I think the fundamental error people make is believing that art, particularly great art, is an expression of what the artist believes. I bet if you ask great artists why their work is great, most of them will give the wrong answer. Great art comes from people who devote their lives to making those millions of decisions, as you say, that somehow make everything fit together.
Basically no great accomplishment is an expression of what the person who accomplished it believes. That's not where accomplishments come from. We accomplish something when we surpass ourselves. If we try to merely embody what's already in us, we accomplish nothing.
Though I haven't seen it myself, it's no surprise to me that Nolan's film ended up great, despite all the signs about "woke" garbage. Nolan is just great, as his past creations mightily attest.
Very insightful and something the modern right misses badly. I'm seeing in my comments here that right wing people tend to think that the current state of film and TV is the result of a malicious conspiracy. They feel that if they bluntly tried to do the same thing in reverse it would backfire. They're right it would backfire, but they're wrong about why. What Hollywood makes is a result of much larger forces than what anyone in particular thinks they believe. Those forces must be tangoed with with some grace. The current right is too overly self-pitying and victimized to have that subtlety, probably from absorbing too much left-mocking media.
The truth is, everyone is roughly doing their best. If you don't like what is out there the only thing to do is get over yourself and make something great.
I have an ongoing debate with someone who happens to be a pastor of the reformed variety in my book club. We're in a tustle about whether Tolkien or Lewis are better fiction writers (or at least who we prefer). I side with Tolkien for largely these reasons, he sides with Lewis largely for opposite reasons. He craves a 'point' he can latch onto. I say, there are greater points to grab in Tolkien precisely because he doesn't limit himself to the points he can think of or comprehend. I think there's virtue on both sides, and probably several greek dialogues (whether involving Socrates or playwrights) that do the topic better justice than we do.
I personally disagree on the Nolan point after having seen it, ironically on exactly these grounds, though not because it is or isn't 'woke.' It just felt like a generic Vietnam War Film™ (or another Oppenheimer) wrapped in sandals and bronze and given modern makeup in the name of accessibility. Admittedly, I think Nolan's artistic bona fides only extend as far as his directing -- I find him a horrific writer who was at least somewhat better served when his brother helped with his scripts. He can't get out of the way of his pen and usually ends up crushing his excellent eye with his very heavy hand which usually waits until the third act to jump-scare you and crush all your hopes for nuance. I prefer The Prestige and Memento precisely because he limits his directness to answering "what happened?" and leaving the "so what?" up to the audience.
Yeah these are all good points. The New Right has still mostly defined itself by what it is against, not taking risks with a true creative spirit. But of course if you create something genuine, you also risk many on 'your side' also critiquing it. Which is why it's safer to keep defining yourself in the negative.
My novel being published later this year does do some of the things you are mentioning. Hopefully part of a new upswell of high quality art that transcends being woke or antiwoke, but also does more than just hearkens back to safe old stories. Like you say, we are in a hybrid age which requires hybrid stories.
This bit from Flannery O'Connor's "The Nature & Aim of Fiction" feels relevant: "It is in the nature of fiction to not be good for anything unless it is good in itself." People who tell great stories tend to be obsessed with craft, not ideas. They also tend to be obsessed with stories.
My sense is that it is probably extremely difficult for folks who make a living dissecting stories to make good stories. It's probably also pretty hard for folks whose primary diet is story-dissection. I don't have high hopes for any kind of ideological movement becoming some kind of renaissance of great storytelling, no matter how spot on their ontological propositions are, as you mention. That's just not how stories work.
"it is probably extremely difficult for folks who make a living dissecting stories to make good stories. It's probably also pretty hard for folks whose primary diet is story-dissection." Excellent.
Thanks man. The more I’ve thought about your piece, the more I think a group like the New Right is inevitably going to end up in stasis; recognizing that the only way to change culture is through story but caring too much about changing culture to tell a good story.
As it goes with these things. I still think there must be lots of people like me who were transformed by this (Pageau was the reason I went back to church) and are working on novels and movies right now and could be a spark of something good.
As a 51 year old performing artist who escaped both NY and LA, and NOT abandoned all hope or my mission, even after menopause-- the line between art and entertainment became a chasm in the last 10 years. Yes, the woke stuff started it. At least in my underground community, where I had been writing a screenplay and TV pilot about the underground as I knew it, until I got canceled and my entire life was ripped out from under me.
Navigating since, I have been in CONTRACTION, getting back to simplest elements. Unfortunately, the modern world only ever values EXPANSION. I can't find collaborators willing to start anything without being shown the money first. To me, having money before you create will ruin it. I start every show or project with available materials, even if that means cardboard. First I get the 1.0 version up on its feet AND THEN worry about putting money into it to get to 2.0. Thereby avoiding putting the cart before the horse. Thereby giving creative ideas the freedom to play in the woods instead of perform well on a test.
There's also a lot of misplaced values and flimsy allegiances to the status quo-- aka the rebels turned into normies. I'm sick of hearing about all the expenses and responsibilities everyone has. What about the responsibility to culture? To humanity? What about making uncomfortable sacrifices to do something bigger than you? Let's pretend we're 20 again and that our passion IS going to change the world. And that the 20 year olds of today aren't going to know how to do it if we don't show them how it's done.
