"All art is political"

Let's take a step back and examine that statement. Why does Left always parrot this phrase? Why can't anyone else have their own interpretations?

Why can't the woke just appreciate art? A thread🧵1/

https://twitter.com/Vladolak/status/1836521095354290239

The woke is nothing more than a reaction to the failed promises of liberalism. It's a manifestation of a brittle belief system lashing out because it is worried about being called out as hollow--which it is. It has no more teleological promises it can offer. /2

Founding Myths. We've all seen the 4chan post about how the Post-WW2 Consensus is the basis for modern society.

But what about the Founding Myths of the future? More specifically, what about first contact is so tantalizing for the Left? A thread on our posthuman future 1/🧵 Up until fairly recently, first contact has been the wet dream of atheists and rationalists everywhere. The idea of finding evidence for alien (sentient) life is another psuedo-religious impulse, a search for meaning in the cosmos. /2

I caught some flak for my Prometheus thread, specifically accusations that I was strawmanning Atheism. So let’s address that here.

Why Atheism is really boring for storytelling, thread 2 electric boogaloo 🧵 1/ Deliberate design is a completely pseudo-scientific concept (according to atheists). There’s no evidence for it, and the mainstream consensus is that life was a cosmic accident. But you can’t say anything about a cosmic accident. You can only shrug your shoulders at it. /2

Since people are talking about Prometheus again, let’s return to one of my favorite topics

How atheists can’t help themselves reinserting religious impulses into narratives, a thread 1/ 🧵 Now Atheism is a really boring ideology for storytelling. There’s no God, no morality, and no meaning. Everything is an accident, and we can take only the most superficial material interpretations possible.

This kills all storytelling except the most nihilistic genres. /2

A day has passed. And I want to re-articulate some things in this thread to clarify what my intentions were. 1/

https://twitter.com/harisel57511397/status/1827016665965473916

I write threads as they come to me. I don’t draft them up beforehand. And even when I plan things out, there are sometimes connections/tangents/points that I understand, but unfortunately get misunderstood when sent into public. Some of these are inevitable, but I admit I could’ve done a better job with this one.

I did not mean to imply that Matt Walsh was responsible for Mr. Birchum. What I was trying to get at was the spiritual attitude of his scene and why shows like Mr. Birchum exist and why mainstream Conservative platforms struggle with art.

I see Matt Walsh as a Conservative archetype, and I can see similar thought processes in the creators of this show.

The implication behind this post is that Christians are raving zealots who hate new media out of a puritanical spite. But that’s a caricature of a much deeper problem.

Let’s take a look at the kinds of Christians in charge of media empires. 1/

https://twitter.com/haruhiaisaka/status/1826608453873434705

The thing to understand about Matt Walsh is that he’s not a zealot. He may have very good Conservative stances on LGBT, abortion, contraception, and so on. But politics is not spirituality.

Matt Walsh is a trend chaser. He’s a merchant on the social media market. /2

I recall sometime in the 2010s that there was a craze for TV shows where anyone could die unexpectedly. This was sold as a new, more mature form of storytelling that was more realistic and hence superior to “naïve” media like LoTR. But what did this new trend get us? 1/ While the prospect was exciting at first, it all slowly turned into bloat and cynicism. Writers brought up conflicts for the sake of being morally grey—not for finding the right answers. Characters were killed for shock, not for serving a larger picture. /2

This right here is my favorite scene in all of Star Trek. It represents so much of what made the show good, and it’s a tragic commentary on how the Left tried to recreate Rightwing virtues from Leftwing ideas.

From season 3 episode 6, The Specter of the Gun finds the Enterprise crew being subjected to an alien simulation designed to prove humans as nothing more than barbaric savages. And because it’s Star Trek, this simulation is a recreation of the Wild West.

On the Justification of Man in Science Fiction:

You'll notice virtually every Sci-Fi story penned by atheists shares the same progressivist mythos that uses pseudo spiritualism to get out of asking religious questions. These have become tropes cemented within the genre. /1 Where did humanity come from? There are two basic answers atheists have to this question. Either we evolved from nothing, or more interestingly, we evolved from a precursor civilization. In this case, the precursors serve as a surrogate God except without Christianity. /2

I'll give a proper answer to the critique. To steelman this argument, the neo-pagan sees Tolkien's "history as a long defeat" as a rallying cry of nihilism. After all, Gondor is but a shadow of Númenor. And it is all but explicitly said that the Age of Men will be lesser... 1/

https://twitter.com/realSimonLaird/status/1787284981032587617

But what the neo-pagan fails to see is the religion Tolkien's mythos is embedded in. Tolkien sees the strength of elves and men as fading to sin. So it is a very good thing, that the fate of the world does not lie in men! Tolkien meant his world for a Redeemer 2/

