The Critical Drinker on Destroying Heroes
The critical drinker holds forth on why modern Hollywood is so very bad. It is by design.
His most recent video on the topic is well worth viewing:
My comment:
He’s right.
There is also simply an element of Marxism involved.
The Frankfurt School, long ago, realized that they could not compete with any capitalist economists on any rational argument, so they quite deliberately and openly adopted a policy of merely accusing capitalism of being responsible for any and every evil and ill imaginable, including things having no relation to economics, such as race relations and the war between the sexes.
This was called “Critical Theory” of which one branch “Critical Race Theory” has been making headlines of late.
“Deconstruction” is Critical Theory in regard to art and entertainment: it is the approach that all stories, films, and so on, serve as propaganda for the class interests of the oppressors to cow the oppressed, including innocent boy’s adventure tales. By this theory, everything is a sinister attack by the oppressor class attempting to maintain its power; everything is evil.
Hence, the only good storytelling is propaganda exposing the stories of the oppressor class as frauds: the false mask of heroism must be ripped away.
A flawless heroine from the oppressed group must be propped in place, and this is done as a revolutionary act meant to shock the bourgeoisie. The more shocked and annoyed they are, the more revolutionary hence admirable the work.
By placing an oppressed-group heroine in the shoes of the oppressor-group hero, audience expectations are subverted, as part of a Pavlovian attempt to reorder their thinking into revolutionary socialist conformity.
Now, actually showing the diversity hire strong female character actually going through the steps of actually doing something heroic, something involving sacrifice or selflessness or suffering or self-awareness, would affirm the bourgeoisie social values and moral thinking it is the firm purpose of the revolution to overthrow.
Having the Wizard of Oz hand out rewards to scarecrows, tin men, or talking lions simply will not do, since the whole charm and point of that famous scene is that these humble heroes had in themselves the virtues they sought all along, as the audience saw when they rescued their friend from a wicked witch. In Critical Theory, to deconstruct this narrative, the wicked witch must be glorified as good, and the white-privileged farmgirl must be humiliated.
And when a Marxist gives out rewards, he is a bigger humbug than any wandering carnival wizard. Marxism grants them to those who do not deserve them and never will: the oppressed identities that he thinks actually are brainless, heartless, and craven: as when elevating military officers not for bravery but for gender dysphoria; or christening warships for sodomites.
Likewise, in a deconstructed narrative of the heroine’s journey, the diversity girl must be simply given the medal, the diploma, and the testimonial of hero and scholar and philanthropist without ever being shown earning any of those things.
The purpose is not to entertain the audience with tales of soldiers and saints shown doing admirable acts. The purpose is to condition the audience to invert normal morality.
Got that? Under Marxist theory, entertainment is not meant to entertain the audience but to shock, annoy, and anger them.
Mission accomplished, Hollywood.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