Another factor that may not be on the radar of more mainstream folks is that the underground scenes have been intentionally destroyed. Mainly since the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland in 2017 which gave police the right to shut down artist warehouses in cities all over the country. There was a MASSIVE underground world where radical ideas were put into practice and tested out-- now those spaces are just about nonexistent. No one talks about this part of the problem, but artists (like me) don't need a fancy house with a living room, we need a dreamspace with a workshop. And it's basically illegal to live and work in the same place in this country. They enforce it mightily and it has slowed me down and rendered me un-housed. Now what's left of the underground is basically limping along at pay-to-play festivals, which are really just about drugs and hedonism.
The GLOBAL part of this is a lot of the problem too. Creative ideas can't cook long enough anymore. The outliers may come up with something innovative but then it will get co-opted so fast by social media. Then it gets mimicked (if not mocked, like you said) and ground down into paste before it can even take form. All of this has / is destroying the seeds of creative revolutions that COULD grow in the mainstream culture, but have not been able to take root in this environment.
And I can barely find collaborators who can hold something small long enough without pressuring it to PRODUCE RESULTS-- the mind virus of always SCALING UP and MONETIZING has ruined what is real and true. I think that's what books DO have-- the gestation in the darkness.
Those are some of the reasons I see as to why the culture is broken and why movies suck.
I'd been waiting for this piece after you teased it a few days back and it didn't disappoint with the distillation of thought on the matter. My thought also leads me to challenge the status quos.
Good film, and art, does something when it reveals what we are feeling but we haven't yet been able to put into words ourselves. Like Nolan's refusal to use CGI if he can help it, our minds know what it is real or not. The same goes for when something is corny or virtue-signaling; whether it comes from The Wokery or MAGAts. Yet the rest of us are somewhere in between and want to feel like we are moving towards something better, safer, or stronger. Which, depending on our dispositions, we could feel needs to be reminisced from the past, some new combination of old and new, or some entirely novel idea. But too much (risky) funding seems to try and follow the momentum of the extreme views rather than to try and steer the audience in a steady drift from this shared ground of the many who know the extremes to be unrealistic.
And, as you reiterated for Jonathan, subtly is not the New Right's method. As it hasn't been Trump's, or now Mamdani's. (Never mind their use of a fictitious villain, but) using the momentum of these extremes does catch a lot of people in its nets however. But that will not be of help to conservatism though, as it is not "cool" enough because it is not new enough.
What is cool about it? Well, I'd say values like family as the foundation and virtues like loyalty and honor and wisdom. And they feel a little novel nowadays too.
I am most un-Orthodox in that I have no home for an ideology but foundationally believe in Christ's words. He is the O.G. humanist before public opinion gunked his words and movement up with more words and movements. I grew up in evangelical church knocking on doors, hosting tent revivals, and being an usher at faith healings. This was in 1990s California. Then I ran away from home to be homeless within surf and skate culture because I wanted genuineness.
I read and had wanted to write ever since To Kill A Mockingbird. Hemingway's letters told me to get experiences, so I'd have something to write about. I thought of joining a monastery but through prayer I knew I didn't want to hide in the world. If I was going to try and be an Atticus Finch or a Harper Lee, writing about it in ways that did more than knocking on doors, then I had to live in the world. To experience what others were experiencing. As everyone from Dostoyevksy to Kerouac did. But the best stories aren't found in film. How many of them can you rewatch and still feel moments of being seen or seeing something new?
In film, Hollywood has a firm grasp on the greatest form of storytelling. It is so because it is easy to take in and captures all of your senses. What it can't do that writing can is the interior life. Writing not only lets you experience internal thought, but it lets you walk in another's shoes to more greatly see what they are experiencing. More than that, it develops your mind to be attuned to life at a much greater magnification. When done well, film taps into that. It makes you feel, it makes you think, it makes you share the experience with others. I'm thinking about Ted Lasso the most here, but men especially enjoy the epic myths of great men overcoming much. Lasso, btw, was famously turned down by many studios before it was picked up by Apple.
I've been editing a story set in historical events as the characters struggle with Girardian themes. It utilizes the structure of the Eddic Ragnarok where Baldr dies, and Odin makes moves to try and resurrect him. All set within the American Civil War on the precipice of the Gilded Age. But this story won't be picked up by the Big 5 publishers—just as it won't be by the Big 5 production companies—because they don't think enough of the American audience. Because they see either the extremes or the same old, same old tried and true genres. Risk averse.
I think this is ripe ground for the right, and middle. America is shifting. Like Kurtz' recent article on millennials and zoomers pointed to, young folks have a lot of challenges to overcome and they want to. They want the tools to be better men. And women. But men especially, as Kurtz pointed out.
And although Hollywood holds a lot of power, with a near monopoly on storytelling, it doesn't hold the formula. That is written within us where the ever-changing variable adapt to our environment. And one of those variables is our reaction to Hollywood's bullshit. And New York's. And London's. And politicians. It is culture at large.
I should go write the essay I intended to write today though. One of the ones I hope builds me an audience so I can actually publish the story to one. Like this response however, I have my doubts anyone will read them. Which is the realist thing the right needs to address, actually making something good enough that audiences can't deny is good entertainment.
