Thread by @codyclarke

Conservatives often whine about wanting to 'win the culture war'. This thread is going to be me essentially open-sourcing a clear and winning roadmap on how to do that, at least within an area I know a ton about: film. I'm sharing this for free because I'm sick of the whining.

You can't whine about losing the culture war while cranking out, as your main profitable film entertainment:
- Christian movies that play straight to one tiny niche and are unintentional comedies / laughably bad to anyone else
- Inferior copies of big budget Hollywood genre fare

This tactic, though 'profitable' because it does the very wooden / logical economic thing of playing to a specific base that will always come out and support it, actually bites you in the ass, because it sacrifices coolness for money. You need coolness MORE than money.

The only coolness points conservatives have gained in the last few years has solely come through 'triggering' the other side, making liberals look like the uptight ones. And even better, it has cost them no money to do so—it can be done for free with a meme, a tweet, whatever.

Capitalizing on uptight outraged people (historically the religious right) as free marketing for a film, in order to give a film coolness, has been used for many decades to profitable effect, but beyond that, LANDSCAPE-CHANGING effect. Entire genres thrived near entirely on this.

The irony here is that religion is full of controversial and shocking material. If you open up a bible, it's not pages and pages of Davey and Goliath cartoons. There's seriously hardcore stuff in there.

But I digress. The point is, what has worked in the last few years, as far as the right gaining coolness?
- Spending barely any money
- Triggering uptight people on the left

That to me sounds like a winning combo for independent film. Here's what to do:

Art is only ever art when it's democratized—for instance, books are art because anyone can pick up a pen and paper and write something. Film has had a massive barrier to entry up until very recently, and so it is only JUST NOW starting to become an art form.

The natural conservative response here would be "Barriers to entry are good! That means meritocracy! The best filmmakers will make it through and make the best films!" Shut the fuck up. You have no idea what you're talking about. You have been brainwashed by the film industry.

For every example you can give of a great filmmaker being let make a great movie, there are THOUSANDS more examples of great filmmakers never gettin the opportunity, or getting the opportunity and having their opportunity sabotaged by studio influence.

It's been a hellish thing. But now with the fact that $500 films can become official Amazon Prime Recommendations (right next to movies 10,000x budget) things are different. That's what happened for my films RAMEKIN and MUTE DATE.

I make low budget movies that do not look, sound, or feel 'cheap'. Maybe they don't look like Hollywood films, but I don't want them to—I want them to look like themselves, and be singular, and be mine. I want them to be art, not slop for the trough.

Wayne Gretzky once said "Don't go where the puck is, go where the puck is going to be." Conservatives, when it comes to film, are often obsessed with going where the puck is, and thus they never gain any real ground in culture. They are habitually never ahead of their time.

The puck of film is headed towards a future that looks a lot more like what I'm doing as a filmmaker, and a lot less like Hollywood. Stop trying to emulate a dinosaur that is dying off and start trying to emulate what's coming next: mankind.

What I do is also lightyears faster than what Hollywood can do. A concentrated effort of low-budget filmmakers could make and release an entire catalog of films along a similar theme in the time it takes Hollywood to put on its pants in the morning.

Does that remind you of anything? Memes are faster than the Daily Show, or late night talk shows, etcetera. Within not many years at all, the Daily Show has gone from being the most relevant show on TV to being the least relevant. It's a dinosaur show.

Any new art form is won by the LEAST uptight people, and lost by (and helped by the outrage of) the MOST uptight people. Film—true, democratized film—is the new art form. Do what you did with memes. Take it over. It's yours for the taking. The left couldn't take it if they tried.

If the left tried to take over the burgeoning art form of film—true, democratized film—ironically they'd copycat the losing gameplan of Christian filmmaking, since that's where their uncool head's at. Theyd make stodgy, artless shit that is laughable to anyone outside their base.

The left are conditioned to fail by the right pulling a RABBIT SEASON, DUCK SEASON on them and getting them to switch places with them and become the uptight, uncool ones. If the right can't slam dunk this basketball and dominate truly indie film, it's their own fault.

A great starting place would be horror. Horror has long been the starting place for burgeoning film artists because it's not about polish, it's about being effective. And horror is also the easiest place to exploit, as free marketing, the easily triggered.

