Semi-Open Thread: The Culture of Hunting and Hunting as Metaphor

 

This is an Open Thread of sorts because, most likely, many of you(or most of you) know more about the art/science/ritual/tradition/culture of hunting than I do. Actually, I know nothing of hunting as I’ve never hunted myself. And though I totally support gun rights, I’ve never owned guns or fired one myself. My personal curiosity about hunting is mainly about the tastes of various animals.

What do game animals taste like? Plenty of people have tasted venison, but what about moose(Sarah Palin’s favorite), bear(though it’s pretty close to dog meat as canis and ursus are cousins), beaver(though my guess is it’s caught through trapping than hunting — trapping strikes me as a form of animal-torture that can no longer be justified), wild turkey(and various other prairie fowl), pronghorn(seen in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN), alligator(I’m told all reptiles taste more or less like chicken), raccoon(again, too close to dog meat), opossum(soul food meat), and wild hog. As I’m opposed to the Hogocaust, I stay away from pork, but as wild pigs must be culled, I wouldn’t mind game-pork-ribs.

Just out of curiosity, do people hunt with assault rifles, AK-47 and AR-15? I recall a political cartoon that mocked gun rights by a hunter mowing down deer with a machine gun. Of course, people own such guns for protection from the government(and maybe gangs of hoodlums during riots). I read somewhere that assault rifles on the market are merely hunting rifles designed to look military. Are cowboy rifles(like Winchesters in Western movies) good for hunting? I don’t suppose anyone hunted with a magnum 44. I can’t imagine giving the Dirty Harry speech to a dying black bear.

I chose this topic because my recent hiking trip coincided with the hunting season in some areas. Usually around late October or early November — summertime is great for swimming but mosquitos and certain flies drive you crazy — , I go on these excursions into nature, mostly to hike, sometimes to kayak. But this year, I ended up going in late November, culminating in the Smoky Mountains, and it just so happened that parts of Missouri, Southern Illinois, and Kentucky were in the peak of hunting season. So, surprisingly, some of the campgrounds were near to full capacity.

These hunters really know what they’re doing. On my hikes, I might see a deer now and then. (Despite the talk of bountiful black bear population in some states, my bear-sighting amounts to all of 15 seconds). Deer are bountiful everywhere but rarely do they cross your path on hiking trails. But these hunters sure know where to look or how to track them because there were dead deer all over the place. On the ground, on trucks, hanging from trees, on motorboats, roped to posts, and etc. It was rather impressive, as were the skills with which the men carved up the dead animals into strips. Hiking just requires stamina. In contrast, hunting requires one’s senses to become almost animal-like. You must be acute in sight and hearing, even smell. I suppose hunters like the sense of reconnecting with a more primal way of being.

Warnings were posted that hikers should don orange bright-colored clothing and hats, and there were guns firing all over the forests, and so, I didn’t do much hiking until I got to the Smokies. Lying in the tent at night, I got to thinking about the culture of hunting.

The most famous American writer of the 20th century was probably Ernest Hemingway. According to Paul Johnson, he even qualifies as an intellectual of sorts, in the code of manhood and how it related to politics. His fame as a writer was inseparable from his celebrity(and sometimes notoriety) as a man of action who sometimes risked his life in fishing trips off the coast of Cuba or hunting safaris in Africa(though what really did him in was a plane crash, or mechanical failure). It was as if his code not only required man to stand tall before danger but go out of his way to pursue danger for danger’s sake. It wasn’t enough to write but to have the right stuff.
He admired men who put their lives on the line. His novels reserve special respect for those who experienced brush with death and came out stronger — it’s as if true wisdom comes only by the test of physical endurance that can break or make a man. Gunshot wounds and arrow marks are like scars of pride, like among primitive hunting tribes. Hemingway was obsessed with bullfighting where man was both the hunter and the hunted. Some of his short stories are set in Africa among hunters and lovers(as if the hunt is a metaphor for the game of love or manhood’s refuge from its frustrations). Some writers just write. Others, like Hemingway and Yukio Mishima, sought the harmony or fusion of the pen and sword/gun. Norman Mailer, who wrote the first great World War II novel and loved boxing, was also in that category. Going deeper into American history, there is James Fenimore Cooper and the stories of hunters-explorers, though Michael Mann’s rousing quasi-fascist adaptation of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS is the only thing I know of the Leatherstocking Tales. And though whaling(as a commercial enterprise) in MOBY DICK isn’t exactly hunting in the conventional sense, it is really about an obsessive hunt for a particular whale than whaling as commerce.
It’s as if that one particular whale keeps alive the mythic power of nature being overwhelmed by man and his technology. It refuses to be turned into more blubber for lamp oil. It’s terrifying but also reassuring because man’s dominion over nature was becoming all too evident with accelerating progress. (Isn’t it a bummer that we can’t hold any animal in awe anymore as their numbers are dwindled by poachers, though I suppose a poor Indian villager still worries about being devoured by a tiger or leopard. Personally, the most terrifying animal I encountered was a gopher on a hiking trail that did the ‘black knight’ thing in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. It bared its incisors and wouldn’t budge and then chased me around a good deal.)
John Huston, who made a decent movie out of Herman Melville’s novel, was an avid hunter like Ernest Hemingway, a self-professed maverick who liked to live on the edge. Supposedly, he put his life on the line several times on the set of MOBY DICK, and his African adventure, where he planned to shoot both AFRICAN QUEEN and big game, was the inspiration for the novel WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART, which was made into a movie(unsuccessful commercially) by Clint Eastwood who remained unmistakably himself to its detriment. (It also has Eastwood acting tough by putting down an anti-Semitic British woman; yeah, it’s really tough to pander to Jews in Hollywood!)

When I was young, movies like HATARI(directed by Howard Hawks) and MOGAMBO(directed by John Ford) often played on TV. Hunting was presented as exciting and fun. It was full of thrills and a test of man’s character in face of danger(and a world full of Negroes with spears, though most of them seemed surprisingly hospitable to whites). BORN FREE is about Elsa, a lioness raised among humans but faced with the near-insurmountable challenge of returning to nature. Having being nurtured and fed by loving humans, it failed to develop hunting-and-fighting skills and must be taught how or learn the hard way on its own or die. (Despite the happy ending in the movie, Elsa was mauled to death at the age of six by rival lions. It’s a cruel world, this nature. The best nature documentary I’ve seen is LIONS AND HYENAS, a grim, harrowing portrait of the bloodcurdling ways of predators. It also shows how animals not only exhibit aggression and rage but can burn with hatred. It’s so different from those pictorial nature programs where everything is spectacular and romanticized.)

But over the years, hunting came to be regarded with less respect, even with hostility. One of the biggest firestorms on social network some years back was when some white hunter in Africa killed a lion. Most of the outrage came from white people in the West, while some black person of African origin wrote an op-ed in the NYT that his folks back home lived in fear of the much dreaded lions. Perhaps, the lion-romantics were thinking of THE LION KING(like politicians worship The Zion King). Would they have been so outraged if the hunter killed a hippo or cape buffalo? Or a honey badger? On the other hand, movies like THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS suggest the theme of hunting can still catch on with the mass audience. (Still, whereas in the old movies hunting was done for sport or commerce, THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS is morally justified on grounds that the said lions are man-eaters, which makes the hunt a case of self-defense than a sport for trophy.)

Perhaps, the two most famous movies with the theme of hunting in the 1970s were DELIVERANCE and THE DEER HUNTER. In both, hunting goes from adventure to a darker metaphor of man’s place in the world. Burt Reynold’s character fishes with bow-and-arrow. Jon Voight’s character spots a deer but loses his nerves at the decisive moment. Later, the story turns into man-hunting-man, and Voight’s character is penetrated by his own arrow. It’s as if man goes from predator to prey. The hunter learns what it is like to be hunted, and the hunted learns how to become a hunter, a real killer. In THE DEER HUNTER, the first hunt is presented majestically, especially with the Rockies doubling as the Appalachian range. But in the second hunt, Robert DeNiro’s character, recently returned from the war where he was the hunted one, cannot make himself shoot the deer. Thus, the notion of the hunt goes full circle into self-consciousness. The predator discovers what it is to be the prey and even identifies with it. (Still, there is a distinction between the hunter and the soldier. A hunter of his own free will goes into nature in pursuit of prey. It is his decision and his adventure. Also, it is up to him to kill the deer or let it go. Thus, there is an element of nobility in hunting whereas soldiering, for all the talk of patriotism and honor, is about being drafted into mass slaughter of people you don’t even know. The hunter must kill mindfully whereas the soldier must kill mindlessly.) James Dickey, who wrote DELIVERANCE, was a hunter himself and an expert archer. THE DEER HUNTER was accused of jingoism, and Michael Cimino was no peacenik. Still, just like the Western genre took a darker turn in the 1950s, the hunter went from a romantic figure of manhood and adventure to a darker figure of destruction or self-doubt. In Jim Jarmusch’s GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI, couple of white hunters are deserving to be murdered by the Negro Hero because they killed a bear. Now, bears are my favorite animal, but what is the moral logic in a film where the Negro is a hired killer himself. I I guess the mere fact of being black confers upon him some extrajudicial right to punish ‘bearacists’.

