RANDOM THOUGHTS

On Love, Death, Smut, Sex, Violence, Exploitation, Exaltation 

And Cheap Sensationalism

In Western Culture and Politics 

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Salome holding the head 
of John the Baptist

Bonnie and Clyde brought about a seminal change in American motion pictures. When was it 1967 or 68? I was all grown up and well into my twenties then, but I remember going to see this thing at my home town theater in all innocence ––– not having any idea what to expect. I remember too being genuinely shocked, and hurt at what I saw on the screen. I felt like throwing up –– I was literally stunned. 

What disturbed me most, however, was the reaction of most of the younger members of the audience. They laughed coarsely, hooted, cheered and jeered as each bullet smashed realistically into the skull or body of the many victims of vicious assault from both criminals and law officers alike, while blood looking all too real spurted out of the wounds.

And Oh! how the audience giggled and hooted and guffawed at the scene where the little thug with the cap accompanying Bonnie and Clyde got involved in three-way sex with the couple! The simulated oral copulation the little man performed on Clyde while he and Bonnie were smooching was unforgettable for its sickening ugliness and depravity –– something no decent person should ever have to know about much less witness graphically in a movie theater. And it was entirely gratuitous –– nothing needed to advance the plot –– just cheap sensationalism at its worst.

In a very real sense I've never gotten over that experience. It was one of several things that made me realize I was –– and would ever remain –– deeply  conservative.

Some want to see nothing but capitalist exploitation of a desire people have to see such stuff. Yes, of course, but I think it goes deeper than that.

Civilization has never advanced very far from the days of the Coliseum. There is a hideous capacity for blood lust and a morbid fascination with depravity that lies just beneath the surface in all of us waiting for what-appears-to-be a good excuse or an easy opportunity to let it loose. 

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The crafty, ruthless, unprincipled money grubbing merchants of corruption and degradation who took hold of the entertainment industry, and long ago wormed their way into positions of dominance in certain sectors of academia have pandered to this capacity for corruption to make money –– certainly –– but also to undermine and ultimately destroy the culture they hate –– a culture that would have put a halt to their evil machinations had it been sophisticated enough to be aware of the implications of what at first seemed only trivial if a bit tawdry.

Here's a quantum leap for you: It's like the sudden, irrational demand for dark wood cabinets, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and buff-colored stone or marble surfaces in bathrooms that has taken hold of the real estate and home improvement industry. Do you really think this phenomenon grew out of a natural impulse the majority of people just suddenly felt a spontaneous need to satisfy?

GEDOUDDAHERE! 

Granite countertops have become the new standard not because they're better than Formica –– although in many ways they are ––, but because the real estate and building industries have seen that they can exploit this idea to their great financial advantage. So through outlets like the Home & Garden Channel, they continually brainwash the viewers with the notion that you just aren't anybody and that your house is unsalable, if you don't have granite countertops, hardwood floors, crown moldings and all the rest of it. Every program is blatantly scripted to reinforce this dictum. It's become like a litany or a mantra.

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Mass media works ceaselessly to hypnotize the public and manipulate us into accepting then buying all kinds of things we do not really want or need –– and would never dream of owning –– if it weren't for the influence of these moguls who really do control almost everything behind the scenes. The Movies, TV, News and Information and what-now-regrettably-passes for "Education" reign supreme as the tastemakers.

Except for a few determined weird eccentrics like me, who prefer to buck the trends and manfully swim against the current on principle, most people are just putty in the hands of those who govern the industries outlined above.

So, it's both the lust for ever greater amounts of money, and also the fevered ambition to destroy Western Christian Civilization –– as it has been –– that works to debase and trivialize our society on every conceivable level. 

This ambition must be motivated by sheer spite, however, because paradoxically these moguls are in fact busily wrecking the very system that made it possible for them to achieve wealth and power. It's like biting off your nose to spite your face, but apparently these types -- as brilliant as powerful as they are –– can't see beyond the ends of their noses anyway so blinded are they by hostility.

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The novels of Jane Austen never mention sex as such, and certainly never depict anything but the most decorous behavior imaginable, nevertheless sex pervades Jane Austen's work like golden thread shot through a fine brocade. The growing affection between Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy –– a relationship which at first seems rooted in mutual hostility but ends in mutual respect, appreciation and deep affection –– is frankly one of the sexiest literary experiences imaginable. 

The tension that develops between those two at first meeting is palpable and obviously based on a sexual attraction unwanted by either party, so it first shows itself as frank hostility, instead. Yet the attraction builds gradually throughout the book till the reader longs for these two to recognize each other and fulfill the tender-but-powerful passion that has grown between them. 

We want to get right down to business today when it comes to sex, and that takes all the thrill of the chase and all the romance and adventure out of conducting a love affair. Too bad! 

None of us would be here if it weren't for sex, so it should hardly be considered unmentionable, but in taking all the subtlety and all the charm out of it we've lost a great deal that used to make life tremendously exciting.

