to keep reviewing movies (since he does not watch TV) he needs to spend more time with TVtropes.com to learn that any idea or plot device that can be used in a movie or TV show has already been used many times.
> "in extolling the virtues of an absolute monarchy tempered only by the right of other princes of the royal blood to challenge the king to a duel to the death, [Black Panther] was perhaps the most reactionary movie of the decade."
Don't forget this scene:
https://youtu.be/ev_RUKS8u6k
"If you let the refugees in, they bring their problems with them. And then Wakanda is like everywhere else."
Ryan Coogler = Black Trump?
Ryan Coogler is a racial loyalist, which made him seem woke. But he's basically a jock.
Is there really any distinct difference between a “racial loyalist” and a racist? Don’t they both have a sharp preference for their own race and believe in the superiority of their race? Is using the term “racial loyalist” just a kinder, gentler way of calling Coogler a racist?
Just asking, for a friend . . .
Kendi or TNC or Nikole Hannah-Jones go out of their way to blame white people. Coogler somewhat, but less so.
I appreciate your response Mr. Sailer, but I kind of find it wanting at the same time. Kendi, TNC and NHJ are all explicit black racists but Coogler is mildly less so???
So when exactly would this “racial loyalist“ excuse work for a mildly, less racist white person??? Never.
Tyler Perry likes black people much more than he hates whites. Spike Lee is more vice-versa.
The X-Files is right-coded in the same way that RFK Jr is now right-coded.
Yes, I was bemused by that sentence. In what way is the X-Files right-coded?
Mulder believed in aliens and other supernatural or alien forces and thought the government was covering it up.
The show can be described as conspiratorial.
Yes, but how is that right-coded? Government conspiracies against the public has always been a left-wing trope.
Not since 2020! It'll be interesting to see if that changes with the coming administration...
But that wasn't *right-wing* until recently. Mulder's political views weren't clearly defined (though obviously he was anti-authority) until the revival episodes where he winds up working with a right-wing talk show host and he doesn't like the guy's politics, implying he's on the left.
Vince Gilligan got his start writing for X Files and then created Breaking Bad.
I don't watch a lot of TV, but Ross Douthat could probably explain it.
Yup, and Bryan Cranston was on an episode of X-Files written by Vince Gilligan...which led to him being cast as Walter White on Breaking Bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(The_X-Files)#Casting
Who IRL is an unhinged leftist.
Isn't using '...-coded' itself left-coded?
I was going to jump in about that, but you beat me to it.
The coding has switched a lot since the 90s when that show came out. Conspiracies used to be just as much about the government colluding with corporations as they were about Communists or fluoride or whatever. Liberals had all kinds of theories about Nixon or the CIA assassinating JFK. UFO groups weren't strongly political and leaned left if anything--there was a lot of overlap with hippies.
Now that the left has completely taken over the existing academic and media institutions (at least through 2024) it's unseemly to spread too much disdain about medical experts on that side of the aisle--but conspiracy theories about vaccines were a thing of the hippie-crunchy left at least as late as 2019.
I'm going deep nerd here, but the pretty left-wing RPG company Pagan Publishing (and later Arc Dream) had a whole RPG which was basically X-Files meets the Cthulhu Mythos, where secret government strike teams were covering up incursions of extradimensional monsters.
Conspiracy theories weren't strongly right-coded until 2020 and COVID.
Right. In the 1970s conspiracy theories were mostly left wing: JFK, RFK, MLK (although oddly there are fewer MLK conspiracy theories than you'd think), Warren Beatty and Robert Redford movies, etc.
As I've often said, the turning point came in 1991-1992 when Oliver Stone's "JFK" looked like it would sweep the Oscars, but then the serious news media pushed back hard against the cultural news media's liking for conspiracy theories.
Ah, was that it? I remember there was a controversy over the movie but I was kind of young.
Somebody has to disagree with you about the Blues being not entertaining, so it might as well be me.
I'm so glad Steve said. I like old blues but mostly as an origin story. Like everyone I tried to like the old stuff and see it as superior to led zeppelin et al. Eventually I had to admit I had been gaslit by critics.