THE HUNTER with Willem Dafoe is another dark-themed movie on the subject. Its hunter is a hired gun after a near-extinct species. Still, it depicts the inner struggle within the heart of the hunter. In the end, it’s more about motives than the act itself. Dafoe’s character is a mercenary, and thereby lies his treachery but also the possibility of redemption because, after all, a hunter with honor would not be gunning down the last remaining specimen of a dying species for money. It’d be as bad as killing Snow White.

This applies to war in general: The distinction between patriot-soldier versus the soldier-of-fortune. It is also why the bounty hunter was disdained in the traditional Western(and even in the neo-Western like THE WILD BUNCH by Sam Peckinpah. Even though they were after outlaws, they did it for money, not justice. It’s also the moral conflict in MIDNIGHT RUN. The question of the motives. Just like you can do the wrong thing for the right reason, you can do the right thing for the wrong reason. But then, in the more cynical universe of Sergio Leone, bounty killers/hunters could be ‘cool’ and impressive because “In a world where life had no value, death sometimes had its price… That is why bounty hunters appeared to make lots of money collecting dead bodies of people whose mugs are on ‘wanted’ posters.”

Given the vast wilderness that lay before the white man in the New World, one would think the theme of the Hunter would have played a bigger role in American popular culture. But the narratives of Westward expansion have largely passed over the theme of hunting, at least in movies and TV shows. The popular TV show GRIZZLY ADAMS would have you believe the Adams was some gentle-souled cross between Jesus and Tarzan who lived in blissful harmony with nature when he was a rough man who was ultimately killed by one of his bears. John ‘Kermit’ Denver’s idea of nature.

There are exceptions, like JEREMIAH JOHNSON, based on mountain men who ventured westward to hunt and trap animals. But most stories set in the West are about man vs man, either Cowboys vs Indians or Lawmen vs Outlaws. Maybe there is a certain shame involved in the rapid destruction of wild life. At one time, whites in the East thought that trees and animals were bountiful, almost limitless, in Western lands. But within several decades, 50 million bison were reduced to few thousands. Destruction of habitats led to the sudden extinction of the passenger pigeon that once blackened the sky(and probably rained down birdy doo all over). This sense of shame is addressed in movies like DANCES WITH WOLVES where Indians(and Kevin Costner’s character) lament at the white man’s way of killing bison merely for hide and profits, whereas Indians hunt to survive and use every part of the animal. (The less naively romantic will remind you that Indians too had no qualms about burning down entire forests and slaughtering more bison than they could consume, not least by driving entire herds over cliffs.) And Jim Jarmusch’s revisionist Western DEAD MAN begins with white men in a train car who, upon spotting bison, shoot at them like mindless killing machines. The film seems to suggest white folks see the world in the simple binary of the living and the dead, with the living living to make the other living dead in a zero-sum game of total domination. In contrast, Indians inhabit a world where life and death are interwoven as myth and spirituality, just like there’s no distinction between man and nature among the primitives. Some have found the film to be a profound and necessary critique of modernity’s tendency to categorize the world either in the name of science or commerce. Others have found it to be insane, flaky, and retarded. I’m somewhere in between. It’s often ugly and putrid(and self-righteous in tone, like the songs of Neil Young who did the music) but has a great ending worthy of Tarkovsky. American West is mostly about pioneers than about man vs animal, and the great hunts in movies are usually set in places like Africa. There is plenty of animals to kill in North America but it largely owes to the near extinction of apex predators like cougars and wolves. So, humans must cull the population of various plant-eaters busily devouring trees & roots and spilling out into highways. (For some, hunting may be associated with tracking down fugitive Negroes with blood hounds. In George Romero’s zombie movies, rural hunting folks are hardly distinguishable from the stereotype of rednecks whose favorite sport is hanging Negroes from trees.) THE REVERENT is also a dark narrative of the West.

It could be the difference between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ is the former tends to have a neo-aristocratic take on hunting whereas the latter has a more democratic attitude. Most ordinary ‘liberals’ either disapprove of or don’t care for hunting, but a good number of elite ‘liberals’ have impressive gun collections and do hunt. Elites hunt, masses don’t on the ‘liberal’ side.
In contrast, many ‘conservatives’ not only feel that hunting should be open to all but functions as a culture that defines community & tradition and rite-of-passage from boyhood to manhood. Pauline Kael criticized THE DEER HUNTER for perpetuating this very myth of American Manhood, i.e. Cimino’s work is less about the horrors of war than about how men become True Men through the trial of violence and war where every fiber of one’s being is tested. Hemingway likewise romanticized war as the greatest subject for a writer.

Three excellent movies involving hunters or hunting culture are DERSU UZALA(Akira Kurosawa), HIMATSURI(more a story about lumber men, but their culture overlaps with that of hunters), and INTO THE WILD, where a estranged son of an upper-middle family makes it to Alaska and must survive as a hunter, though what really does him in his failure as a gatherer(of plants). All three movies capture the mystique of nature without romanticizing it.

Denis Villeneuve’s PRISONERS begins with a man instructing his son in a hunt. The father is a somewhat troubled figure who is driven to the edge when his child is abducted. In the ensuing manhunt, he goes vigilante, only to be ensnared in the trap set by the object of his pursuit. (Visually impressive, it’s mostly torture porn, as well as one of those movies with the most kindly Negroes while the biggest threat to the community turns out to be – spoilers alert! – some old rural woman, LOL, who makes Norman Bates look like a boy scout. Right, never mind all the feral blacks ruining cities and communities. Never mind all the white deaths from opioids. What we really need to fear is killer granny.) A far darker take on hunting is SURE FIRE, an independent film by Jon Jost where it’s used as a metaphor for American culture of domination and death. It goes from the father teaching his son how to use the rifle to using it on his son, then turning it on himself. Sometimes, I wonder if works like these aren’t more the projection of the artist’s own neurosis than reflection of social reality.

Granted, there are some nutters out there. Though not a gun owner myself, I accompanied a friend in the early 90s on visits to private gun dealers. One guy was a Vietnam veteran and kept yammering about how Libyans were planning to invade the US and why people must be armed for the fateful day. Where did his get his worldview? From RED DAWN and Chuck Norris movies? While Hollywood’s depiction of small town America is mostly slander, there are some nutty militia-types out there. And some of these people end up serving in the US military and blowing things up in the Middle East as dupes for Zionists(like my gun-loving friend ended up doing).
According to Costa Gavras’ BETRAYED(written by the trashy Joe Eszterhas), white militia types kidnap Negroes and set them loose to be hunted down like animals, ROTFL. Thus, the culture of hunting on the Right isn’t restricted to animals but an atavistic ritual of deep-seated tribalism verging on human sacrifice. (If, on occasion, white folks still kill blacks, it has to do with self-defense against black thugs and criminals, not some ideological training in white supremacism, but then, Jewish Hollywood and Media have spread all sorts of vile defamation against white Americans that are then absorbed by international directors like Gavras. Much of European animus toward White America stems from Jewish Media’s defamation of whiteness. BETRAYED seems to have served as training film for the current FBI. To be sure, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was the real smash at the box office but soon became unfashionable with the rise of globo-homo and tranny-wanny. Today, the FBI is like this organization directed by Jewish homos and trannies to hunt down imaginary KKK.)

On the other hand, there is the vanity of man as the ‘most dangerous game’, like in the short story by Richard Connell. Not only has it been made into a movie but spawned stuff like RAMBO and countless others where the hunted man becomes the most awesome hunter. Playing both the hunted and hunter adds a bit of christ mythology, like when Sylvester Stallone is hoisted christ-like as the maverick soldier willing to sacrifice his life for the abandoned P.O.W.s. There you go. Rambo is Conan + Jesus.

Among young ones today, their predatory instincts are surely channeled most into video games. By the age of twelve, the players probably shot, hacked, or bludgeoned half a million of units in various games. The popularity of sports owes to athletes serving in the roles of hunter-heroes. They compete for trophies. It advantages blacks because they evolved in Africa to be hunter-warriors. Thus, blacks win the most trophies as ersatz hunters of Western modernity, and blackness is highly regarded by the much-cucked white race that now offers its women to black studs. But, the black advantage in sports is also primed for criminality, and this means the police(the great majority being white) have no choice but to hunt down black criminals. The white mind admires the black hunter-prowess in sports but cannot connect the dots between black athleticism and black criminality. In their hero-worship of black athletes, they are outraged by police violence against black criminality when, in fact, if not for sports, many black athletes would likely be criminals(and indeed many of them are despite all the money they earn). As whites have lost out in sports, they look to superhero movies, horror movies, and other fantasies as outlet for their sublimated hunter-instincts. Maybe you can be Spiderman. Or, you can hunt for vampires or zombies that, in turn, hunt for you. Or become a ‘good’ vampire like Bella and feed on animal blood than human blood — what happens when Mormonism dreams of vampires.

