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I watched “It’s A Wonderful Life” which was like a, curious example of how things used to be for some people, and I try to eventually watch three movies by the same director, and the library had this movie too. I feel like “Arsenic and Old Lace” will be like a better movie, right—Cary Grant has a great voice, and it’ll be cool to see him young; and just generally, I trust Frank to be a great party host more than I trust him to bring freedom and truth to the little ones, you know.
(Frank Capra) And you know, as I was explaining to my girlfriend, Buttercup, American democracy, is ultimately founded upon Athenian democracy.
(weird hanger-on from early 20th century America) Oh yeah, Frank? What was so great about Athenian democracy?
(Frank) Well, in Athenian democracy, as long as you weren’t a slave, or a foreigner, or a woman, you had it pretty good. Everyone who could fight in the battle to protect their fellow tribesmen and honor the state had a say in the government.
(old-school micro-aggression smart Alec) Oh yeah, well I wouldn’t trust a little book-worm like you, Frank, to hold a spear next to me in the battle. (weird laugh)
(Frank) Well, excuse me: I gave a very emotional speech to my fellow tribesmen before the battle, I’ll have you know. I looked the part, I’ll have you know! (tries to get at him to punch him in the face; a crowd of people restrain him)
(Buttercup) (holds him) Now Frank, I sure think you look the part: now, if there’s anything I can do to support your life; I’d be happy to do it. I could do some drudgery for you: or better yet, I could ask my father to give you some of his money!
(Frank) That’s real swell, Buttercup. (turns) See, jerk! Somebody thinks I look the part!
Endless fun. You can’t look away.
But yeah, something about how it will be…. I mean, I don’t want to label it….
But yeah, it’s interesting how this is “how you were supposed to think”, right: and how a lot of guys ~did~ think: the good-student types, kinda privileged-and-naive-from-long-ago, right…. Of course, it wasn’t what ~everybody~ liked. Some guys wanted to see somebody get a bloody nose in a fist-fight, or for the Cavalry to burn an Indian village (full of savages!) to the ground, right; Frank kinda had a different style; governor’s mansion mythology, not frontier fighter mythology, right…. I think one of the ironies of American history/society is that if you were to tell the average frontier fighter that you thought that Frank Capra was a historical curiosity, they’d resent it immensely; and yet their great complaint against the intellectual classes is that, even when they’re not Marxists or from diverse backgrounds, they look and sound pretty much like Frank Capra, which is almost as bad.
(shrugs) People don’t want to make it make sense, right.
…. (reads the back of the DVD) So it really is another “Wonderful Life” movie, or rather, a prequel in the Naive American series, right. Smith probably makes an appeal directly the President, right, to “protect and preserve the nation’s One True Resource, our only defense against the rising tide of fascism and communism—the Naivety of the American Boy!”
And because of Smith, nothing bad ever happened in America to anybody ever again, because the males that he mentored went on to lead the lead the nation into a golden age where all Americans loved each other, and treated each other with respect, always, and without reservation or exception, fully 4% of the time, which is why America is free from the Outer Darkness of “outer space”, and there’s an atmosphere and everything! All because of Smith! [laughing until crying emoji]
Might be amusing. We’ll see.
…. Obviously, there has to be an elderly codependent named Happy that it’s difficult to respect, right….
Wow, this is boring…. lol….
It’s funny, how it’s like: it’s hard to describe it, like the Unlikable Cynics, that wear like their grey-hearted devil mask and sneer at people—it’s like, career politicians do have kinda a superficial sell, right; people aren’t cartoon villains, right—and then, like, I’m sorry, but kids don’t talk like that to their father in 1939, if he’s a weak codependent, he’s that much more tyrannical with the kids he beats, right…. But yeah, it’s like, the Cartoon Cynics vs, the Children’s Choice, right…. “It’s A Wonderful Life” is hokey: this isn’t hokey—this is propaganda, right…. It’s cute propaganda, of course, but…. And holy shit, is it boring, oh my god….
~ The message is like, “I’m an American. That makes me a good man. Americans, an American, he’s a good man. It makes my heart hurt, how good I am.” It’s like, wow…. Who do we have to exclude and bomb to safeguard our way of life, right…. God, I’m just so glad we’re so goddamn Anglo, right: we’re the Good People, you know…. It’s like, if we’re so modest, and so boring, and so good: how can we not conquer the world, torch the odd country now and then, right? It would be good for those others—bah, THEM!
~ In the Immortal Words of Krautface Burgdorf: A Kayerist! An Opportunist!; —Or, In English: “Some naive fucker!—Cynical!” [laughing until crying emoji]
~~ It’s like, God, I knew it was going to be bad, but it’s so much worse than I forecasted, you know…. It’s not entertaining like I expected…. This is what Sidney Poitiers meant when he said—I forget the exact words he used, but it was like: ‘what we all believed in God/the USA/Frank Capra/naivety’, you know…. It was like, mass delusion, you know, especially once you dig down deeper than his One Best Movie, which isn’t really so bad, given the circumstances, right…. But he made more than one movie; the folk consciousness has worse days even than we knew….
