Social Engineering, Actually
As the festive mood is upon us, I thought I'd take this opportunity to do something (slightly) different. Rest assured, the usual themes relating to the fact that we live in a grotesque illusory mirage of lies conjured up by a wickedly dark predator class who want to excoriate us all from the earth, will generally remain, but will be channeled through the - perhaps somewhat unlikely - vehicle of a Richard Curtis film.
Or, to be more precise, not the film itself. A recent Independent article regarding it.
First of all, full disclosure: I like Love Actually. I do genuinely enjoy it and re-watch it every Christmas. But here is a key point: I have to watch it on my own, since the male person with whom I reside utterly abhors it. This is true for about 90% of male persons to whom I have ever mentioned the subject (followed by a shudder and a grimace), but despite this ineffable - and, I would have thought, fairly obvious - fact, the Independent article referenced above has somehow managed to spin the film as a terrifyingly tyrannical emblem of privileged male supremacy and extremist female oppression. The article is worth a read, as it is a chillingly brilliant example of just how duplicitously the media skews and manipulates stories and perceptions, in order to manicure people's minds and encourage them to see themselves as victims (which, of course, has become a deeply fashionable currency lately).
Love Actually is a romantic comedy, and simply the fact that it belongs to that genre of film immediately reveals to which gender it is designed to appeal. That is to say, women. Not men (or any of the 7,468 other genders, which didn't exist way back in medieval and binary 2003). Nevertheless, according to the Independent, Love Actually is roughly on par with The Handmaid's Tale in its examples of brutal and crushing patriarchal oppression, since, apparently, in the lighthearted seasonal climes of London in the early 2000s as depicted in the film, "all the power and agency belongs to male characters, while women are silent, appreciative, pretty things."
Ummm, WHAT?!
I just re-watched a few scenes of the film, just to make sure a few pre-plague stage-prop muzzles hadn't made it onto set, but no, just as I remembered, none of the female characters are muzzled or silent, and all of them speak - in many and various environments, including at work, in bars, visiting friends etc., and not just barefoot and blossoming with their 13th child from the confines of the kitchen sink. (Actually, I believe only one woman in the film has any children at all.) I suppose Liam Neeson's character's wife might qualify as silent, being dead and all that, and this illustrates a key piece of extraordinary twisting and omitting of inconvenient details in the Independent's analysis.
The piece claims to analyse the dynamics in all the prominent male-female relationships in the film, in order to "prove" that the men are all self-centred, chauvinistic, creepy, philanderers, but, conveniently, omits the very central story of Liam Neeson's grieving widower, Daniel - by all accounts, a model husband who has stepped up to raise his deceased wife's son. No mention is made of the touching relationship between Daniel and stepson Sam, nor of the anxiety Daniel expresses about not being enough for Sam now that his mum has gone.
Nothing can be made of this theme in the Independent's article, because it is all too human, and frankly, the aim of the piece is to dehumanise men and paint them as little more than carnal animals, Calibanesque monsters led only by their most base appetites, in order to polarise women against them - a very popular theme at the moment, as I've written about before.
Airily airbrushing out the inconvenient detail of the loving husband and devoted stepdad, the article then goes on to analyse the extra-marital affair of the Alan Rickman character, inexplicably concluding that the sultry office bimbo triumphs over the dowdy-but-loyal wife - when, in fact, Alan Rickman stays with his family and is desperate for his wife's forgiveness, whilst the horned harlot ("does she think it's Halloween?" being one of the few reasonable queries the Independent posits) is left alone in a shady bedsit with nothing but a necklace, and anachronistic headband, for company. She is painted as an amoral, grasping, materialistic homewrecker, with Alan Rickman the stereotypically weak and selfish middle-aged man led by his libido, whilst Emma Thompson's character is portrayed as veritably saintly - a great mother, wife, sister, and friend, adored and appreciated by many of the film's central characters, including prime ministerial brother Hugh Grant and bereaved friend Liam Neeson. Despite all of this, according to the Independent, Emma Thompson's character is "punished" in the film by "feeling sad", when, apparently, nobody else does. It seemed to me that Andrew Lincoln was quite sad at having no chance whatsoever with the love of his life, that Colin Firth was rather forlorn at finding his girlfriend cheating on him with his brother, and Liam Neeson was at least somewhat glum about his beloved wife's untimely demise - but these are just, as Neeson's stepson Sam might put it - perhaps a future Independent journalist in training? - "tiny, insignificant details". They don't fit the narrative, so ignore them.
Moving on to the film's signature sequence - Andrew Lincoln serenading Keira Knightley and declaring his secret love with a series of handwritten notes. The Independent declares this "w*nk tape an almost comically blatant example of the male gaze in cinema: the camera literally frames his lust, the viewer presented Knightley through his adoring eyes".