Tolkien’s conception of the Ring is not some stupid metaphor for material power. Yes, it offers power, but that’s not the essence of the One Ring. The question Tolkien poses is whether we can pursue material victory through spiritually corrupt means… 1/

https://twitter.com/fromkulak/status/1787285181797204272

The Ring (being part of Sauron’s soul) is basically a phylactery for a demon. To use it is to inherently invite the demonic. It’s an object of the occult. And humanity is not able to use those forces for a greater good because we ourselves are fallen and corruptible. 2/

This is very different from THIS. A lot of people don’t understand the distinction, but the difference between Riza Hawkeye and Korra lies in their archetypal roles. No one cares about fantasy female warriors. The problem is the essence of their character. 1/

Men love Riza Hawkeye. Why? Because she remains feminine. She’s a valkyrie, not a cocksure girlboss. Riza is a cool, collected, professional killer. And despite inhabiting a masculine archetype, she gets away with it because she never assumes a masculine personality. 2/

The hardest part about being a reactionary is acknowledging entertainment you used to love is poisonous. In rehabilitating the image of King Arthur, we must tear away the ironic and the comedic in order to create something we can sincerely devote ourselves to. This scene alone has done tremendous psychic damage to the English consciousness. It's a complete divesting of the sacred, the divine, and the kingship. It makes a mockery of everything those things stand for. While hilarious, it must be the first target in restoring tradition.

The question is not merely one of ideology. Though wokeness is indeed a brittle calcification of late stage liberalism, it is not the sole factor for why good entertainment has plummeted. For that, we must look at the collapse of belief.

https://twitter.com/Scientific_Bird/status/1759700304725971342

Wokeness is a phenomenon that actually predates Gamergate and the 2016 election, but back then it was organic. It was the promises liberalism offered: equality for all, ever increasing prosperity, an upstanding society based on rationalist morals.

Why the first Starship Troopers movie failed as a parody, a thread:

Watching the movie, it was clear the director was aiming for a campy, over-the-top depiction of the Terran Federation. Perhaps not an outright mockery, but certainly a drastic departure from the serious novel. First, let's tackle a writing pitfall that irks Leftists to this day. If you make your characters naturally handsome, fit, and well-groomed, then it becomes increasingly difficult to properly mock them. Beauty is self-evident, and all the characters in ST are good looking.

By popular demand, let's discuss the black sheep of the Stargate franchise. SGU was the flawed stepchild that couldn't find an audience with the fans of Stargate. It was too dark, humorless, and had soap opera levels of cringe drama. So, let's discuss why I adore this show. Let's first address the criticism of the drama. Fans rightly hated this show as they thought it was just a rip off of Battlestar Galactica. Yes, it's annoying and edgy. But it gets vastly better by the second season. And there's a lot more happening than teen romance.

Because my FMAB thread blew up, I’ll do a full critique of the series. First, I want to handle some objections that came up in my original post.

1. I am a Catholic, and I am approaching this series from a Catholic perspective for the benefit of Catholic writers. I’m aware of the philosophical underpinnings of the show, and I don’t care how accurate they are to real world equivalents. I find the spiritual elements to be in error, and I would be remiss to not point that out.

2. Some might call this critique biased, and they would be completely right. However, as biased as I am, everyone else is equally so. Save for the mechanics of storytelling e.g. plot structure, tone, and emotional resonance, there really isn’t an “objective” way to analyze stories on their thematic elements. You either accept the axioms or you don’t, and I don’t.

3. Some might call my critique into question in that has little value. FMAB is clearly doing in its own thing and not trying to be a Catholic work. To judge it to a standard it never accepted is not fair. Well, I don’t play fair. Right now there is an absolute dearth of good Christian fictional works being produced today. Too many books, movies, and television shows are “doing their own thing”. If I can help Christian writers with their own stories through this analysis, it is all the better.

4. I’m approaching this not so much an indictment of storytelling quality but in substance. I disagree with the message, not how well it was told. FMAB executes everything almost flawlessly, and I am not debating its virtues in this area.

5. I do absolutely adore this show
Let’s plunge right into business. The main problem with Truth is that he's an uncaring God. The Elric Brothers commit a serious transgression, and one that deserves punishment, but not in the manner presented. Truth does nothing to course correct the Brothers before disaster.

Many Christians have reservations about reading horror, and I’ve defended the genre in the past, but there is admittedly a harder case to be made for Lovecraft. Personally, I think he’s one of the most invaluable horror authors to have ever lived. But first, let’s break down the traditional objection to horror. It’s situated around a view that all artistic works are meant to be “clean”. Showing objectionable content inspires objectionable behavior, and that does have a kernel of truth. But good art requires Truth.

This reminded me of a few passages from A Canticle for Leibowitz. To give some context, nuclear bombs have dropped once more. The world is in ruin. Many are suffering from radiation sickness. "Mercy" camps are set up to euthanize the suffering. A mother decides to kill her child. Abbot Zerchi tries all manner of arguments to persuade her to spare the child's life. He argues fervently, but the mother is near inconsolable.
"Offer it to Heaven, child."
She looked at him coldly. "You think it would please God?"
"If you would offer it, yes."