Of course, Jews have their own favorite theme of the hunt. The Hunt for the Nazi Criminal. Simon Wiesenthal and his formidable Jew Crew of bloodhounds. It crops up in movies like MARATHON MAN and THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL. Gregory Peck, who tried to stop the Devil Child in THE OMEN, is Josef Mengele trying to produce a clone army of Little Hitlers. A more intelligent Nazi-hunting film is Paolo Sorrentino’s THIS MUST BE THE PLACE where some decadent Jewish pop star cleans up his act after his father’s death and goes on a sober(ing) journey to hunt down the Nazi baddy. Another decent Nazi-Hunt film is THE GERMAN DOCTOR. But if Latinos want to wring their hands about genocide, they should just look into their own history of what was done to the brown natives.

The most hilarious(unintentionally of course)is Atom Egoyan’s REMEMBER. (Egoyan’s decline from one of Canada’s most interesting film-makers to an agit-prop dispenser of moral cheap shots is truly dispiriting. How did a man who once made works like EXOTICA come to making such garbage?) Still, those movies were about going after Nazi-Nazis. Recently, there was some TV show with Al Pacino calling on ‘mitzvah’ on ‘white supremacists’ who could be anyone who wore a MAGA hat. Jewish Power, fearful of white awakening under Trump that may defy globalist hegemony(mostly in service to Zion), has decided to spread far and wide a bloodthirst for hunting ‘nazis’ in a world where Trump is ‘literally Hitler’, making anyone who voted for him a literally-little-hitler. (Of course, what is most Hitler-like about Trump is his total support of ultra-rightist Zionist tyranny over Palestinians, but that’s one thing even ‘liberal’ Jews appreciate about the man.) So, even as most ‘liberals’ aren’t into hunting culture, they are certainly into (witch)hunting-mentality.

Hunting-as-metaphor is a broad subject perhaps because apes evolved into man as hunters, a process that imprinted something deep in the human psyche. While monkeys and apes are also known to kill and devour small animals, they are mostly plant-eaters. Most of what gorillas and orangutans consume is vegetarian. Chimps, far more social, tend to kill more but they too subsist mostly on plants. When it comes to other animals, they are far more worried about being killed as prey than killing as predators. Gorillas mostly live in dense jungles and also have the strength to defend themselves from most animals. Chimps have to worry about leopards but can climb trees to flee danger. But when apes began to walk upright and become more manlike(like in the opening of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), it became a matter of kill or be killed. Their mode turned more from flight to fight, and with the mastery of tools and weapons, proto-man apes rose up the ranks in the predatory hierarchy until they became the apex predator, even able to bring down buffalos, bears, mammoths, giant sloths, and tapirs. (The bone eventually turned into a space ship hunting for new worlds out in space.) Thus, the herbivore turned semi-carnivore(or omnivore), that is until agriculture emerged to make man more herbivoric once again. Still, the emergence of the predatory instinct was crucial to the transformation of ape to man, and this hunter instinct has become sublimated into so many human endeavors.

It’s oft been noted that predators generally are more intelligent than prey animals. Whereas prey herbivores merely need to chew on grass or eat whatever is available, predators must seek and capture food. And this requires some strategy. Granted, not all predators are smart, and some herbivores are remarkably intelligent. Take pigs and elephants. Herbivores but among the smartest animals. In contrast, sharks are near the top of the food chain in the sea but dumb as hell. So are crocodiles.
Maybe, we need to draw a distinction between munch-predators and hunch-predators. Munch-predators don’t need to be smart because food is all around. A shark merely needs to open its mouth and scoop up a big school of fish. Something will enter its jaws. And a crocodile merely needs to wait until some thirsty animal comes near water to drink. The food is always coming towards it. Munch whatever is nearby. In contrast, hunch-predators must hunch low and strategize to obtain their kill. For example, wolves must coordinate and rely on teamwork to bring down animals that a single wolf cannot kill on its own. A lone wolf is no match for a moose or a bear, but a pack of wolves can even scare the bejeezus out of a Grizzly. Lions also rely on teamwork and strategy. Solitary felines rely on stealth. As they lack stamina, they must get as close to the prey as possible before pouncing, and this requires subtle coordination between mind and body. (As for insect predators, I suppose they should be treated more like programmed organic machines than sentient creatures. They are totally superb in what they do but that’s all they can do.)

As for higher intelligence among pigs and elephants, maybe it’s related to their noses. Their nose-centrism turns them somewhat into predatory herbivores. If animals like deer just eat whatever is around them, pigs with their super-acute noses are always on the search for hidden foods, like roots and truffles. And elephants do amazing things with their noses, aka trunks. They’d be examples of nose-led intelligence.
As for monkeys and apes, their higher intelligence was probably related to trees. Their fingers grew longer to move from branch to branch to flee danger and seek out fruits, but as the fingers grew longer over time, monkeys and apes discovered they could do more with their extremities than initially meant for. They developed proto-creative tendencies as fingers are suited for versatility and the use(and even making)of tools. So, among herbivores, they were outliers that could compete with and even surpass the predatory animals.

Because of this duality of prey mentality(ape) and predator mentality(ape-into-proto-man) among humans, it’s hardly surprising that the culture of weaponry is both ‘clawic’ and ‘hornic’. Predators use claws to hunt prey animals, and prey animals use horns to defend against predators. In human society, criminals are like predators and they use weapons, knives or guns, as ‘clawic’ instruments. (Interesting that ‘liberals’, though disdainful of hunters who kill animals, have often been partial to the likes of Bonnie and Clyde who prey on ordinary folks.) In contrast, law-abiding folks own guns for ‘hornic’ purposes, that is as potential prey defending their life and property from criminal predators, often Negroes in the US. Kyle Rittenhouse is a perfect example of the ‘hornic’ gun-owner. (Cops are somewhere between ‘clawic’ and ‘hornic’ because they serve to protect but also actively hunt down criminals, which is why some crime movies featured lawmen as half-outlaw themselves, more domesticated wolves than sheep with horns.) The mentality is that of Ralphie(bullied at school) in A CHRISTMAS STORY who dreams of owning a BB gun to protect family by hunting down criminal varmints:

And with Jewish or ZOG-like takeover of US elite institutions, many white Americans feel they need guns against the hawk-like government. After 1/6 event, the FBI has been on the hunt for just about anyone who stepped inside the Capitol building, and some prisoners have been treated like animals in cages. Recent gun sales suggest people are stocking up for some fateful moment in the future when things will come to a head. Some speak of civil war. Wars begin as series of battles but end with the last combatants, those who refuse to give up the fight, being hunted down like animals.

In a way, if humans evolved into being from herbivoric apes to predatory hunters, dogs evolved in the opposite direction: From pure predators(as wolves) to semi-herbivoric creatures. While wolf violence is ‘clawic’, dog violence is largely ‘hornic’ in defense of man and his property. And even though dogs serve as co-hunters alongside man, they also serve as protectors and even ‘friends’ with sheep, which they defend from coyotes, wolves, and other killers. Also, dogs adapted to subsist in large part on plant diet. In impoverished societies, dogs make do mostly with corn, potatoes, rice, beans, and veggies. Japanese dogs seem to have a thing for cabbage.

The duality of prey/predator mentality is also at the profound hypocrisy of the Christian West. Jesus spoke of the meek. He was their shepherd, and ideally the Faithful should be gentle as a lamb. But the Christian West also became the most adventurous, aggressive, and ambitious civilization hellbent on conquering(and converting) all the world. It became the greatest apex predatory civilization the world had ever seen, but its Christian ethos portrayed itself in prey-like terms.
It is no wonder the Western genre focused more on decent Christian folks being attacked by savage Indian heathens than on the fact that whites were encroaching on Indian land, clearing the forests, and wiping out wild life. And yet, it wasn’t just hypocrisy but a kind of paradox: To create a more peaceful order where people could practice the brotherhood-of-man schtick, much of nature and savage-tribal ways had to be ruthlessly eradicated for civilization of laws and sacraments. It applied not only to American Indians but to black Africans brought over to serve as slaves. Only through violence could blacks be forced to live by law and order than by jungle jivery. And the post-WWII discourse held that Evil Civilizations came to see the light and walk the straight path only through defeat by ultra-violence. Thus, Japan and Germany became ‘liberal democracies’ at the cost of millions of lives in the ‘Good War’, or the good extermination. It’s interesting that Jewish Power seeks to guilt-bait white civilization for all the violence it committed in the name of progress and prosperity but then also argues that any amount of violence and mayhem is justified in order to tame and reform Evil ‘Racist’ Whites into Good Cuck Whites. So, shame on white ruthlessness but glory to anti-white ruthlessness.