Great to read this and to feel your real struggle with it. I also struggle with the same things and I don't have good answers. It's cliche but I hope more people bother to do this sort of wrestling. It is what is missing and the actual cost of what we hope to achieve.
This is excellent. It’s helpful to remember that something as massive as Hollywood (if you imagine this means the American film making industry) is civilizationally sized. It has a body that is sized and timed at a massive massive level. Small contributions are there. Timeframe is massive, normally. You get moments like Jaws, or LOTR, or Harry Potter, but they are rare, and important. I have a lot of thoughts about this. Your piece really struck me. It’s vacation, which is great for pondering questions like this and terrible for making anything (video or substack). :) Thanks for posing the question as you did and not letting it go.
Nathan Jacobs of course has tried to make a dent in that industry. I thought he should be mentioned. But it’s difficult. It’s sort of like trying to become a professional athlete. Very very steep Pareto distribution.
All it takes is a small seed to grow something big. There is certainly a re-enchantment project with enough cultural juice to produce a few at the top of the distribution to make great films, etc. It doesn't have to be all of us, but just a few people to get behind. It's been almost ten years. I think the question "why haven't we done it yet?" is a fair one, if only as a challenge. The new right project by and large getting their kicks from mocking the dying order is a plausible reason for the lack of a spark so far.
Paul, you made a point that also occurred to me about the timeline infrastructure requires and the fact that a .05 batting average for greatness is actually amazing. The right is in its creative infancy here and these things take time, especially given how unorganized that side is. Also worth noting, I think, is that it is inherently harder to build than to destroy, and that is a mechanical advantage the blue church creatives have leveraged. It’s also why negative campaigning is more effective in politics. Creative subversion is a hack because the presumption we all (?) implicitly hold is that when you create art, you build something beautiful. When your brand is tearing down, you have gamed the system through sleight of hand in some sense, but can appear “productive” through a kind of spiritual destruction. I believe there are times when you first have to destroy to rebuild, but with an honest intent to make something better. The mocking of insanity is appropriate, but it has to be preparatory and in service of the building to come. The new right can do that, but had better not be naive that it will be easy. This should be spoken aloud. We are not “taking down the patriarchy” but endeavoring to work as honest builders, and that it will take blood, sweat, tears and time. Hope you having a great vacation! Cheers.
Very insightful and well-written piece. I was particularly struck by two points you made, first, that film "has to slip through Overton windows to enter the acceptable unconscious of the culture while also appeasing global market interests," and second, that "The New Right so far fails to capitalize here because it tends to conflate correct ontological propositions (which it often has) with [...] many embodied choices." Admittedly, I'm reading a certain interpretation into "embodied choices" here in order to connect these two points, but it seems to me that together they illustrate a kind of catch 22. The need to slip through Overton windows and enter the acceptable conscious of the culture seems to pose a much greater obstacle for creators with politically disfavoured visions. For "embodied choices" in film to resonate, perhaps they have to be modest about how much of their counter-cultural vision they seek to evoke, and skillfully work these oppositional elements into themes and styles which can appeal to the dominant culture. But the catch is that these conditions may too strongly favour the dominant culture, to the point that creating successful, resonant art may not accord any possibility of significantly disrupting the dominant culture. Maybe it can only allow minor nudges of the culture which its acceptable conscious can regard as elaborations of its own principles.
Great comment - and after seeing The Odyssey, what you suggest is exactly what Nolan did. The entire move is a Trojan horse.
The fact is, every artist of every age had to work with the age he was in. There is no Platonic society that makes all art equally possible -- that would only make bad art possible. Embrace the obstacles.
Thanks. I'll have to go see it. I agree with you in principle, but the obstacles do sometimes seem overwhelming. I do wonder if, insofar as art primarily serves as a vehicle for evoking and propagating culturally ascendant ideas, rather than a medium through which ideas in high places are first settled - that being philosophy, - the main challenge we face may still be in the philosophical sphere. Perhaps the New Right's failure to capitalize in art stems from its failure to capitalize in discourse, perhaps owing to a lingering complacency and persuasive inadequacy in their ideas; and perhaps the need to embrace the obstacles in art corresponds to a need to embrace the obstacles in, for example, the academy, so that the Overton windows can be moved in discourse at the same time as they are slipped through in art. That would mean not looking to success in popular art as the most promising means of subverting and triumphing over the dominant culture, but looking rather to success in philosophical discourse. This isn't to say that art can't elicit original ideas not preceded by philosophical discourse in high places, but I do think history tends to confirm the general pattern of philosophical ascendancy in high places followed by aesthetic ascendancy in popular culture.
I'll have to revisit this again when I have the proper ratio of food:coffee returned to me, but felt a sympathetic urge to comment about 2/3 of the way through.
It seems to me about as reasonable to criticize film or tv as media on account of Marvel or daytime programming as it does to criticize literature on account of pulp or 'smut' fiction. I think people must think this way because they've never been exposed to directors like Malick or Kubrick or films like 12 Angry Men or Dead Poets Society (these for an arbitrary start). Much the same way as someone might give up 'literature' as silly if they had only read books off of airport racks instead of being guided through any number of great authors. I should first point out that they hadn't even gotten to the literature yet. Perhaps there's something more to that guide thing, too...