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There may be an exception or two in the world of Opera. Richard Strauss's Salome portrays a young pagan princess in the court of King Herod who becomes obsessed with lust for John the Baptist –– a prisoner at Herod's palace. Her behavior in attempting to seduce John the Baptist, who is locked up and therefore helpless to escape her unwanted attentions, starts out as that of a young girl who is experiencing her first crush, but soon becomes openly lewd as the captive male shows more and more resistance to her attempts to woo him. Towards the climax Salome moves beyond lewd, sheds every semblance of self-control, and in a frankly obscene, frenzied display of desire and fury at his rejection removes all her garments (during the famous Dance of the Seven Veils) and stands before him naked.

His horror and loathing at this spectacle causes her to demand his head to be brought to her on a platter. When finally this grisly deed is accomplished, she kisses his dead lips and sings one of the most oddly moving passages of vocal and orchestral music ever written. Gruesome and depraved as this scene may be it is also heartbreaking for she realizes that her victory is bitter, and that she has lost herself forever –– just before Herod, who has had more than enough of her obscene antics –– orders his men to crush her to death with their shields.

The true meaning at the heart of Salome, which started out life as a play written in French by Oscar Wilde, is the terrible tragedy of losing one's innocence by giving way to uncontrollable lust devoid of affection or any kid of reciprocity.

It's a valuable lesson, and the one-act opera's incredible power comes at least partially from a graphic depiction of this young girl's frenzied orgy of wanton self destruction. 

Not everyone's cup of tea, of course, but I maintain that in this case the depravity definitely has "socially redeeming value." It is not gratuitous and merely sensationalistic.

A pagan court in the ancient world –– a brutal world that could callously order the murder of every first-born son, and the Crucifixion of Jesus –– could never be subjected to the rules of etiquette demanded of members of the upper classes in the drawing rooms of eighteenth century England.

Yet, while prim, decorous Pride and Prejudice is really very sexy, the forceful display of uncontrolled sexual desire in Salome is anything but –– instead it is terribly, terribly sad.

I think noting the contrast between these two very different works is important.

There's a fine line sometimes between obscenity and poignancy. Smug Philistinism is no more moral and no more rewarding than pornography. Both these extremes miss the point of life completely in my opinion.

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As for Huxley and Orwell both offer masterful depictions of a nightmarish future –– the ultimate dystopian society. 

Of the two I believe Orwell is the more successful in making his case, but we should remember that long before these two E.M. Forster wrote The Machine Stops (1909), which is undoubtedly the grand daddy of the others. It's a novella or long short story and well worth reading. Forster truly had the gift of prophecy.

Also, long after Orwell, the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood gave us The Handmaid's Tale, which –– though obviously derived from the other works –– enhances, underscores and amplifies the horror of these futuristic fantasies –– which have already turned out to be sadly prophetic.

I don't agree, as some on the right assert, that everyone who has supported Democratic party initiatives is inherently violent and bent on destruction. I have too many liberal friends who are pleasant, intelligent, highly literate, witty, remarkably capable people who just happen –– because of the education cum indoctrination they received from Ivy League colleges, or places like the University of Chicago or Berkeley –– to be profoundly ignorant of modern history and economics.

They were skillfully fed the Communist Party line when still at an impressionable age, and swallowed it hook, line and sinker without realizing what they were doing.

Also, no one should argue that the Ku Klux Klan was or is a left wing organization, yet it certainly used terrorist tactics to gain and wield power.

The prelates who ran the Spanish Inquisition, the Star Chamber in Britain and presided over New England's Salem Witch Trials should not be described as "leftists" either.

What we ought to be fighting is the almost universal impulse people have to tyrannize and subjugate one another. It's wrong no matter who falls prey to it, just as it's wrong no matter what cause it purports to serve –– even our own.

Just to make myself clear: I do not mean we should never use violence to defend ourselves when we've been attacked, but perpetrating aggression on our own behalf is not right –– tempting though it may be in many instances.

One of the great ironies of history is that Hitler started out as a virulent anti-Communist. That we were allied with Stalin's U.S.S.R. against Hitler is paradoxical, because our greatest ally, Winston Churchill, knew the danger of Marxist, Socialist, Collectivism from its inception, yet we fought with Stalin to defeat the Axis powers.

That Communism turned out to be a much greater, far deadlier, FAR more widespread and long-lived threat than Naziism is still a source of wonder.

Hitler is still cast as the great villain of the 20th century, while the much greater horrors perpetrated by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao Tse Dung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro and now Venezuela's Chavez are glossed over –– hardly mentioned in modern classrooms. 

One other point we should consider: The Fabian socialists –– a group whose statist/collectivist objectives I abhor –– have never advocated nor used violence in their much-too-successful attempt to dominate British society.

We on the right ought not to be divided, because we are both on the same side. It is only to some of the brutal-sounding methods some of us casually advocate to defeat our adversaries –– and to the powerfully persistent use of generalization and hyperbole used to characterize the opposition –– that I object.

I doubt very much if we can succeed in defeating one set of lies, distortions and gross exaggerations with another.

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~ FreeThinke