Is the predatory instinct naturally more curious and adventurous than the prey instinct? Not always. Most predators do little but rest and sleep after satiating themselves with the kill. Lions sleep 20 hours a day. In contrast, rodents, though herbivores, are among the most restless and energetic animals. And they seem obsessed with gnawing through everything. It’s still probably true that predatory animals have more play in them. Kittens and puppies are more playful than kids(goat babies) or calves. But young monkeys and apes are also very playful. More often than not, playfulness seems more associated with aggression than passivity, though excessive aggression directs most of one’s energies towards narrow set of interests, which is the problem with Negroes whose aggression usually amounts to humping and thumping.

While all organisms, plants and animals, are expansive, multiplying and spreading as far and wide as possible, the hunting instinct is distinct in its surgical aggression. The hawk pinpoints the prey and swoops down on it. This surgical targeting mentality is what separates predators from prey. Prey animals must be alert to the slightest sign of danger, but the senses are reactive than proactive. Thus, it requires danger to activate their senses. In contrast, the predatory or hunting instinct, being proactive and searching, could develop beyond its original purpose, and in a way, all of human endeavors and achievements could be characterized as the product of the ‘hunt’ for something. The hunt for treasure, the hunt for hidden secrets, hunt for some cure.

In Coen Brothers A SERIOUS MAN, the white goy neighbors(who seem Germanic) are literally into hunting. The father passes the gun to the son like a torch. Though members of modern society, it’s as if their sense of culture derives from barbarian ways. However, the Jewish father is also a seeker, a hunter for truth, perhaps of God Himself, except that it’s a mental pursuit. Perhaps, this is what distinguishes the Jewish mindset from the goy Christian mindset. Though Judaism calls for humility before God, it’s also aggressive toward God in gnawing at the secrets God has hidden. In contrast, Christianity believes that all has been revealed through Jesus, and its adherents no longer need to search or demand more answers; just embrace and believe, and partake of Jesus as the final sacrificial kill in man’s hunt for salvation. In contrast, the Jewish Way is more like that of the dwarfs in Terry Gilliam’s TIME BANDITS, what E. Michael Jones calls the ‘Jewish Revolutionary Spirit’. But does he really think Jews will lose this tendency if they accept Jesus? Perhaps, white goy Christians lack such mindset not because they accepted Jesus but because their personalities are different at the genetic level. If Dan Quayle were to convert to Judaism while Alan Dershowitz were to become Christian, I suspect Quayle will remain his generic ‘white bread’ self while Dershowitz will still be restless in his neo-Christian ways. Jews turning to ‘conservatism’ as ‘neocons’ certainly didn’t take away their restless spirit.

My personal views on hunting are as follows. I generally don’t like the idea of killing animals(especially birds as flight is wondrous), but I understand some species must be culled due to absence of natural predators. Also, killing animals for food makes perfect sense. After all, life is about life consuming life, and unless one is a Buddhist, what need to break free of this cycle? Hunting for sport is understandable given our animal-predatory instincts but strikes me as distasteful for any truly civilized person.
Sam Peckinpah as a boy caught more fish than he could eat, but his grandfather made sure he ate every last catch as lesson that no living creature should be killed for fun. The same lesson is imparted in THE GREATEST GIFT, an ok-TV movie with Glenn Ford as reverend who buys his son a rifle.

There are some people into hunting as a test of manhood. This seems plausible with a primitive savage with stone-age weapon going on the hunt. But, does it make sense with a high-powered rifle that can bring down a bull elephant with one shot? What is so tough about shooting a moose or a bear? A charging Grizzly may be a challenge, but why not just leave the stupid animal alone? It reminds me of the movie CONGO where none of the craziness would be happening if the humans just stayed out of the jungle and left the dumb apes alone.
One good thing about the gun is its merciful efficiency. Who wants to be a deer stuck with an arrow wandering through the forest in agony? Who wants to be a bear with a spear stuck on its side? The scenes of hunting with spears in the Italian documentary AFRICA ADDIO is truly gruesome and gut-wrenching(though I can’t blame the primitive Negroes for what is their livelihood), and the hunting rifle sure made it a lot more merciful for animals if indeed they are to be hunted.

Some have accused Ted Nugent of being an evil person, and the invective struck me as over-the-top, typical anti-conservative spiel. But upon perusing his book, he does seem rather unhinged. His philosophy of hunting is like his philosophy of war. Just shoot em and blow em up, as if the mayhem of nature and nations is one big celebration, a rock concert. Such unthinking childishness. No wonder Jewish wits use goy dimwits as soldiers. It’s like man and dog. When order breaks down, sword rules the pen. But as long as order remains, pen rules the sword. Yet, so many of the Right ‘cling to guns’ as Obama put it. Of course, he wanted white folks to give up guns, not gain mastery of pens and cameras, but they better do the latter or perish.

Frank Sinatra vs the Boomers

 

I’ve never been a fan of Frank Sinatra or any popular singer/ musician of the 20th century prior to the advent of Rock. I much prefer 19th century music, such as Civil War songs, to much of 20th century popular music. I can appreciate the talent of men like Gershwin, Armstrong, Berlin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kahn, Porter, and etc. I can see how certain artists/entertainers were seminal in some way and highly influential, even on Rock, but have a hard time tuning into their sensibility. (Likewise, despite the wonders of Old Hollywood, movies for me really begins in the 1950s, especially with World Cinema.) This extends even to Rock n Roll. Notice how young people today are interested in Rock Music going back to the 60s, but young people in the 1970s hardly listened to anything prior to the 50s/60s. It suggests a continual musical culture for around seventy years, from early 60s to now, with the decisive break having taken place somewhere in the 50s. I don’t recall any of my friends showing any interest in Elvis or 50s Rock n Roll. As for Sinatra and the like, that was considered grandpa’s music.

Plenty of music critics and scholars have heaped praise on Frank Sinatra. Some even claim he was the greatest American singer of the 20th century. Personally, if I had to play old style music, I’d rather listen to Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, and Bobby Darin, to be sure, a rather slippery figure to categorize. If I have a soft spot for a crooner, it’s Engelbert Humperdinck. And some black singers managed to combine more classic styles with the trendier tempos: Lou Rawls especially with “You’ll Never Find”.

Still, one can understand Sinatra’s towering place in 20th century music. More than most performers of his kind, he was able to grow and change while, at the same time, remaining true to his essence. He aged like wine, culminating in “Strangers in the Night” in 1966, perhaps his greatest song. Also, while other singers had prettier voices, his had a richness, a gently intoxicating quality like a glass of rum.

To the best of my knowledge, there was no overt boomer hostility against Sinatra. He just wasn’t on their radar. Besides, even before the arrival of Beatlemania followed by Counterculture, Sinatra had been knocked down a few pegs by Elvis Presley and other Rock n Rollers. There was a sort of the Return of the Italians in the early 60s, but it was composed mostly of Teen Idols like Frankie Avalon. Sinatra had by then become an institution but wasn’t really culturally relevant, just like John Wayne continued to make movies into the 1970s but as a nostalgia act; Clint Eastwood was the one changing movie culture.

Though initially critical of Rock n Roll and Elvis the Pelvis, Sinatra understood the times had changed, and there was the famous duet of him and Presley on TV in 1960. Girls screamed for Sinatra but went crazy for the King of Rock n Roll. (The scene in DINER about Sinatra vs Johnny Mathis shows how Elvis could still be scandalous to those who came of age on the eve of the Rock Era. When Mickey Rourke’s character says he prefers Elvis to both Sinatra and Mathis, he is rebuked as ‘sick’.)

And yet, one might argue Sinatra-ism won out over Elvis-ism. Once the novelty(and shock value) of Rock n Roll wore off, what was there but professionalism? Indeed, Elvis Presley himself abandoned his earlier style and morphed into a performer much like Sinatra. He became a Las Vegas act. One might even say Sinatra-ism won out over Dylan-ism. Bob Dylan was the greatest artist of Rock, but once the artistic well ran dry, again, what was left but professionalism? For good or ill, one of the biggest acts around is Adele who is above all a professional.