In fact I think film or television might just be greater artistic media in a certain technical sense in the same way Astronomy might be placed at the top of the Quadrivium. Math applied in space and time is more complicated than math in space or time alone in much the same way that art in space, time, color, sound, and word is far more complicated than art applied in only one of those dimensions. This may not make it inherently better, but I think it might explain why sometimes it feels we have far fewer great films than great books, paintings, plays, or even photographs. Not to mention that we've had the medium for a far shorter period of time than any other 'high' art, if you'll grant the presumption.
Alright, caffeine rant done. Hopefully it's helpful for a little more than enshitiffying a large language model.
Everyone loves the right and the right is a primary draw, although they are only allowed to be villains. Andrew Ryan, The Homelander, Walter White, Darth Vader. However if I made a movie or show that was essentially Homelander going around zapping people the right doesn't like and humiliating them, which I think is a fair description of similar left aligned properties, I think the risk I get actually de-banked or otherwise restricted from access to society or infrastructure is non trivial. And in this arena once you get blacklisted enough you end up in Andrew Tate waters where you have to continue living outside mainstream societal infrastructure.
It's certainly a choice to live as a martyr guerilla but it's not the 'why don't rights tell the good stories there's no reason not to' the article presents it as. The prevalence of 'the right only critiques' simply demonstrates the sanctioned scope of action from the major left infrastructure institutions.
Insightful comment but I think it taps into the mindset of the right writ large. Excessive mocking of the left is fun, but it trains unconscious victimization and lack of subtlety.
Hollywood made characters like Homelander because they were tapping into a much larger cultural sentiment than anyone who was involved in creating him. It's unbalanced, but it's riding a very particular cultural wave. If you did the same thing in reverse, you would be making even more flat and boring propaganda. The right thinks that the reason people backlash against this is because of a malicious conspiracy, but really it's because people hate obvious propaganda.
It's better to look to people like Tolkien than Andrew Tate for inspiration about how to approach a world you don't agree with.
Andrew Tate was my boundary example of a guy who can't just 'live normal' anymore, he cannot retire from being Andrew Tate and run a quiet accounting firm. To illustrate, compare Mel Gibson vs Harvey Weinstein. The former struggles with the raw infrastructure of distributors and funding et al despite his celebrity and successes. The latter had an enormous filmography despite everyone in the know knowing he would casting couch left and right simply because the infrastructure accepted him whole heartedly.
Well, humanity is fallen so that's a much larger pattern than left vs. right. Gibson did great work with what he could and that's also something to admire.
Nolan's _Inception_ explains how to make a resonant, positive story. It explains it by doing it as thr avatars describe the process. Brilliant tutorial about life changing stories.
The New Right is to culture what Mal was to Cobb, though.
AI art is like Inception's Limbo space. Infinitely capable of manipulation, but its unreality ultimately renders it meaningless.
I think Angel has done the best of tackling what might be the biggest two of the three hurdles outside of story-creation itself—the economics (which is huge) of both production and distribution, and tapping into the existing pool of talent (Hollywood actors that are otherwise still working).
The third is having an audience (sufficiently large) that is ready to receive, and I think that is a cultural problem related to your points. Angel has cracked this some by building on past successes and its pay-it-forward distribution model (for theatrical releases). It takes time to build an audience and trust. But there is a limiting problem regarding what their inbuilt audience will be interested in (not just their current size but their interest). So how to build it without alienating their base? It’s a tricky thing.
This cuts through so much of the fog around this issue. Thank you for this. Many parallels to my own endeavors in music, especially the monk’s roll to the illiterate, and the “fix it in post”disposition. AI is a spectrum, as I’ve been saying recently. So much to think about here. Sad to hear the summit didn’t offer much of a response to the problem.
Good article, Mr Foreman. I strive to create beautiful art myself, and for a time I thought sincerity was the missing ingredient in modern shows/movies (think the bathos complaints of MCU movies from years ago), but looking at what sincere pieces I've written up, its, well, a bit too heavy handed and unthrilling. Perhaps its an overcorrection from the New Right approach you characterized as near-exclusively mocking (which I don't disagree with).
To create and not pontificate is maybe in part opening yourself up and letting things flow through the medium of your own mind, but theres a nature or tendency to filter, correct, readjust to make sure the lead isn't buried. I want to make something. I want to make something good, true, maybe even beautiful- but I can't will it or bake it like a cake, and for whatever Rightoid out there is aiming for cinema, God help them because you rightly point how much /bigger/ it goes beyond a single person and their clutch of fans.
I think the fundamental error people make is believing that art, particularly great art, is an expression of what the artist believes. I bet if you ask great artists why their work is great, most of them will give the wrong answer. Great art comes from people who devote their lives to making those millions of decisions, as you say, that somehow make everything fit together.
Basically no great accomplishment is an expression of what the person who accomplished it believes. That's not where accomplishments come from. We accomplish something when we surpass ourselves. If we try to merely embody what's already in us, we accomplish nothing.
Though I haven't seen it myself, it's no surprise to me that Nolan's film ended up great, despite all the signs about "woke" garbage. Nolan is just great, as his past creations mightily attest.
