I see modern society as too fractured to really have any universal figure of condemnation. Even Hitler and the Nazis will lose their power, especially as the global Left increasingly makes Palestine the central symbol of their movement. Leftists know that sympathy for Zionism is in large part due to the Holocaust, so they don’t want to bring Hitler up too much anymore. Younger Democrats and others on the global left are almost entirely anti-Zionist.
Meanwhile, you have some people on the Right like Darryl Cooper (Martyr Made) saying that Hitler wasn’t really the bad guy in World War II. So I don’t think Hitler can play the role of Satan for long.
I'm trying to think -- in the history of media, has there EVER been a successful project like this? Create a work that subverts and perverts the original and extends a middle finger to all of its fans, yet is still a success?
It at least seems like it's almost always a bad bet. After all, if you want to tell an original story, why not just tell an original story? What's the point of using a familiar brand if its only effect will be to antagonize its existing fans? It's one thing to never produce anything besides reboots, prequels, and sequels of stories that you love -- but of stories that you hate? I get why unhappy people writing fanfic as a hobby late at night might choose to write hate-adaptations, but why does Hollywood keep giving them a budget?
The closest I can think of to a subversive project succeeding is "Wicked" (the play, which I think the movie adapts straightforwardly). But there are several important respects in which it is different from the various other subversion/perversion adaptations, which is probably why it succeeds.
Yeah, I had that thought as well. There's a lot we could say about that one, which I saw in theaters and rather enjoyed. I didn't include it alongside Wicked because, while not a total bomb, it was still considered a commercial failure. But I'll acknowledge it DOES have a lasting appeal that something like Rings of Power will never have. It was, on some level, an *artistic* success.
One funny thing about it, germane to this point, is they actually started out with an original screenplay! But the suits wouldn't buy it, which is why they started shopping it again with the "Starship Troopers" name and ended up with something that was a mix between their original screenplay and that novel.
On one hand, it seems dumb that the suits cared about the Starship Troopers brand per se, which really wasn't worth that much. But on the other hand, by tempering the original vision, they probably ended up with something better than they would have otherwise: a film that was a subtle enough satire that it could still be enjoyed as a straightforward military adventure. I think a lot of what made the old Hollywood work was this sort of interplay, which really limited the degree to which creators' contempt for their audience shone through in the final work.
Been following your substack for a long time, thanks, and completely agree on the secular Satan!
The Enlightenment and modern physics start to call the supernatural into doubt around 1700. Preachers responded by shifting to grand *secular* harms like slavery.
I did a big reading project on this, where I looked at what Harvard Divinity Schools grads were doing year by year (1810, 1811, etc). Best I can tell, the transition becomes really noticeable in Unitarianish authors around 1810 to 1860.
The upshot is God is dead, but Satan continues incognito as Hitler and slavery. Unfortunately, this creates a claustrophobically angry pseudo-religion, missing joy, peace, forgiveness, awe.
If you actually read the letter where Sean Rowe, head of the Episcopal church, gives his reasoning for the decision, it's not great.
He doesn't dispute the idea that the Afrikaners might deserve refugee status, which is something that is debatable, but simply says that he's upset with how the administration is handling other groups and that, somehow, Afrikaners leaving South Africa is so detrimental to the mission of racial reconciliation there that it is a moral imperative for the church to end its cooperation with the feds so as not to be forced into helping with their resettlement.
Imagine, for a moment, someone saying that about the ethnic minorities of Myanmar.
If he'd actually said "we think the Trump administration is politicizing the refugee program based on the fact that it's rejecting 'left-coded' refugees and taking in 'right-coded' ones whose situations are far less dire, and we refuse to be part of that," I would at least respect his reasoning, and would sympathize with his decision even though I disagree with it. As matters stand, however, the letter reeks of identity politics as much as the Trump administration's policies do.