There was clearly an ethnic angle to the Sinatra phenomenon. It’s usually the case that kids from underprivileged backgrounds try their luck in sports and entertainment. Italian-Americans, who lagged other white ethnic groups, were over-represented in sports and music. There was Joe DiMaggio in baseball. Rocky Marciano and Jake LaMotta in boxing. And lots of singers. But, the Italian-American role in Popular Music may also have owed to a rich cultural heritage. Italians had opera and lots of colorful folk tunes, though a lot of this got watered down for Anglo-American tastes(like what Chef Boyardee is to Italian Cooking). Paradoxically, precisely because the Italians were so rich in musical heritage, they may have missed the boat, relatively speaking, in the boomer Sixties given to novelty and experimentalism. To some degree, this was also true of blacks. Though blacks played a huge role in 60s musical culture, they were overshadowed in the second half of the decade in terms of innovation and originality. Blacks, awfully proud of their own styles, mostly stuck to soulful or bluesy standards while White Rock pushed the envelope into new amazing directions, with additional inspirations from surprising sources, even Hindu music. During this period, Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee(of Love) were outliers. Indeed, Ellen Willis the female rock critic described Hendrix’s output as part of ‘White Rock’. In contrast, the British, not known for a great musical heritage, eagerly adopted whatever seemed exciting and ran with it, producing the revolutionary sounds of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who, Pink Floyd, the Kinks, and others. And Led Zeppelin combined hard blues with Wagnerian operatics. Without much of a musical pride of their own, the Brits took to the new frontier with passion. Those without spices of their own are more likely to try new spices. No wonder Anglos suddenly became the biggest ‘foodies’ around the world.

Perhaps, Italian-Americans felt they had an excess of musical culture/color. Also, the Italian style was more complementary with Jazz, a combo of brass, sass, and class. Though Jazz culture could be lurid and kinky, it was also about dressing well and looking stylish, thus appealing to Italian-Americans. (In MEAN STREETS, even lowlife street hoods wear proper attire.) Italian-American community may have leaned Democratic and politically liberal but remained culturally conservative, with greater emphasis on family, clan, and community. And the Church. So, the Rock Culture that defined the boomer generation could be a turn-off. Even the Rascals, perhaps the best Italian-American rock band of the Sixties, had more of a sentimental attachment to established musical genres. Their best song, “How Can I Be Sure” has an Old World flavor.

Rock n Roll may have been more amenable to Italian-American culture. Though low and crass, its aggression made for tribal mentality, the kind in WEST SIDE STORY. So, even if Rock n Rollers didn’t mean their music to be street gang music, it went well with leather jackets and switch blades. The Jets vs the Sharks.

Rock Culture, in contrast, was about love and peace(even as some of the music got louder and crazier). The new tribalism was really an anti-tribalism, about flower power and grass than fists and turf. No wonder the Rock n Roll kid in I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND(Robert Zemeckis comedy about the arrival of Beatlemania in America) hates the Fab Four whose joyousness negate the machismo of Rock n Roll. And THE WANDERERS(directed by Philip Kaufman) ends with an Italian-American kid in the early Sixties ruefully gazing at the dawning of the Folk Music scene(that would have a profound impact on Counterculture).

Not that Frank Sinatra was about tribal hostility. Politically, he went out of his way to oppose racial discrimination against blacks. In Hollywood, he made a not-very-good but rather surprising WWII movie that treated Japanese soldiers with a degree of sympathy: NONE BUT THE BRAVE.

Still, Sinatra wouldn’t have been nothing without distinctions. The private life was not to be confused with the public life. There was professionalism and amateurism. One had to dress for the occasion. The stars took the stage or screen, and the audience remained in the seats. (To be sure, during the height of Sinatra-mania, a harbinger of bigger manias to come, things did get out of control with the girls.) The Italian-American community was more prone to feeling that way. Italian-Americans had more a culture of respect for the elders, cultural if not always familial. If the likes of Sinatra and Dean Martin set the standards, those were ones worthy of emulation. (If Dean Martin seems somewhat out of place in RIO BRAVO, it has less to do with his Italian-ness than his plain cowboy clothes. It was Sergio Leone and the Spaghetti Westerns that really added style to the Western genre.) Martin Scorsese once remarked that Sixties culture was so different from the Italian-American community he knew. His ethnic enclave was, at the time, insular and indifferent to vast socio-cultural changes happening all around. Later, when an Italian-American became the prominent face of popular music, it was John Travolta in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Though disco was hardly Italian-ish, it was about dressing up and spending inordinate amount of time on one’s hair.

Though hardly a fan of Sinatra, what he stands for has special meaning for me on account of two movies. Indeed, these two movies illustrate the special standing Sinatra has in American Cultural History despite the profound changes stemming from the boomer era. These are not the well-known Sinatra movies like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY or THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, or one of the several musicals he made. Rather, Sinatra-ism stands out in precisely because the films are about the world in the process of boomer transformation.

The first is BABY IT’S YOU(story by Amy Robinson), the only truly great film by John Sayles, an intelligent director who marred most of his works with nods to social significance. Who the hell wants do-goody Peter-Seegerism in movies? BABY IT’S YOU is the exception and may well be, along with DINER, the best movie about young people in the 1980s. John Hughes dominated the youth movie market in the 1980s by pandering to the lowest common denominator, but the decade’s two best movies about youth are set in late 50s and mid-60s and based on personal memories. BABY IT’S YOU is about Jill, an upper-middle-class Jewish student majoring in drama. She’s headed to some elite college full of Wasps and Jewish girls from affluent families like her own, but in her final year of high school, attracts the attention of some Italian-American guy know as the ‘Sheik'(like Rudolph Valentino). While the times are changing, the guy is resolutely old school when it comes to dress, hair(oily), and style. In contrast, Jill is attuned to the newest trends in the arts and culture. She wants to fit in with the Zeitgeist.

It all comes to a head when both their illusions go up in smoke. He was so infatuated with instant stardom that he never realized that success owes to natural talent + hard work + luck. It doesn’t just fall at your feet because you dress well and have high self-esteem. He thought he’d become a star in music even though he can’t sing because he’s got the looks and is liked by tourists in sunny Florida. It never seems to have occurred to him that Sinatra had real talent and worked extremely hard at it, not least because he wasn’t so hot in the looks department. Without musical talent, would Sinatra have made it in the movies or been noticed by women?

As for Jill, she saw herself as leaving behind her humdrum middle class milieu and seeking authenticity as an artist, but she’s overly sensitive to peer perception and follows every new trend. They meet again, probably for the last time, in their painful moments of self-realization. Still, before they bid farewell and go separate ways, they share a final moment on the college dance floor. Though a psychedelic band plays the gig, they take his ‘weird'(because ‘square’) request to play “Strangers in the Night” by Sinatra. Other students, who’d been rocking to the latest music, seem bemused but slowly ease into the mood of Ole Blue Eyes.

The final part of BABY IT’S YOU could be a corrective realism to THE GRADUATE, actually a fantasy. Benjamin manages a fairytale ending as he runs off with Elaine Robinson, but there is no pie in the sky for Jill and the Sheik. And that everyone begins to dance to Sinatra, their parents’ music, is suggestive of what Mike Nichols said about the two elopers: They will end up like their parents.

The meanings are threefold. For the Italian-American Sheik, it’s his final gift to the girl. He’s back in the image that caught her eye in the first place, in high school where, unlike the other boys, he dressed in style and moved with confidence. For her, he plays that role one more time. But, it is also what he will always be. Despite the loss of illusion — he’s not cut out for stardom — and a future like his old man’s(blue collar work), he can always take pride in looking good and dressing well. In a way, this was Sinatra’s gift to the men of his generation. At the very least, no matter however humdrum their station in life, they could look a bit classy by taking pointers from men like Sinatra.

For Jill, the song speaks a timeless truth. At every moment in her life, she met boys and girls with whom she thought she’d bond forever, but ultimately, they are all like strangers in the night, especially in modern and mobile America. Just like she drifted apart from her high school friends, she will forget her college friends. And even though, for a time, she fell for the Sheik as the love of her life, they are incompatible in so many ways and must go separate ways. The Counterculture said the Moment is everything. Summer of Love will change the world and what’s happening now is what really matters. In contrast, “Strangers in the Night” is resigned to the timeless truth that life goes on, strangers become lovers, lovers become strangers. The song was both reassuringly old in style and a departure for Sinatra. In its air of alienation and detachment, it could even be ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ by the standards of the day. Not quite 007 but the new face of Sinatra who, unlike many of his peers, was capable of change, walking the fine line between nostalgia and fashion. It’s also a song that only an aged voice could have pulled off.

The other memorable Boomer/Sinatra moment is in LOST IN AMERICA. The movie has a contemporaneous setting. It’s the yuppie eighties, and David Howard(Albert Brooks, who also wrote and directed) is a thoroughly status-and-material-obsessed professional in advertising. But when denied the promotion he’d been dreaming of, he decides to give a big middle finger to upper class aspirations. Ironically, it’s not because he’s put off by excess materialism but because his ascendancy isn’t fast enough. His principled stance is the perverse product of his thwarted ambition.