For anyone who doesn't speak "edgy liberal progressive circa 2021" (the gratuitous swearing channeling oh-so rebellious fifth-form cool), the writer is attempting to convey the message that Lincoln finds Knightley attractive. I guess in progressive liberal land, everyone falls in love on the basis of compatible personal pronouns and a shared appreciation of intersectional vegan carbon-neutral gender-fluidity, but in the rest of the (otherwise known as the real) world, finding someone attractive - and therefore, possibly, committing the deeply othering and oppressive sin of "looking at them adoringly" - usually features. You might think that being looked at adoringly was quite inoffensive, maybe even quite flattering, but rest assured, the Independent is here to correct your outdated bigoted extremism. By looking at Ms. Knightley this way, Lincoln is actually - and I quote - "cropping her, containing her, imposing limits on the terrifying object of desire".
O... kay.
Never mind the fact that Knightley's character, as the happily married object of Lincoln's non-reciprocal desire, has all the power, because she is happy and in demand, and Lincoln isn't. Forget the depiction of her character as confident, friendly, and likeable, contrasted to Lincoln's lonely, awkward, weirdo. Never mind all that - why let facts get in the way of a good bit of social engineering? The media never has before. No, clearly he is the one deeply oppressing and marginalising and otherising her because he... looks at her. Yep. Quelle horreur (yikes, sorry about that bit of outrageous cultural appropriation there, Independent).
Moving on to the entirely innocent and aw-bless 'romance' between Liam Neeson's young stepson, Sam, and schoolfriend, Joanna, you'd think this might escape the Independent's scathing screed, being as they are at primary school and aged eleven, but, apparently, it's never too early to start indoctrinating children into insanity (a mantra the liberal press seems to live by, judging by all their gushing over "drag queen story-time").
Little Sam (who looks more like five than eleven) attracts the wrath of the writer because he - wait for it - learns a new skill to impress a girl.
That's it. That's the entire sum total of his evil, oppressive, junior misogyny. According to the Independent, his earnestly attempting to master a skill - in this case, playing the drums - in order to appeal to someone he likes, is equivalent to devious master manipulation and arch-treachery almost on par with Colin Firth's character learning Portuguese so he can communicate with the object of his affections (which the Independent deems "deranged" and "an arrogant example of male entitlement"). The article declares that young Sam ought instead "start a conversation instead of pretending to like music to trick someone into fancying you". Good God in heaven (again, sorry, liberals, for the religious extremism) - he is eleven years old! I know the liberal press is a primary proponent of the "Born This Way" theory, but, in reality, we aren't born fully formed, deeply diverse and fascinating characters, we're born empty-headed and screaming. Admittedly, many liberals never really leave this phase behind, but for the rest of us, we aren't "born who we are", we have to develop - a significant part of which is learning new skills - especially at the age of eleven! What exactly is this scintillating conversation Sam is meant to strike up supposed to consist of? How well his stepdad grilled his fishfingers? His favourite type of playdough (like I said, he looks about five)?
Last time I checked, part of being a good conversationalist involves making an effort to be interested in the things that appeal to the other person, and were Sam not to do this and instead dominate the conversation just talking about himself and his own interests, you can imagine how the Independent's Metric of Misogyny would judge him then - but I must stop this terribly bad habit of trying to apply logic and consistency if I'm going to make a habit of reading the left-wing press (e.g., circa 2019: The Tories are trying to kill us all with benefit cuts! Circa 2021: The Tories are trying to save us all with free vaccines!).
The next target for the Independent's beady, bleary, apparently rather cataracty eye, is Laura Linney's Sarah and Rodrigo Santoro's Karl. The Independent deeply disapproves of this long-awaited liaison, because, the clearly very shy and unsure of himself Karl, exhibits the teeniest, tiniest, politest bit of frustration that his long-hoped for rendezvous with Sarah keeps being interrupted by Sarah's mobile phone (something Sarah's obviously deeply evil boss has also expressed finding mildly annoying). According to the Independent, this means that, "[i]n rom-com land, a man cannot share a woman with another man, even if it is her sick brother. And a woman cannot have her own life or responsibilities; she must at all times be available to service his needs".
You would think from this description that Karl had hit Sarah over the head with the phone and dragged her back to his cave, rather than looking mildly upset and sitting meekly on the bed (her bed) as she takes the call. And, interestingly, on the topic of an analysis claiming a woman "cannot have her own life or responsibilities", we as viewers know all about Sarah's life and responsibilities - we know where she is from, where she lives, how long she's been at her job, how long she's had a thing about Karl, and we know all about her sick brother - whilst, conversely, we know nothing at all about Karl, other than that he has a very muscular physique, which the camera lingers on gratuitously and for far longer than his character actually has any spoken lines.
I could go on and on (you've probably got that idea if you're a regular reader...), but I think I've illustrated the point I'm trying to make. It's not the wilful and manipulative misinterpretation of Love Actually that has inflamed my ire (well, not ENTIRELY...) - it's that this is so emblematic of how the media deviously propagandises people generally.