Very insightful and something the modern right misses badly. I'm seeing in my comments here that right wing people tend to think that the current state of film and TV is the result of a malicious conspiracy. They feel that if they bluntly tried to do the same thing in reverse it would backfire. They're right it would backfire, but they're wrong about why. What Hollywood makes is a result of much larger forces than what anyone in particular thinks they believe. Those forces must be tangoed with with some grace. The current right is too overly self-pitying and victimized to have that subtlety, probably from absorbing too much left-mocking media.
The truth is, everyone is roughly doing their best. If you don't like what is out there the only thing to do is get over yourself and make something great.
I have an ongoing debate with someone who happens to be a pastor of the reformed variety in my book club. We're in a tustle about whether Tolkien or Lewis are better fiction writers (or at least who we prefer). I side with Tolkien for largely these reasons, he sides with Lewis largely for opposite reasons. He craves a 'point' he can latch onto. I say, there are greater points to grab in Tolkien precisely because he doesn't limit himself to the points he can think of or comprehend. I think there's virtue on both sides, and probably several greek dialogues (whether involving Socrates or playwrights) that do the topic better justice than we do.
I personally disagree on the Nolan point after having seen it, ironically on exactly these grounds, though not because it is or isn't 'woke.' It just felt like a generic Vietnam War Film™ (or another Oppenheimer) wrapped in sandals and bronze and given modern makeup in the name of accessibility. Admittedly, I think Nolan's artistic bona fides only extend as far as his directing -- I find him a horrific writer who was at least somewhat better served when his brother helped with his scripts. He can't get out of the way of his pen and usually ends up crushing his excellent eye with his very heavy hand which usually waits until the third act to jump-scare you and crush all your hopes for nuance. I prefer The Prestige and Memento precisely because he limits his directness to answering "what happened?" and leaving the "so what?" up to the audience.
Yeah these are all good points. The New Right has still mostly defined itself by what it is against, not taking risks with a true creative spirit. But of course if you create something genuine, you also risk many on 'your side' also critiquing it. Which is why it's safer to keep defining yourself in the negative.
My novel being published later this year does do some of the things you are mentioning. Hopefully part of a new upswell of high quality art that transcends being woke or antiwoke, but also does more than just hearkens back to safe old stories. Like you say, we are in a hybrid age which requires hybrid stories.
Awesome, would love to read that. We should make fewer negative vows in general.
Malcolm Guite recently said to “risk naïveté”
definitely true. to be the informed naive is the only way forward from our current age.
You are absolutely cooking here.
This bit from Flannery O'Connor's "The Nature & Aim of Fiction" feels relevant: "It is in the nature of fiction to not be good for anything unless it is good in itself." People who tell great stories tend to be obsessed with craft, not ideas. They also tend to be obsessed with stories.
My sense is that it is probably extremely difficult for folks who make a living dissecting stories to make good stories. It's probably also pretty hard for folks whose primary diet is story-dissection. I don't have high hopes for any kind of ideological movement becoming some kind of renaissance of great storytelling, no matter how spot on their ontological propositions are, as you mention. That's just not how stories work.
"it is probably extremely difficult for folks who make a living dissecting stories to make good stories. It's probably also pretty hard for folks whose primary diet is story-dissection." Excellent.
Thanks man. The more I’ve thought about your piece, the more I think a group like the New Right is inevitably going to end up in stasis; recognizing that the only way to change culture is through story but caring too much about changing culture to tell a good story.
As it goes with these things. I still think there must be lots of people like me who were transformed by this (Pageau was the reason I went back to church) and are working on novels and movies right now and could be a spark of something good.
100%. I am hopeful about what’s to come from folks (like yourself) who woke up on the Peterson-Pageau pipeline but remain obsessed with stories.
Never mind the monasteries, I'd like to see a return to personal and familial patronage of the arts.
Yes.
So many great points to ponder!
As a 51 year old performing artist who escaped both NY and LA, and NOT abandoned all hope or my mission, even after menopause-- the line between art and entertainment became a chasm in the last 10 years. Yes, the woke stuff started it. At least in my underground community, where I had been writing a screenplay and TV pilot about the underground as I knew it, until I got canceled and my entire life was ripped out from under me.
Navigating since, I have been in CONTRACTION, getting back to simplest elements. Unfortunately, the modern world only ever values EXPANSION. I can't find collaborators willing to start anything without being shown the money first. To me, having money before you create will ruin it. I start every show or project with available materials, even if that means cardboard. First I get the 1.0 version up on its feet AND THEN worry about putting money into it to get to 2.0. Thereby avoiding putting the cart before the horse. Thereby giving creative ideas the freedom to play in the woods instead of perform well on a test.
There's also a lot of misplaced values and flimsy allegiances to the status quo-- aka the rebels turned into normies. I'm sick of hearing about all the expenses and responsibilities everyone has. What about the responsibility to culture? To humanity? What about making uncomfortable sacrifices to do something bigger than you? Let's pretend we're 20 again and that our passion IS going to change the world. And that the 20 year olds of today aren't going to know how to do it if we don't show them how it's done.