The important thing though is that any politics whatsoever (if at all, honestly—you'd be better off with none) needs to be vegetables snuck secretly into the dish. Conservatives always fuck up their proportions—you watch a christian movie and it's like 90% vegetables 10% art.

Some people love vegetables, yes. But do you want to be in the vegetables business or do you want to be an artist? Your best asset is people not knowing what the fuck you even think. Art is about QUESTIONS. Politics is about ANSWERS. If your shit has both, it's propaganda. Gross!

The right has gained significant ground by causing people to ask new and better QUESTIONS. That's what 'red pilling' is at its best: opening people's minds to questions they had never even considered, rather than merely trying to answer the loaded questions theyd been stuck with.

Art is about raising questions, art is about raising questions, art is about raising questions, I cant say this enough. Answers are boring. Questions are infinitely interesting. Great questions lead to bigger and better questions. Knowledge is less sexy than thirst for knowledge.

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything", as Mark Twain said. How much of conservativism (and libertarianism) has been bogged down by spitting out memorized facts and stats and whatever? Better to send people down a path of discovering truth themselves.

Art sends people down that path better than any substance known to man, if it's art that truly raises questions. You educate someone truly by causing them to have a new question in their mind, not a new answer. It's the whole 'teach a man to fish' vs 'give a man a fish' thing.

Think of the persuasive power of the beauty of a sunset. Think of how much it has done for the human mind, in how many questions it brings to mind just on its beauty alone. Think of how much it has done for the soul—how many souls it has helped feel meaning and purpose.

In contrast, look at this slop. Which is going to bring more people towards God—a sunset, or this? The only audience for a movie like this is people who already agree with everything it, or people that want something to make fun of. Amount of yards gained in the culture war: Zero

Make art thats like a sunset. Inspire people with beauty. Literal beauty, or figurative. I made a horror movie called RAMEKIN that, whether you love it or hate it, causes people to never look at a little white porcelain cup the same way ever again. I made the ordinary unordinary.

A lesser filmmaker would have molded a rubber version of a ramekin, put angry eyes on it, gave it teeth, and had it flying around on a string ripping peoples throats out. Thats horror that's been done a million times. I did a horror about a literal porcelain cup and kept it such.

There's a lesson here that is so important, and that is to do things that have not been done before. People think that means bigger. Often that means smaller—particularly in film, where bigness has been the default for so long. Break the mold. Go small, but go beautiful.

It's also cooler to go small. What was rock music if not a reduction to bare, cool elements? Simplicity is always cooler. 'Sup' became cooler to say than 'What's up?'. List goes on. This is film's moment to be rock and roll. Be truly independent and small and cool and beautiful.

Worth noting is that the right often looks at the Hollywood output of the left, all the cool film entertainment its created, and thinks 'how can we ever catch up'? You dont have to—the second the left loses its cool (now) all the cool works become associated with you, not it.

Like the hot popular chick leaving the jock asshole and going with the nerd who displays coolness at the end of the 80s movie, the attraction was never ideological—it was always based on magnetism towards coolness.

The left has gone nuts and is in the process of systematically disowning everything cool that has ever been made by a liberal. It is leaving all its cool shit out on the lawn for free, and conservatives need be going by with a truck and loading up. It's all ours now.

All coolness throughout history instantly belongs to whoever is currently cool. Lose your cool (become uptight and puritan and authoritarian) and you lose your connection to the lineage—even if 'your side' made most of the cool art of the last however many years.

Dave Chappelle is the same Dave Chappelle he's always been. Older and wiser? Sure, but he's still Dave, he's still an artist on a journey, and he's still cool as shit. Yet, they flipped on him. They wanted him to have become uncool, like they have.

Dave is considered a sinner simply for being wise enough to not jump off the same dumb cliff as the left has. Be like Dave. If you're an artist on the right, stop following suit of Pure Flix or whoever else has made zero stride in the culture war. Don't jump off. Be a sinner.

I can go on forever on this topic, and more subtopics, but I'm gonna take a break for now. I'll talk more about this stuff in the future. I gained a bunch of followers by writing about this today, and I want you to know I really appreciate it. I will not let you down.