As a ‘bold’ gesture to prove to the world and himself that he’s no longer in the rat race, he embarks on a late-blooming quest to search for America, what the guys supposedly did in EASY RIDER. The first notable song in the movie as he and his wife drive out of the city in a Winnebago is the 60s rocker “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf. But these two, who ostensibly want to ‘touch Indians’, decide to spend a night in Las Vegas where the wife, in a fit of wild abandon, gambles away all their ‘nest egg’. Of course, Las Vegas is more Sinatra-ville than Hippie-stan. (The Sixties became associated with great events, like Woodstock. But events come and go, whereas industries like Las Vegas remain.) And, what can be more crass and materialistic than gambling? And yet, her loss of inhibition could be regarded an expression of the Sixties spirit. After all, the message of Counterculture was to liberate yourself from traditional notions of responsibility and do what comes naturally. And so, the couple is faced with a conundrum. She acted ‘liberated’ and, as a result, lost all their money to Big Capital, the enemy. In contrast, he insisted on prudence so as to maintain the conceit of their ‘liberation’. Indeed, he is later forced to admit that the guys in EASY RIDER could pull it off only because they were, after all, supply-and-demand capitalists who sold drugs and stashed away the cash in a safe place.

But without the nest egg and without high-paying jobs, Howard decides to make the best of it… that is until, in the role as school crossing-guard, he gazes at a Mercedes Benz(with seats of leather apparently, perhaps a warped allusion to the Holocaust and human lamp-shades). Then and there, all the illusions vanish into the air, and the couple is driving across America to none other than the Big Apple to Sinatra’s rendition of “New York, New York”, which like “Strangers in the Night” was both old school and relatively new(as the song came out only in 1977 with the release of Martin Scorsese’s movie).

All this reminds me of a scene in Oliver Stone’s NIXON. It’s near the very end when Anthony Hopkin’s Nixon, upon signing the letter of resignation, finds himself alone with the portrait of JFK. He mutters, “When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.” With the passage of years, the generation that wanted to regard themselves as the messianic John Lennon of “Imagine” ended up more like Frank Sinatra. Now, any comparison of Sinatra and Nixon may seem absurd as Sinatra was a big star whereas Nixon was considered unpleasant in look and style. Yet, Sinatra’s stardom was somewhat unlikely because he really didn’t look that good. Apart from his success in singing, his stardom owed to luck and connections. He played the game and was tainted by corruption.

In a way, it’s difficult to imagine a cultural figure as multi-faceted and multi-involved as Sinatra, especially when compared with the big stars of the Sixties. Among boomer youth, there was a saying, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”. That meant, ideally at any rate, the Rock artists shouldn’t involve themselves too closely with business. They should just make personal music. (Or engage in business in a utopian manner, like the Beatles with Apple Corp after Brian Epstein’s death; it turned into one big fiasco. Another ideal was to put on free concerts, like the Rolling Stones at Altamont. Another fiasco.) Also, even if boomers were politically engaged, the ideal was to remain clear of the bastions of power and privilege. Protest against the Man, don’t be part of the Man’s structure(until Saul Alinsky advised otherwise).

As such, many of the key musical figures of the Rock Era had limited involvement with the real world. In contrast, Sinatra was engaged in many areas. Not only did he make it in music but he became a movie star. He was also associated with gangsters who reputedly helped his career a few times, which became the basis of Johnny Fontaine in THE GODFATHER, another reminder of what the boomers really became. He also played the role of middleman between the mafia and politicians. Though he came to prominence in more ‘innocent’ times(before the crazy Sixties) — it’s as if US went from less innocence to more naivete —, he was more comfortable with compromise and corruption as ways of the world. Yet, despite all this, he too fell under the illusion that he was on the side of angels because he supported the right causes(such as Civil Rights) and became close with Mr. Camelot John F. Kennedy. His sins would be washed away with the right connections. But then, the Kennedy brothers turned against the mafia(that had helped rig the election), and Sinatra found himself on the outside. It wasn’t long before he was supporting Ronald Reagan as governor and Nixon for president. He had truly become the Chairman of the Board. He also got entangled with the likes of Mia Farrow.

Boomer hippies romanticized about going back to nature, as if Fountain of Youth was waiting for them in the New Eden of Woodstock. After three days, Woodstock became a disaster zone. And, eking out a living from trees and dirt was no cakewalk. In the end, real potential was in the cities that Sinatra sang about: Chicago, his kind of town, and San Francisco, where he left his heart. And of course, New York, to which Albert Brooks is headed in LOST IN AMERICA. Blacks sure gained more from moving to cities than American Indians did by remaining in rural reservations.

Sinatra’s signature song was perhaps “My Way”, which is loaded with the contradiction that, to do it your way, you must join the company. Boomer ideal was to be personal, authentic, true to oneself without compromise. But just about all boomers who ended up doing anything became the suits. Perhaps a timeless truth about the nature of power, one which the boomers thought they could finally cast aside, only to end up, like Albert Brooks in LOST IN AMERICA, discovering the Real America by heading back to the city with high rises, high-paying jobs, and connections that matter. George Lucas built an empire independent of Hollywood and did it his way… only to churn out very Hollywood-ish movies playing to age-old conventions of pleasing the crowd. And he sold his personal dream to Disney.

One of the reasons Sinatra fell out of favor in the Sixties was that, despite his political credentials of being a good progressive, he had ties to the mafia. This didn’t jibe well with the New Frontier thinking of the Kennedy era and beyond. And yet, fast forward to today, and the Power Boomers no longer need to be associated with the mafia because they are gangsters or gangstoids themselves. In a way, Michael Corleone was naive about going legitimate and turning away from organized crime. There’s a better way: Legalize the criminal vices, and all that was once illegit becomes legit. Just like that. With gambling legalized just about everywhere, we are living in Sinatrapolis. And given the state of US foreign policy as dictated by Jewish boomers, the old mafia seem like small potatoes, hopeless amateurs. In 2020, the system cynically employed black thugs and Antifa to burn down cities just to gain a few percentage points in the black vote and to embarrass Trump. And Big Pharma has proven to be a global-gangster operation under the Covid Regimen: They made the world an offer it can’t refuse.

And yet, triumphalism isn’t what Sinatra-ism is about. Even in the song, “My Way”, there is a note of melancholy and resignation as well as pride and defiance. It’s not about a man who always got to do things his way and feels exultant. Rather, it has the sound of man who betrayed or abandoned so many dreams but still managed to make it to the finish line and keep something to call his own. It’s more a song of survival than victory. And especially his later songs are more about the mood after-the-party than during it. A sense that no matter how intense the moment, it will burn out and lights will dim and life will go on as it always has. That is the beauty and sadness of BABY IT’S YOU’s final moment, and maybe a saving grace for the boomers as well.

Whit Stillman and the Philosophy of Dance

 

“Before disco, this country was a dancing wasteland. You know the Woodstock generation of the 1960s that were so full of themselves and conceited? None of those people could dance.” – Charlotte

Whit Stillman’s films are mainly known for their dialogue and have been compared with the works of Eric Rohmer. And yet, music plays a key role in their themes of civilizational anxiety. If some artists focused on the cracks of desperation on the facade of bourgeois respectability or social conformism(like in FAR FROM HEAVEN and REVOLUTIONARY ROAD), Stillman traced the lingering remnants of conservatism in a world committed to ceaseless change. And especially given the character of American Conservatism — to conserve the engines of free enterprise that facilitates nonstop constructive destruction — , there’s hardly any respite, let alone sanctuary, for the true conservative.

William F. Buckley held a stop sign to a locomotive moving at full speed but was in love with its very engine. Therefore, true conservatism is hopeless in America(and modern West in general) as everything is in constant flux amidst vast changes beyond the control of any individual or institution. And yet, vestiges of conservatism remain at the margins as part of human nature, more so among those with certain dispositions. Thus, for Stillman conservatism is less a political philosophy than a style and approach to life. It’s telling that the socialist in METROPOLITAN fits in very well with the hierarchy. At the very least, he has the manners and a sense of honor(that even leads him to call out the dragon to save the damsel). And in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, the 70s music scene associated with shameless homos, salacious blacks, and tasteless goombas(mainly due to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER) is presented as something like neo-camelot for the well-heeled and privileged.

Some of the songs in METROPOLITAN are by black singers, not exactly a marker of high society, but there is royalty in any kind of excellence. And, despite the story being set in 1969, the songs featured are of an earlier period, as if the Summer of Love and Woodstock never happened. (Keeping with tradition can be regarded as behind-the-times but also timeless, and the casual viewer could be forgiven for thinking the story is set in another time, earlier or later. In this, METROPOLITAN has something in common with David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET that seems set in the 80s but stuck in the 50s, or early 60s. When the film came out in 1990, the initial impression was of an upper crust variation of John Hughes brat pack movies. Given budget limitations, Stillman didn’t dwell much on period details and one could almost believe it was about some hidden socialite corner in the here-and-now. Stillman could be mistaken for a youngster himself when, in fact, he was a boomer born in 1952, nearing forty when he finished his first film. But then, John Hughes was even older and faked his rapport with 1980s youth.)