Another factor that may not be on the radar of more mainstream folks is that the underground scenes have been intentionally destroyed. Mainly since the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland in 2017 which gave police the right to shut down artist warehouses in cities all over the country. There was a MASSIVE underground world where radical ideas were put into practice and tested out-- now those spaces are just about nonexistent. No one talks about this part of the problem, but artists (like me) don't need a fancy house with a living room, we need a dreamspace with a workshop. And it's basically illegal to live and work in the same place in this country. They enforce it mightily and it has slowed me down and rendered me un-housed. Now what's left of the underground is basically limping along at pay-to-play festivals, which are really just about drugs and hedonism.
The GLOBAL part of this is a lot of the problem too. Creative ideas can't cook long enough anymore. The outliers may come up with something innovative but then it will get co-opted so fast by social media. Then it gets mimicked (if not mocked, like you said) and ground down into paste before it can even take form. All of this has / is destroying the seeds of creative revolutions that COULD grow in the mainstream culture, but have not been able to take root in this environment.
And I can barely find collaborators who can hold something small long enough without pressuring it to PRODUCE RESULTS-- the mind virus of always SCALING UP and MONETIZING has ruined what is real and true. I think that's what books DO have-- the gestation in the darkness.
Those are some of the reasons I see as to why the culture is broken and why movies suck.
Excellent. Lots to ponder here. Thanks for fighting the good fight out there.
I'd been waiting for this piece after you teased it a few days back and it didn't disappoint with the distillation of thought on the matter. My thought also leads me to challenge the status quos.
Good film, and art, does something when it reveals what we are feeling but we haven't yet been able to put into words ourselves. Like Nolan's refusal to use CGI if he can help it, our minds know what it is real or not. The same goes for when something is corny or virtue-signaling; whether it comes from The Wokery or MAGAts. Yet the rest of us are somewhere in between and want to feel like we are moving towards something better, safer, or stronger. Which, depending on our dispositions, we could feel needs to be reminisced from the past, some new combination of old and new, or some entirely novel idea. But too much (risky) funding seems to try and follow the momentum of the extreme views rather than to try and steer the audience in a steady drift from this shared ground of the many who know the extremes to be unrealistic.
And, as you reiterated for Jonathan, subtly is not the New Right's method. As it hasn't been Trump's, or now Mamdani's. (Never mind their use of a fictitious villain, but) using the momentum of these extremes does catch a lot of people in its nets however. But that will not be of help to conservatism though, as it is not "cool" enough because it is not new enough.
What is cool about it? Well, I'd say values like family as the foundation and virtues like loyalty and honor and wisdom. And they feel a little novel nowadays too.
I am most un-Orthodox in that I have no home for an ideology but foundationally believe in Christ's words. He is the O.G. humanist before public opinion gunked his words and movement up with more words and movements. I grew up in evangelical church knocking on doors, hosting tent revivals, and being an usher at faith healings. This was in 1990s California. Then I ran away from home to be homeless within surf and skate culture because I wanted genuineness.
I read and had wanted to write ever since To Kill A Mockingbird. Hemingway's letters told me to get experiences, so I'd have something to write about. I thought of joining a monastery but through prayer I knew I didn't want to hide in the world. If I was going to try and be an Atticus Finch or a Harper Lee, writing about it in ways that did more than knocking on doors, then I had to live in the world. To experience what others were experiencing. As everyone from Dostoyevksy to Kerouac did. But the best stories aren't found in film. How many of them can you rewatch and still feel moments of being seen or seeing something new?
In film, Hollywood has a firm grasp on the greatest form of storytelling. It is so because it is easy to take in and captures all of your senses. What it can't do that writing can is the interior life. Writing not only lets you experience internal thought, but it lets you walk in another's shoes to more greatly see what they are experiencing. More than that, it develops your mind to be attuned to life at a much greater magnification. When done well, film taps into that. It makes you feel, it makes you think, it makes you share the experience with others. I'm thinking about Ted Lasso the most here, but men especially enjoy the epic myths of great men overcoming much. Lasso, btw, was famously turned down by many studios before it was picked up by Apple.
I've been editing a story set in historical events as the characters struggle with Girardian themes. It utilizes the structure of the Eddic Ragnarok where Baldr dies, and Odin makes moves to try and resurrect him. All set within the American Civil War on the precipice of the Gilded Age. But this story won't be picked up by the Big 5 publishers—just as it won't be by the Big 5 production companies—because they don't think enough of the American audience. Because they see either the extremes or the same old, same old tried and true genres. Risk averse.
I think this is ripe ground for the right, and middle. America is shifting. Like Kurtz' recent article on millennials and zoomers pointed to, young folks have a lot of challenges to overcome and they want to. They want the tools to be better men. And women. But men especially, as Kurtz pointed out.
And although Hollywood holds a lot of power, with a near monopoly on storytelling, it doesn't hold the formula. That is written within us where the ever-changing variable adapt to our environment. And one of those variables is our reaction to Hollywood's bullshit. And New York's. And London's. And politicians. It is culture at large.
I should go write the essay I intended to write today though. One of the ones I hope builds me an audience so I can actually publish the story to one. Like this response however, I have my doubts anyone will read them. Which is the realist thing the right needs to address, actually making something good enough that audiences can't deny is good entertainment.