Impressionable young (and not so young) people are going to come away from that article fired up with self-righteous indignation about the terrible way women are victimised and oppressed by evil monstrous men, and this has powerful implications for how they think about, and conduct, themselves in society, and how they treat other people. Young women reading that article are being taught to believe it is an oppressive abomination for a man to look at them appreciatively, or to learn something new to impress them, or to be mildly annoyed if a much-anticipated romantic moment is interrupted (although I'd like to add for the record that what Karl actually says is "life is full of interruptions and complications", which seems sufficiently understanding and sensitive and new-manny to me). In essence, women are being told to read devious, oppressive ulterior motive into literally everything men do, even when they are primary-school-aged!
It's really dangerous and subversive propaganda, because - obviously - it is not just contained to this one film review, this attitude is now woven all throughout society and infests all our dominant institutions - the idea that men are bad and dangerous and predatory and evil, and everything they do represents some sort of imminent existential threat to women.
What is particularly disturbing about the Independent article is what I said at the beginning: Love Actually is a romantic comedy, which means this particular film, like the entire genre to which it belongs, is designed for, and appeals almost exclusively to, women. The Independent banging on about what a male-dominated, male-centric, male fantasy it is would obviously clearly imply it appeals overwhelmingly to men - but nothing could be further from the truth.
The Independent may well have a point that the depictions of relationships offered by Love Actually are superficial and unrealistic, concerned only with the initial burst of infatuation and not the difficulties and complexities of longer-term bonds, but guess why that is? Because it's fantasy and escapism, of the type that many women enjoy. Women (yes, tedious disclaimer, not all women) enjoy romantic comedy and lighthearted love stories and there is nothing wrong with that, any more than there is something wrong with men liking high speed car chases and Die Hard. Women may well like unremitting bleak misery as well (yes, I'm talking about Mike Leigh), but the simple fact is that many women enjoy romantic comedies and as such are the target audience of the genre.
Filmmakers know this and so, when making romantic Christmas films, produce what will appeal to their target demographic - women. Not men. So to call Love Actually male-centric male fantasy is quite literally delusional. It's made for women, not men. So imagine that you are a woman, possibly quite a young and impressionable one, who has been watching and enjoying Love Actually as a part of your annually anticipated Christmas festivities, and then you read the Independent's article, sternly rebuking you for being complicit in your own oppression and indeed the betrayal of your entire gender, for uncritically enjoying this film, rather than seeing all the terrible, staggering, oppressive evil it represents.
Such a message is telling you that your own instincts and natural preferences are wrong and bad, dangerous and degrading and you must restructure your entire personality immediately and stop responding favourably to men liking you and being (albeit sometimes clumsily) nice to you, as they are only trying to oppress you and force you to into being a "silent, pretty, appreciative thing" (which literally no female character in the entire film is except for the dead one - in fact, that description is far more befitting of the all-but-mute and topless, rippling-torsoed Karl).
Of course, one could argue that the point of view put forward by the Independent is "just an opinion", but the problem is, people don't read the media that way, as simply opinions that may or may not have any basis in reality. They read the media as a source of ineffable wisdom and fact, and as a resource from which to get their own behaviour guidance and views. Very few people absorb a variety of perspectives from myriad sources, think them all through carefully, and arrive at a balanced view, because that is called critical thought and it has been surgically excised from our culture over recent decades - after all, the panto plague would have failed on the first night were it not so.
So, what the Independent article is doing to female perceptions of male-female relationships - and what it reflects about what wider society is doing to them, too - is very disturbing and very revealing, and as such, I thought it deserved a counterview. A "fact-check", if you will (if one can reasonably fact-check made-up fantasy Christmas stories...).
Anyway... I have actually just taken a two-hour break from watching the film to bring you the above incandescent rant, so maybe the next time an article in the Independent annoys me, I should just cope with Christmas political clashes the same way everyone else does, and get another glass of Prosecco...
In the meantime, and culture wars aside (at least for the next 45 minutes whilst I finish the film...) Merry Christmas 🙂
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The mainstream media - tool of the deep state cabal, is engaged in deception in order to gaslight the average person so that they are unaware of the truth. Knowledge is power, therefore the better you can hide it from your enemy (and what better way than to program them with the opposite - anti-truth), the greater your power over said enemy.
This is why as a general rule, you can bet that whatever common narratives they keep banging on about are roughly 180 degrees from the truth.
This may offend some feminists out there (meh) but men are not inherently sexist. Neither are whites inherently racist.
They HAVE TO keep reminding us of these things lest we forget. It keeps them in the forefront of our mind and creates a general picture of how things are: men are abusive, society is sexist, whites are racist - to name a few.
Football. If 'football' was systemically racist, do you think you would see so many black players at the top level? The answer is no. And yet taking the knee has become a regular feature of games (as well as in many other elite sports).
There are ALWAYS a relative handful of dickheads - abusive, chauvinistic, racist people. Hence they will always have fuel for their lies. Even one racist shout in a crowd of 60,000 is too much, they will say. I agree it would be good if there were no racists, but implying that all of us are racist because of a few dickheads is purely malevolent and wicked deception.
Another handy rule, whatever they tell us we are guilty of, they are guilty of. Simple projection.
It is a sad state of affairs, however the answer is to teach young people these truths and in doing so we take back our power.