Since the Jazz Age, it’s been commonplace for whites to draw inspiration from black music, which had both a sharpening and loosening effect, like a strange drug. In one way, it could mean getting down and dirty, crude and vulgar, all nasty and shit. And yet, there was also hopeful desire to encourage or elevate blackness toward finer sentiments and higher passion. Some blacks internalized this, becoming self-consciously arty and turning jazz from popular idiom into bona fide art music. It was as if blacks had the voice and energy, but whites(many of them Jewish composers) had the finer sensibility.

For METROPOLITAN, Stillman chose black songs that are kinder and gentler, with emotions not so out-of-place in the world of Jane Austen. From Stillman’s quirky perspective, perhaps, there’s an overlap between the black world and the WASP(or UHB) world. Both exist in the margins, privileged or not. It is the late Sixties, when blacks were making the climb while the Wasps were beginning to feel the slip, but with neither commanding the center of American Life, up for grabs and soon to fall into the hands of Jews. (Even today, Wasp elite sentimentality toward blacks and hostility toward white ‘deplorables’ may derive from such mindset. If Wasps are to relinquish power and privilege, then blacks, with their soulful history of injustice and just being soulful, are more deserving than the ‘insensitive’ masses of ‘redneck’ truck drivers and ‘white trash’ with MAGA hats.)

METROPOLITAN is somewhat like AMERICAN GRAFFITI for high society youth. If George Lucas’ film depicts the more ‘innocent’ Sixties before everything blew up with drugs, race riots, and the Vietnam War, METROPOLITAN is like the last hurrah(or final whimper) of the socialite culture. Higher up in society, they could afford to be somewhat aloof and remain less affected by events on the ground; still, social changes have seeped into this world as well in lifestyle and attitudes — Nick Smith(Chris Eigeman) hallucinates to mescaline, albeit gazing at a Babar comic book. It’s also like a minuscule version of THE LEOPARD(by Luchino Visconti) though with comic than tragic overtones; it’s as if they’re doing it for appearances for maybe the last time before their world becomes a museum piece.

Though we don’t see much dancing, the gatherings often center around debutante balls(or whatever such are called). These gatherings are in stark contrast with the kind of dance usually associated with the late Sixties where hippies, high on drugs, moved their bodies anyway they felt like(in tune with the cosmic groove?) On the evidence of GIMME SHELTER(The Rolling Stones film), maybe drugs-and-dancing should be avoided like drinking-and-driving. Though a key event in the Summer of Love billed itself as the Gathering of the Tribe, there was little that was tribal(in the real sense) among the hippies who were too loose to establish a lasting community. After all, tribal societies tend to be rather rigid and demanding, than trivial and libertine. Dancing in a primitive tribal setting serves a purpose. It could have spiritual significance or serve as a rite-of-passage. It’s not something youths do just for the hell of it. Even though the world of high society is far removed from primitivism, there is a link between the tribal village and high civilization in their observances of rites and rituals, in their insistence on cultural significance regarding certain acts. In METROPOLITAN, the young men and women aren’t just hanging out for fun but keeping with a tradition that has been handed down(and ideally should go on indefinitely). They aren’t merely of the whims of the moment but the bonds of history, which is perhaps why the betrayals of parents(though hardly seen) are especially painful as they failed in their duty to the graceful transition between generations.

For Stillman, dance-as-ritual is key to civilizational health. Without dance, society is stuffy and repressed, its vitality stifled. But then, dancing also poses a threat to civilizational order with its summoning of animal spirits and sensual delights. John the Baptist surely got nothing out of Salome’s dance. For this reason, Stillman prefers a kind of philosophy of dance, a compromise or even a compact between the exciting animal spirits and the sensible man-made rules.

The dance cultures of METROPOLITAN and THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO are light years apart but have in common a sense of form and standards. The young men and women go about their lives in METROPOLITAN mostly oblivious to the cultural upheavals of the Sixties(rather like the mafia guys in GOODFELLAS), and the characters who frequent the club in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO act as though the Sixties never happened. The most memorable dance moment in METROPOLITAN is a casual cha-cha-cha, a much forgotten number. The characters are hopelessly but charmingly are out of time. In contrast, the boys and girls in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO are very much with-the-time(though to realize at the end that disco vanished as quickly as it appeared, and they are suddenly find themselves out-of-time), but what the older forms of dance and disco have in common is a sense of definition and criteria. No wonder SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER was about a dance contest. Can anyone imagine a hippie dance contest?

Though disco was no one’s idea of conservatism, it did come with a set of standards and hierarchy. It wasn’t just about dancing anyway you felt like but dancing well. And even though the disco look soon became the look, there were do’s and don’ts. You couldn’t be sloppy like the people at Woodstock. Not for nothing did Mike Royko write a column about confusing a hobo with a hippie.

Not that THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO has much in common with SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. (The John Travolta movie was the biggest thing associated with disco, but Josh is disdainful of it. If anything, the characters seem to cherish the exclusivity of their favorite haunt. While the club in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is open to anyone, even an ex-priest and fat girls who can’t dance, the very appeal of the club in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO it’s so damned hard to get in. Even the self-designated socialist can’t believe his good fortune.) Stillman seems to have a natural aversion to Deplorables and isn’t a true conservative but a conservatoid. For him, conservatism is less a matter of core values than style, look, and feel. It’s the kind of ‘conservatism’ that might argue ‘gay marriage’ is ‘conservative’ because some homosexuals dress well, maintain well-kept lawns, and salute the flag(while serving in the deep state). Just like Stillman would rather not think about the messy and slovenly Sixties, he almost never touches upon the white working class. Even though his films are mostly about well-heeled whites(mainly wasps), there is a nod to blacks(at least in music and as dancers); also, the honest working man is depicted by Negroes in DAMSELS IN DISTRESS. Just about the only reference to the white working class is the image of rough looking types with ‘Disco Sucks’ T-shirts and TV footage of proto-deplorables who took part in Steve Dahl’s DISCO DEMOLITION, a precursor to the 1/6 ‘Insurrection’, or Deep State Demolition.

Stillman is about hierarchy, and he appreciates the world of style, manners, and knowledge. Even the socialist in METROPOLITAN may be egalitarian in thought but elitist in manners and erudition. As for blacks, Stillman regards them as the royalty of popular music. Of course, we’re not talking of gangster rap and the like, which Stillman most probably doesn’t care for. But there was a time when black music aspired to higher emotions than just wallowing in the morass of ‘muh dick’ and ‘muh booty’. Back then, they were the Duke of Earl(at least on stage) than Da Kang of Bling. Whiling away in a hospital(over what turns out to be a trifle), Charlotte Pingress(Kate Beckindale), the most amoral and conniving character(though rivaled by Des McGrath), begins to sing “Amazing Grace”, either exhibiting her softer side or her self-delusion(that she has any redemptive bone in her body); still, if she’s a phony, she’s a ‘real phony'(like Holly Golightly in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S) because she sincerely believes in all her self-justifying rationalizations. But on another level, the use of the song could be an allusion to the slave trade and the complex relationship between whites and blacks, though disco is too fun and happy for anyone to think about anything.

THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO is mostly apolitical — the only explicitly ideological character is the IQ-conscious socialist Dan Powers(aka Departmental Dan), an object of mild mockery — , and the characters could be Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or depends-on-the-issue types. What matters is status, prestige, and position, which back then were possessed or accessible through many more options, which is no longer the case. In our time, just about the only path to elite prestige/position is through the Democratic Party and globalist ‘values’. The GOP is still well-represented in government but only electorally through the votes of the white middle and working class(and even the poor). All other pathways to privilege and power require one to be a Democrat, a self-abasing RINO(who caves to Democrats at every turn), or a Neocon(who has the backing of super-rich Zionists who take care of their attack dogs). Even though Democratic domination of elite institutions has a long history, one could gain position and respectability as a conservative in the Cold War era. Many more views were acceptable and tolerated on a host of controversial issues. There were holdouts in academia and media for people with views that could get anyone ‘canceled’ in an instant today. One could even be an ‘Arabist’ and hold high position. There was a time when Pat Buchanan was one of the most widely read columnists in America. One could admire Robert E. Lee and hold critical views of nonwhites. And of course, the Cold War reserved a place for the American Right. Today, they tear down Robert E. Lee monuments, and even whites in the South just hunker down in shame or cowardice.