I see modern society as too fractured to really have any universal figure of condemnation. Even Hitler and the Nazis will lose their power, especially as the global Left increasingly makes Palestine the central symbol of their movement. Leftists know that sympathy for Zionism is in large part due to the Holocaust, so they don’t want to bring Hitler up too much anymore. Younger Democrats and others on the global left are almost entirely anti-Zionist.
Meanwhile, you have some people on the Right like Darryl Cooper (Martyr Made) saying that Hitler wasn’t really the bad guy in World War II. So I don’t think Hitler can play the role of Satan for long.
On the Gerwig/Netflix Narnia thing:
I'm trying to think -- in the history of media, has there EVER been a successful project like this? Create a work that subverts and perverts the original and extends a middle finger to all of its fans, yet is still a success?
It at least seems like it's almost always a bad bet. After all, if you want to tell an original story, why not just tell an original story? What's the point of using a familiar brand if its only effect will be to antagonize its existing fans? It's one thing to never produce anything besides reboots, prequels, and sequels of stories that you love -- but of stories that you hate? I get why unhappy people writing fanfic as a hobby late at night might choose to write hate-adaptations, but why does Hollywood keep giving them a budget?
The closest I can think of to a subversive project succeeding is "Wicked" (the play, which I think the movie adapts straightforwardly). But there are several important respects in which it is different from the various other subversion/perversion adaptations, which is probably why it succeeds.
Arguably, Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers would also count.
Yeah, I had that thought as well. There's a lot we could say about that one, which I saw in theaters and rather enjoyed. I didn't include it alongside Wicked because, while not a total bomb, it was still considered a commercial failure. But I'll acknowledge it DOES have a lasting appeal that something like Rings of Power will never have. It was, on some level, an *artistic* success.
One funny thing about it, germane to this point, is they actually started out with an original screenplay! But the suits wouldn't buy it, which is why they started shopping it again with the "Starship Troopers" name and ended up with something that was a mix between their original screenplay and that novel.
On one hand, it seems dumb that the suits cared about the Starship Troopers brand per se, which really wasn't worth that much. But on the other hand, by tempering the original vision, they probably ended up with something better than they would have otherwise: a film that was a subtle enough satire that it could still be enjoyed as a straightforward military adventure. I think a lot of what made the old Hollywood work was this sort of interplay, which really limited the degree to which creators' contempt for their audience shone through in the final work.
Been following your substack for a long time, thanks, and completely agree on the secular Satan!
The Enlightenment and modern physics start to call the supernatural into doubt around 1700. Preachers responded by shifting to grand *secular* harms like slavery.
I did a big reading project on this, where I looked at what Harvard Divinity Schools grads were doing year by year (1810, 1811, etc). Best I can tell, the transition becomes really noticeable in Unitarianish authors around 1810 to 1860.
The upshot is God is dead, but Satan continues incognito as Hitler and slavery. Unfortunately, this creates a claustrophobically angry pseudo-religion, missing joy, peace, forgiveness, awe.
For more on this if anyone is interested, see:
https://jurassiclocke.substack.com/p/mass-holiness-ocd-in-gaza-encampments https://jurassiclocke.substack.com/p/a-cognitive-model-of-modernity-part
If you actually read the letter where Sean Rowe, head of the Episcopal church, gives his reasoning for the decision, it's not great.
He doesn't dispute the idea that the Afrikaners might deserve refugee status, which is something that is debatable, but simply says that he's upset with how the administration is handling other groups and that, somehow, Afrikaners leaving South Africa is so detrimental to the mission of racial reconciliation there that it is a moral imperative for the church to end its cooperation with the feds so as not to be forced into helping with their resettlement.
Imagine, for a moment, someone saying that about the ethnic minorities of Myanmar.
If he'd actually said "we think the Trump administration is politicizing the refugee program based on the fact that it's rejecting 'left-coded' refugees and taking in 'right-coded' ones whose situations are far less dire, and we refuse to be part of that," I would at least respect his reasoning, and would sympathize with his decision even though I disagree with it. As matters stand, however, the letter reeks of identity politics as much as the Trump administration's policies do.