Great to read this and to feel your real struggle with it. I also struggle with the same things and I don't have good answers. It's cliche but I hope more people bother to do this sort of wrestling. It is what is missing and the actual cost of what we hope to achieve.
This is excellent. It’s helpful to remember that something as massive as Hollywood (if you imagine this means the American film making industry) is civilizationally sized. It has a body that is sized and timed at a massive massive level. Small contributions are there. Timeframe is massive, normally. You get moments like Jaws, or LOTR, or Harry Potter, but they are rare, and important. I have a lot of thoughts about this. Your piece really struck me. It’s vacation, which is great for pondering questions like this and terrible for making anything (video or substack). :) Thanks for posing the question as you did and not letting it go.
Nathan Jacobs of course has tried to make a dent in that industry. I thought he should be mentioned. But it’s difficult. It’s sort of like trying to become a professional athlete. Very very steep Pareto distribution.
Lots to talk about here.
All it takes is a small seed to grow something big. There is certainly a re-enchantment project with enough cultural juice to produce a few at the top of the distribution to make great films, etc. It doesn't have to be all of us, but just a few people to get behind. It's been almost ten years. I think the question "why haven't we done it yet?" is a fair one, if only as a challenge. The new right project by and large getting their kicks from mocking the dying order is a plausible reason for the lack of a spark so far.
Hope you have a great vacation!
Paul, you made a point that also occurred to me about the timeline infrastructure requires and the fact that a .05 batting average for greatness is actually amazing. The right is in its creative infancy here and these things take time, especially given how unorganized that side is. Also worth noting, I think, is that it is inherently harder to build than to destroy, and that is a mechanical advantage the blue church creatives have leveraged. It’s also why negative campaigning is more effective in politics. Creative subversion is a hack because the presumption we all (?) implicitly hold is that when you create art, you build something beautiful. When your brand is tearing down, you have gamed the system through sleight of hand in some sense, but can appear “productive” through a kind of spiritual destruction. I believe there are times when you first have to destroy to rebuild, but with an honest intent to make something better. The mocking of insanity is appropriate, but it has to be preparatory and in service of the building to come. The new right can do that, but had better not be naive that it will be easy. This should be spoken aloud. We are not “taking down the patriarchy” but endeavoring to work as honest builders, and that it will take blood, sweat, tears and time. Hope you having a great vacation! Cheers.
Well said.
Very insightful and well-written piece. I was particularly struck by two points you made, first, that film "has to slip through Overton windows to enter the acceptable unconscious of the culture while also appeasing global market interests," and second, that "The New Right so far fails to capitalize here because it tends to conflate correct ontological propositions (which it often has) with [...] many embodied choices." Admittedly, I'm reading a certain interpretation into "embodied choices" here in order to connect these two points, but it seems to me that together they illustrate a kind of catch 22. The need to slip through Overton windows and enter the acceptable conscious of the culture seems to pose a much greater obstacle for creators with politically disfavoured visions. For "embodied choices" in film to resonate, perhaps they have to be modest about how much of their counter-cultural vision they seek to evoke, and skillfully work these oppositional elements into themes and styles which can appeal to the dominant culture. But the catch is that these conditions may too strongly favour the dominant culture, to the point that creating successful, resonant art may not accord any possibility of significantly disrupting the dominant culture. Maybe it can only allow minor nudges of the culture which its acceptable conscious can regard as elaborations of its own principles.
Great comment - and after seeing The Odyssey, what you suggest is exactly what Nolan did. The entire move is a Trojan horse.
The fact is, every artist of every age had to work with the age he was in. There is no Platonic society that makes all art equally possible -- that would only make bad art possible. Embrace the obstacles.
Thanks. I'll have to go see it. I agree with you in principle, but the obstacles do sometimes seem overwhelming. I do wonder if, insofar as art primarily serves as a vehicle for evoking and propagating culturally ascendant ideas, rather than a medium through which ideas in high places are first settled - that being philosophy, - the main challenge we face may still be in the philosophical sphere. Perhaps the New Right's failure to capitalize in art stems from its failure to capitalize in discourse, perhaps owing to a lingering complacency and persuasive inadequacy in their ideas; and perhaps the need to embrace the obstacles in art corresponds to a need to embrace the obstacles in, for example, the academy, so that the Overton windows can be moved in discourse at the same time as they are slipped through in art. That would mean not looking to success in popular art as the most promising means of subverting and triumphing over the dominant culture, but looking rather to success in philosophical discourse. This isn't to say that art can't elicit original ideas not preceded by philosophical discourse in high places, but I do think history tends to confirm the general pattern of philosophical ascendancy in high places followed by aesthetic ascendancy in popular culture.
Here you’ve described why the political Overton window has so consistently slid left for decades. The window cannot be moved from within.
Unless you made some sort of gift that turned out to be something else?
Thank you for the call to action!
Yessir!
I'll have to revisit this again when I have the proper ratio of food:coffee returned to me, but felt a sympathetic urge to comment about 2/3 of the way through.
It seems to me about as reasonable to criticize film or tv as media on account of Marvel or daytime programming as it does to criticize literature on account of pulp or 'smut' fiction. I think people must think this way because they've never been exposed to directors like Malick or Kubrick or films like 12 Angry Men or Dead Poets Society (these for an arbitrary start). Much the same way as someone might give up 'literature' as silly if they had only read books off of airport racks instead of being guided through any number of great authors. I should first point out that they hadn't even gotten to the literature yet. Perhaps there's something more to that guide thing, too...
