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“Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.” — Dolores Claiborne
A Utopia
It was a convergence of events: the Obama win in 2008, which coincided with the rise of Twitter and Facebook, and the advent of the iPhone. Now, we not only had a panopticon, but a little weapon at the ready riding around in our pockets. Now, we had an arena for public shaming — a virtual Coliseum to drag people into the public square for shaming.
Readers of this site are aware that I began pushing back on this early in the cycle. I stood up for people whose lives and careers were destroyed over accusations made about them online. When La La Land was called “racist,” I went along with it at first because I, too, felt traumatized by Trump’s win in 2016. La La Land seemed too superficial at the time. I remember debating this with one of the film’s producers over email. I sounded ridiculous, though I could ’t see just how ridiculous I was back then.
The following year, when Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was dragged out as “racist,” that is when it all clicked in my mind. This wasn’t real. It was hysteria — mass hysteria of the Salem kind. It was our collective reaction to the shock of Trump’s win. By the time Green Book won, Hollywood and the Oscars imploded, and that is what set the whole thing in motion. By 2020, it was total surrender.
I put myself in the line of fire every time someone was accused and attacked. Before long, I became a target, especially by dude bros on Film Twitter who really resented an old lady like me, long past her sell-by date for sex, not shutting up and sitting down. But I never did then, and I still haven’t. I fully accept that I am one of those women who would have been accused of witchcraft and hanged (oh, how I wish someone would make a series on the Salem Witch trials so people could see just how similar it is to what we’ve all lived through).
I was thinking about the great film from 1995 called Dolores Claiborne. I told Jeffrey Wells about it the other day, and he’d never seen it. He wrote about it on his site. Back then, we had so many great movies to choose from that you could overlook a film like that without realizing what a treasure it was. Sometimes I feel like Kathy Bates in that movie – a grumpy old woman who has no fucks left to give but is constantly attacked and is hated by the entire town.
Absolutely brilliant performances across the board, but especially the tour-de-force by Kathy Bates. This is what she should have won the Oscar for. Pause to appreciate Jennifer Jason Leigh’s thoroughly 90s hair and sunglasses. That was the same year she made Georgia – wherein she had to lose a significant amount of weight—two great performances by her in one year.
We no longer see movies like this. We don’t even see anything remotely close to this anymore because what happened to the “left” and to NPR, PBS, and everything else is that they found religion and thus, the meaning of life always must be filtered through the lens of Critical Race and Gender Theory.
Because of that, stories can’t be told organically anymore. There is always the self-conscious need to be representative and inclusive, which doesn’t feel authentic to anyone. The generation raised to see art as an expression of politics seems to like it, but those of us who remember 1995 remain bereft.
The bottom line no one should ever forget is simply this: the same mostly white, mostly men who have run everything forever still run everything. Nothing has changed except the facade. It is performative for the protection of the people at the top.
NPR and PBS on the Chopping Block
“The vote is a victory for Republicans who have long had National Public Radio (NPR) in their sights. But it is also a victory for those of any political stripe who believe the government has no business funding the media.
I didn’t use to count myself among them. But over the past year, under the leadership of a divisive new CEO, instead of taking criticisms of its coverage to heart, NPR instead doubled down on agenda-driven journalism. So, as someone who had spent most of his career at the network, I didn’t support defunding. I instead suggested that NPR could build back credibility by voluntarily giving up federal support. Obviously that didn’t happen.”
…
It’s a self-inflicted wound, a product of how NPR embraced a fringe progressivism that cost it any legitimate claim to stand as an impartial provider of news, much less one deserving of government support.
I witnessed that change firsthand in my 25 years at the network—and I tried to do something about it. I was a senior business editor at NPR when, a little more than a year ago, I published my account in The Free Press of how the network had lost touch with the country, and, like the legacy media everywhere, forfeited the trust of the public.
I explained how over time, as NPR became a boutique product for a well-heeled audience clustered around coastal cities and college towns, it shed moderate and conservative listeners. — Uri Berliner, The Free Press
Would that there were a single person in Hollywood as brave as Berliner to call out what has been an agenda-driven movie and television industry for years now. Hollywood, the Oscars, and everything under the control of “The Left,” which I will use because I don’t have a better word at the moment, has been crippled by a climate of fear and a culture of silence since 2020, aka The Great Awokening.
NPR and PBS are supposedly “public,” with $1 billion in government funding. That isn’t that much. It’s symbolic for the Republicans who have been treated like human garbage by the Left for decades. They have the power to send the message that they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. What’s remarkable is how Katherine Maher is out there saying there is no bias at NPR. DA FUQ? No bias?