This sad state of affairs for the Republicans might be traced back to Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon who played hard for the white working class and southern white vote(even though neither man was a strong social conservative). While rank-and-file Republicans may be about core values, the elites of the movement always put status and social approval above all else. They figure, what’s the point of being conservative if one can’t enjoy the fruits of privilege and respect, which nowadays only come by the way of globo-homo and the like. If the problem with conservatism in the past was it couldn’t win over enough ordinary people, the problem today is it offers little to snobs and social-climbers. The biggest problem for the GOP is it’s toxic to the elitist-minded.

Country Club Republicans and the moderate wing were okay with someone like Dwight Eisenhower who didn’t take a particularly strong stand on anything. This way, the Republicans could gravitate toward whatever was fashionable among the movers and shakers. Increasingly, the white working class and southern whites were falling out of favor among the elites, but Nixon appealed to both hard in 1968 and 1972(though his policies ended up stabbing both in the back). Fast forward to the future, and the GOP is downright apologetic about its two electoral pillars being the white middle and southern whites. If American politics were genuinely democratic or populist, this wouldn’t matter, but the real power is held by the elites, and GOP’s appeal to them is hampered by its reliance on the two most disreputable groups in America: The Deplorables as lowlife losers and Southern Whites as ‘redneck-white-supremacist-racists’. Why does this matter? Because in winning over those groups, GOP became radioactive to the elites and wanna-be-elites whose values came to be directed toward homo-celebration and black-worship under increasing Jewish domination.

While the characters in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO could still conceivably be Republican, all such well-educated urban types today in New York and other big cities would certainly be Democratic. In the short run, the loss of the white working class to the GOP was a big blow to the Democrats, but it was also cut the party loose from deference to corrupt Labor Unions and economic nationalism. By adopting ‘free trade’ and deregulation, Democrats could be more acceptable to Big Capital that relished the moral high-ground held by the Democratic Party. And, end of the Cold War meant the Democrats could no longer be accused of being ‘soft on communism’, and the shift from Big Labor to Big Capital meant the Democrats no longer needed to pander to losers and could finally bank on the winners of society. And over time, immigration would diminish the electoral power of the white working class at any rate. And now, we are told the American middle class has less wealth than the top 1% that is solidly in the Democratic aisle.

Of course, even as GOP depends on Deplorable votes, it does little but pander to the super-rich even more than the Democrats do. Why do the successful lean heavily to the Democrats? It’s because the elites are nothing without conceit of superiority, not only economically and culturally but morally. And as the post-ideological America re-conceptualized morality and values in terms of special identities, mainly centered around Jewish, black, and homosexual, the elites and wanna-be-elites naturally go along. Of course, education played a key role in this, and there are plenty of people with no elite aspirations who nevertheless spout the same nonsense coming from the ivory tower. Still, the main reason why kids of elites study so hard has less to with love of truth and knowledge than want of success and acceptance, though they’re too self-deluded to realize this.

The reason why many white haute-conservatives went over to the Democratic Party is mostly about status. Take Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Why did he vote for Obama? And why did National Review magazine turn into National Disgrace? How come the new ‘conservatives’ are so eager to flash their pro-homo credentials? Some on the Right believe hierarchy = conservatism, but elitism can come in many flavors, especially if the elites don’t have to practice what they preach. Christianity had a long run among European nobility because they didn’t have to act very Christian. They only needed to signal their sanctimony once in awhile. And it’s usually enough just to show that you support BLM and globo-homo(and got many covid shots) without actually having to live in da hood or take it up the arse as a badge of honor in the Current Year. Whit Stillman, a conservative by sentiment than core conviction, is mostly about sniffing for the vestiges of conservatism(real or delusional) in a world where conservatism is all but dead.

The elitism in METROPOLITAN is plain to see(however doomed it may be), but it takes a special kind of mentality to maintain the facade of conservatism/hierarchy in the post-60s age. Then, it’s no surprise that the theorists of dance in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO and DAMSELS IN DISTRESS are borderline cuckoo. Most people into Disco never gave it much thought. Thinking about disco is like bringing a book to a rock concert. Disco just happened. And soon, even non-disco acts got into the act, with the Rolling Stones releasing SOME GIRLS and Rod Stewart singing about people wanting his body. And given its Afro-funkery and homo-narcissism, it was no one’s idea of conservatism or respectability. But for Josh Neff(called ‘loon’ by on/off friend Des), it’s more than the latest trend or fashion in music. “I love the idea that there’d be all these great places for people to go dancing after the terrible social wasteland of our college years… I still consider myself a loyal adherent to the disco movement.”

Now, ‘movement’ implies something radical, like the French Revolution, and there is a morally zealous and reformist side to Josh that evokes Robespierre. It could be his zeal to fight corruption is an extension of his own struggle with inner demons. However, in his need for form and order, there is a semblance of conservative sensibility as well. There are facets to Josh’s character that can lean radical or conservative. Depending on where his mood, he could be a hardline crusader or a defender of propriety.

If this is conservatism, it is of oddballs who don’t quite fit into the normal world but don’t want to surrender to anarchy either. Perhaps, a kind of paradox comes into play among certain natural weirdos. While some weirdos are happy in their weirdness, others are acutely aware that something about them is off and is in need of balance & stability. The character of Des takes his normality for granted, indeed so much so that he plays loose and gets reckless at times. Why not take chances when he can easily go back to being boringly normal again? In contrast, normality is something Josh has to constantly grasp for through mental discipline, medication, dedication to rules, and the philosophy of disco(perhaps as only he sees it)… but then, there are some who see ‘conservative’ messages in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, so he’s not alone. Thus, oddly enough, the ‘loon’ is the most righteous and ‘normal’ character in the film.

Some critics dumped on the film for being rather staid and square for a disco movie, but they missed the point. It’s not about disco but how members of a social class one wouldn’t naturally associate with disco nevertheless find their own existential meaning from it. Stillman is a sort of disconservative, or discon.

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, one of the funniest films I’ve seen, has a similar character, both funnier and more disturbing. If Josh is borderline ‘loon’, Violet(Greta Gerwig) is a functional nutter. Granted, the film is a comedy whereas THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO is drama with comedic touches. Several roles in DAMSELS IN DISTRESS are caricatures than characters, and the situations are often set up for laughs. And yet, pathos also come into play. Violet, though pleasantly goofy and upbeat in her helpfulness, is really quite fragile and walks a mental tightrope, and we stop laughing when she spirals into depression and contemplates suicide.

One reason for her eagerness to help others is as a distraction from her own problems. And she’s obsessed with dance forms(as opposed to mere dancing) as a mediator between chaos and civilization. Dancing brings out the animal spirits, but dance-forms give them shape and erect fences around the barbarism inherent in music/dance. She’s like Nurse Ratched and Randall McMurphy(of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST) rolled into one. If the vulgarized form of Foucaultism says to let loose your inner craziness, Stillmanism says to strive for normality and clarity through the mental fog even if it is an insurmountable Sisyphean feat. The nobility is in the struggle than in the surrender.

There is nothing to suggest POLITICAL conservatism in DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, but as in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, there is a conservatoid yearning for form and meaning rooted in tradition. While Violet’s fixations may not be a red-blooded right-wing patriot’s idea of conservatism, it is distinct from the liberal tendency of letting go and abandoning oneself to the ‘liberation’ of senses. Even as she’s drawn to the sensuality and excitement of dance, she needs the security of rules and standards. She’s open to change, the evolution of dance, but feels most at home with dance forms requiring technique and training. (The flamenco-inflected dances in BARCELONA are also big on proper form and technique. Sensuality contained in tradition.)

I haven’t paid much attention to dance trends over the years, and I’m sure one can find plenty of young ones doing impressive things in countless music videos, but dances that come to my mind over the years are the retarded punk dance(where people just pile onto each other like the demolition derby), 80s club dancing(without any distinct form), bumping-and-grinding(especially with the rise of hip hop), heavy metal hair-shaking & beer-burping, and of course, ‘twerking’ of late where women, especially black ho’s with big booties(though some homo men seem to get into it too) pump their asses up and down like they’re having sex. Stillman is obviously too much of a gentleman(or craven coward) to touch to on the black problem — he’d rather swoon about early 60s black songs and philosophize about the disco era — and falls back on associating barbarism with Steve Dahl’s Disco Demolition crowd or the beer-can frat boys who don’t bathe enough(at least with the proper soap) and wage inter-frat war on those aspiring toward better taste. Still, given what has happened to the culture of dance — mostly skankass ho’s ‘twerking’ their asses or simulating sexual motions than being seductive — , Stillman’s philosophy of dance may seem quaint, but it is also like an oasis, the last refuge of some semblance of sentiment, manners, and form in a world gone totally sheboonic.

“Disco will never be over. It will always live in our minds and hearts. Something like this, that was this big, and this important, and this great, will never die. Oh, for a few years – maybe many years – it’ll be considered passé and ridiculous. It will be misrepresented and caricatured and sneered at, or – worse – completely ignored. People will laugh about John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, white polyester suits and platform shoes…” – Josh