In fact I think film or television might just be greater artistic media in a certain technical sense in the same way Astronomy might be placed at the top of the Quadrivium. Math applied in space and time is more complicated than math in space or time alone in much the same way that art in space, time, color, sound, and word is far more complicated than art applied in only one of those dimensions. This may not make it inherently better, but I think it might explain why sometimes it feels we have far fewer great films than great books, paintings, plays, or even photographs. Not to mention that we've had the medium for a far shorter period of time than any other 'high' art, if you'll grant the presumption.
Alright, caffeine rant done. Hopefully it's helpful for a little more than enshitiffying a large language model.
Everyone loves the right and the right is a primary draw, although they are only allowed to be villains. Andrew Ryan, The Homelander, Walter White, Darth Vader. However if I made a movie or show that was essentially Homelander going around zapping people the right doesn't like and humiliating them, which I think is a fair description of similar left aligned properties, I think the risk I get actually de-banked or otherwise restricted from access to society or infrastructure is non trivial. And in this arena once you get blacklisted enough you end up in Andrew Tate waters where you have to continue living outside mainstream societal infrastructure.
It's certainly a choice to live as a martyr guerilla but it's not the 'why don't rights tell the good stories there's no reason not to' the article presents it as. The prevalence of 'the right only critiques' simply demonstrates the sanctioned scope of action from the major left infrastructure institutions.
Insightful comment but I think it taps into the mindset of the right writ large. Excessive mocking of the left is fun, but it trains unconscious victimization and lack of subtlety.
Hollywood made characters like Homelander because they were tapping into a much larger cultural sentiment than anyone who was involved in creating him. It's unbalanced, but it's riding a very particular cultural wave. If you did the same thing in reverse, you would be making even more flat and boring propaganda. The right thinks that the reason people backlash against this is because of a malicious conspiracy, but really it's because people hate obvious propaganda.
It's better to look to people like Tolkien than Andrew Tate for inspiration about how to approach a world you don't agree with.
Andrew Tate was my boundary example of a guy who can't just 'live normal' anymore, he cannot retire from being Andrew Tate and run a quiet accounting firm. To illustrate, compare Mel Gibson vs Harvey Weinstein. The former struggles with the raw infrastructure of distributors and funding et al despite his celebrity and successes. The latter had an enormous filmography despite everyone in the know knowing he would casting couch left and right simply because the infrastructure accepted him whole heartedly.
Well, humanity is fallen so that's a much larger pattern than left vs. right. Gibson did great work with what he could and that's also something to admire.
What I hate is that I know how. I'm writing what I cann and keeping the lights on but must fight both left and right for funding and help.
I've begun to believe the right is simply more interested in swallowing the left's nonsense than truly creating anything.
Nolan's _Inception_ explains how to make a resonant, positive story. It explains it by doing it as thr avatars describe the process. Brilliant tutorial about life changing stories.
The New Right is to culture what Mal was to Cobb, though.
AI art is like Inception's Limbo space. Infinitely capable of manipulation, but its unreality ultimately renders it meaningless.
Very cool thoughts.
I think Angel has done the best of tackling what might be the biggest two of the three hurdles outside of story-creation itself—the economics (which is huge) of both production and distribution, and tapping into the existing pool of talent (Hollywood actors that are otherwise still working).
The third is having an audience (sufficiently large) that is ready to receive, and I think that is a cultural problem related to your points. Angel has cracked this some by building on past successes and its pay-it-forward distribution model (for theatrical releases). It takes time to build an audience and trust. But there is a limiting problem regarding what their inbuilt audience will be interested in (not just their current size but their interest). So how to build it without alienating their base? It’s a tricky thing.
That's true and it's worth noting that what they have done is very admirable.
For my last point, I think this is very good and probably why it occurs to me: https://cultureuncurled.substack.com/p/why-i-love-liberals
This cuts through so much of the fog around this issue. Thank you for this. Many parallels to my own endeavors in music, especially the monk’s roll to the illiterate, and the “fix it in post”disposition. AI is a spectrum, as I’ve been saying recently. So much to think about here. Sad to hear the summit didn’t offer much of a response to the problem.
This one makes me want to get the band back together for a conversation
I want to talk about this, recorded or not
Absolutely down for that.
Good article, Mr Foreman. I strive to create beautiful art myself, and for a time I thought sincerity was the missing ingredient in modern shows/movies (think the bathos complaints of MCU movies from years ago), but looking at what sincere pieces I've written up, its, well, a bit too heavy handed and unthrilling. Perhaps its an overcorrection from the New Right approach you characterized as near-exclusively mocking (which I don't disagree with).
To create and not pontificate is maybe in part opening yourself up and letting things flow through the medium of your own mind, but theres a nature or tendency to filter, correct, readjust to make sure the lead isn't buried. I want to make something. I want to make something good, true, maybe even beautiful- but I can't will it or bake it like a cake, and for whatever Rightoid out there is aiming for cinema, God help them because you rightly point how much /bigger/ it goes beyond a single person and their clutch of fans.