PBS didn’t seem biased to me when I was inside the bubble of the Left. Now, when I watch it, whether it’s a Ken Burns documentary or a Frontline episode, I can see the agenda pushing. If this is all people can get in rural areas and among tribal communities, then it isn’t news. It’s indoctrination. And it is not fair to the other half of the country, who just voted for Trump.
NPR should have fired Katherine Maher if it were serious about preserving the funding. They should have brought on board some Conservatives and populists to run the stories that many in the country care about. They didn’t.
The measure will now be debated and voted on in the House. If Democrats want to change things, they will have to change themselves because right now they are too insular, too cut off from the rest of the country, to win back power in the short run. They will need more than just “Trump is bad.”
I looked at a report from CBS News about the proposed defunding of NPR and PBS. What do you notice about it?
What you should notice is that it’s frontloaded with journalists who are Black. Three Black journalists and Katherine Maher are at the top. People might say, Why are you such a racist? Why are you pointing it out? Because it is typical of what the Left has become. The influential people are mostly hidden from view, while they populate the public-facing image with minorities.
At the same time, those minorities used as shields will be defined only by how they represent those at the top, their own status, and their own power; how they rise will never be theirs entirely. If the idea is that they can’t rise in a racist country, how can they ever be judged purely on merit?
They don’t have real power. They have borrowed power. It is being temporarily lent to them. The power they possess is the power to destroy people with a single accusation, wielding all their authority. When it comes to creating art – making movies, telling stories, telling jokes, it becomes impossible to tell any good ones because you can’t escape the trap of the reversed hierarchy.
That isn’t what cost NPR and PBS their funding, and it isn’t what destroyed Hollywood and the Left, but it is a good example of the modus operandi of the richest and most powerful people in media. This is true across all platforms, from publishing to advertising, music, and Lifetime movies. They’re all on the same page when it comes to reversing the power hierarchy. That means white heteronormative men at the bottom, white heteronormative women next to the bottom, and then the “allies” get some elevation in rank, then you move up to the most marginalized, having the most “power” within the industry.
Party Like it’s 1995
Everything in Hollywood is broke, from film and television awards, to journalism, to production. It has all been captured by terrified elites who have done everything they can to hide in the shadows and protect themselves. That isn’t healthy for the arts. Artists, journalists, writers, comedians — all have to be free to speak up and speak out. We know they’re not. Just look at what happened to me. This is a totalitarian movement that demands conformity, or else, while also proclaiming to be on the side of kindness with their lawn signs and whatnot.
Every film out of Hollywood bears the markings of a self-conscious, freaked-out industry attempting to stick to the code of the “woke” – lest they be called out, dragged into the arena for public shaming, and watch their entire careers evaporate overnight. Good times. And when I say every movie, I mean, every movie – even the ones people swear up and down aren’t “woke,” they are. They have to be. That is the new code of Hollywood that everyone must follow.
But boy, 1995 was an excellent year for movies. I had only been online for one year. I had no idea how much things would change and that what I would love most would all but disappear 30 years later. Ain’t that a shame.
Films that were nominated in 1995:
Braveheart — the winner
Sense and Sensibility
Apollo 13
Babe
The Postman
With the exception of The Postman, which was the beginning of Harvey Weinstein and Miramax’s hold on Academy voters, all of these movies had a cultural impact.
Jeff Wells listed the best films of 1995:
“Heat, Se7en, The Usual Suspects, Dolores Claiborne and Crimson Tide.
#6 through #10 are Swimming With Sharks, Leaving Las Vegas, To Die For, Before Sunrise and The Bridgesof Madison County.
And then, in this approximate order: Get Shorty, Apollo 13, Living in Oblivion, Operation Dumbo Drop, TheBrothers McMullen, Casino, Mighty Aphrodite, Sense and Sensibility, The American President, Toy Story, Nixon, Richard III, Dead Man Walking, Empire Records, The Basketball Diaries, Dangerous Minds, Clockers, Kids, Clueless, Beyond Rangoon. (30 films in all)”
To Die For, Se7en, Heat, The Usual Suspects, Before Sunrise, Nixon all in the same year is mind-blowing. Movies were so good then even the not-so-good ones seem like masterpieces compared to today.
The ones not on Jeff’s list that I would add:
While You Were Sleeping (solid romcom)
Crumb – like one of the greatest ever documentaries; makes me miss the 90s so much.
Smoke
Species — top tier horror
Clueless
Showgirls
Strange Days
Copycat
12 Monkeys
Things are changing, and they’re changing fast. It almost feels like we’re living through the end of art and what it has represented to human beings for all eternity. Maybe it’s just a temporary thing. Maybe it will all come roaring back. I don’t know. I suppose we’ll wait and see what happens next.