Even the stuff they were cribbing from more directly like Howlin' Wolf, is okay but nowhere near as good at what the rock generation did with it. Those original guys were innovative and great song writers but their performances and recording just don't hold up.
More positive than I was expecting.
I gave Creed and Black Panther moderately positive reviews.
Black black blackity black.
Sounds like an incredibly tedious, overly contrived film. But then, I'm not the target audience.
Well said. The target audience is young blacks who like to see blacks kill/dominate whites, whether vampires or not.
And guilty white liberals.
It seems to me that far to many (almost all?) explicitly black movies inevitably fall into some lazy racist white plot points. Accordingly, I basically skip all of them even when I know the director, like Coogler or Peele, is a genuinely talented guy. I cannot decide how sincere they are in this belief or how much of it is because they have a subconscious impulse to include it because it garners approval from whatever studio and audience they pitch their ideas to. It could also be black nerd trying to show he's still a conscious brother so don't pick on me, which is basically TNC's disease.
As a brief anecdotal aside on the blues in response to Steve's lack of interest, I have a black friend who is an amateur musician with a broad range of artistic/genre interests and he absolutely cannot stand the blues either because he considers it boring. I personally do enjoy it a bit because it reminds me of a long-dead uncle that I loved hanging out with when I was a young adult, and I remember many summer nights walking up to his house and hearing John Lee Hooker or Buddy Guy drifting out into the street through his screen door. I wish I could still do that.
The KKK attack out of the blue near the end of the movie seemed really pro forma. I kind of doubt Coogler's heart was in that part.
There's a joke that 'classy' black music, like jazz or blues, is music black people (largely) no longer listen to.
John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy are better than most. To me Buddy Guy sounds like a lot of the great guitar players of the prime rock era.
No one in Hollywood gets to make the movie he wants. Those tacked on racists plot points likely were not the writer/director's choice. It's the white people doing the financing. Ironically it's like minstrel show stuff for the woke. It's what the film execs want to see from a 'black film'. If I were a good black movie maker it would piss me off to have to include it in everything. What if I don't want to tell a specifically black story?
No thanks. I've had knee-grow fatigue for several decades.
O/T
I was making fun of someone on Twitter recently by facetiously comparing them to Alan Greenspan. I then thought that I don't remember him dying, and sure enough, he is still alive, having turned 99 in March!
Wife Andrea Mitchell goes out every night to bring him fresh blood from virgins. It's a long trip out of DC.
Him and Mel Brooks. I think Norman Podhoretz is still kicking around at 95. Old Jewish guys seem to hang around for a while.
On the other side you could list Clint Eastwood.
This interesting Jewish guy and father of a friend lived to 99. Note that he anglicized his surname but his brother did not:
DAVID SQUIRE Obituary
SQUIRE--David F. Died peacefully at home on February 22nd, age 99. Born in Holyoke, MA, and raised in Brookline, he was an indefatigable go-getter with a big heart and an irrepressible zest for life. While a student at Dartmouth College, David pledged that he would devote himself to public service by the time he turned 40. He also wanted to raise a family and provide them with a comfortable life while still acquiring all the 100-percent-pima-cotton shirts he desired.
So he raised enough cash to buy a small, bankrupt textile mill, and over the next 15 years built it into a profitable company. In 1965, he sold it --a few months shy of his 40th birthday. He then accepted a government position as deputy director of the Job Corps, followed by a stint as senior advisor to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. In 1969, he ditched diplomacy for academia to become vice president of Brandeis University.
He retired eleven years later in order to focus on philanthropic causes such as the American Jewish Committee and the U.N. Global Advisory board, among others. David achieved pretty much everything he set his mind to--and remained a fiercely competitive tennis player into his late 80s.
He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Patricia; his brother, Alan Skvirsky; three children; four stepchildren; nine grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; and the Boston Red Sox. If you wish to honor him, please make a donation to the Heller School at Brandeis or the ACLU.
If Steve wants to keep reviewing movies (since he does not watch TV) he needs to spend more time with TVtropes.com to learn that any idea or plot device that can be used in a movie or TV show has already been used many times.
One of the few Hollywood movies to pay much attention to West African voodoo is Clements and Musker’s Louisiana-set “The Princess and the Frog”.
Angel Heart