Wow. Just, wow.
…. I forgot how relaxing propaganda can be, right…. Puts you right to sleep; makes you feel good…. A little irritating, after a while….
But yeah: the looney professor and his practical wife—they uphold the society; they’re the reason why bad things don’t happen, right….
lol, PR tactics in 1930s America: punch reporters you don’t like in the face.
I’m not sure I know anymore that some law was passed against punching people in the face in the Capitol, sometime in between the invention of television and the Voting Rights Act or the entrance of independently-elected [ie non-wife] female Congress reps, right…. But yeah…. I mean, today, they’d just post another story or two, right, at the very least…. But yeah: talk about the classic male club sort of…. I mean, it’s like they were the frat boys hazing the new member, right…. It’s almost as hard to like them, as it is to like this guy who…. I mean, he’d make such a good soldier, you know: maybe not of a democracy, right: but if you needed to torch a few villages, right, (red man villages?), you’d just have to plug him into some propaganda, and the naive fucker would be blood-thirstily charging into battle before the artillery support was in place, right….
But, it’s entertaining. It’s the farthest thing from surprising. Classics are supposed to be of a high-quality: but sometimes the high-quality is merely sociological, right—it’s like a thing everyone knows even if they’ve never taken it in directly, but only indirectly ten thousand times when they didn’t even know what the name of the game was, right….
…. And yeah: it’s amazing the extent to which it portrays the government as being like a boys’ club, basically: like your reputation with the other boys—for being like a brave pirate, I guess, or some fucking thing—counts for more than legality, you know. Like, legally now it’s time to make Smith the new senator. But wait! One of the boys says that the newspapers make him look like a putz. Guys, I say we don’t let any putz into our gang—rules or no rules! ~Aw, but only a man can say a man is a man! You’re no man, Sparky; I’m a man! I say his testicles are healthy! Let’s make him a man—a senator!
~You know: it’s like, it was bad, sure—but it’s like they inadvertently made it worse than it even really was probably: because they made it the way it “should” be, right. Like, I can’t imagine that even in 1939 Washington was as imaginary a place as that, right; like they made it like Washington was like somebody’s private yacht club that you got into because of your grandfather was the whitest man in the county or whatever, right. Like, in the real world, there has to be a certain amount of…. You know: business, reality. You choose the rulers out of the schmucks you don’t hobble and enslave, but then, once they actually set up shop, they actually have to, you know, rule, and accomplish things. They have to interact with an actually-existing material—and even social!—world, right. They can’t just get up there and gawk at how their skin is literally the same color as Lincoln-Zeus, you know….
It’s like in the Bible, where it’s like, “And then we Israelites moved into the land: and we heroically murdered the entire race of sinners: man, woman, child, cow, horse, goat, and dog!” (They killed, Spot, even? They killed the family dog? [dog emoji]). And then the archaeologists or whoever are like: “They didn’t really kill everyone. They killed some people, but I mean: come on. In the real world, not everybody dies. Grow up.” It’s like, they literally made themselves look worse according to their propaganda than they were in reality, because they were literally so stupid: they didn’t know what lies to tell, right.
…. Woodcraft is an interesting idea—I assume that that’s what’s meant by a “boy’s camp”, you know—but what exactly is the government providing, if not money, you know? His idea is very like, “I’ll take the children to church, but I’ll let them do what they like all day. I’ll help out your parents, and neither of us will have to do anything we don’t like. The government will do something to help out, but it won’t spend any money”—you know. What’s he going to do, give a speech? “Woodcraft is a great idea: but we have to corrupt it with militarism. We have to remind people that the reason why trees exist, is because girls are weak and can’t fight.”….
I mean, I realize it was 1939 and war was on the horizon, but there are better ways to make people feel good, than blind devotion to conformity, you know…. (reads Wikipedia) Wow, in 1939 the G-men thought that this was like, subversive punk rock disloyalty, you know…. Well, at least we know America was NEVER batshit, you know: we KNOW, as historical FACT, that NO American was Ever Ever Bad, right…. And also, we used to think that conformity propaganda was loud anarchism, you know…. (shakes head) Like, how do you get your head around those lies, you know…. It’s like, if there were a romance and there’s like an argument so that the story goes on for more than five minutes and the fucking Baden-Powell Gang walks out, because Mommies And Daddies Don’t Fight; They Love Each Other, you know…. And what is this movie, if not a sort of love story between the people and the state, right?
…. But yeah, crazy to think about, right?:
(the mother) Oh! Propaganda! Romance! Lovely. (clasps hands)
(the father) One moment of disloyalty cancels out a lifetime of obedience and merits summary execution. I’m watching this boy, now. (smoking pipe).
~the American spectrum of popular opinion, 1939.
Wild.
…. But yeah.
“I’m Smith.”
“I’m Jones.”
“Golly: we’re both, Americans!” [rainbow emoji]
Yeah, it’s funny: the whole movie is propaganda—but it made conservatives uneasy because they like, doubted the possibility/usefulness for the system of propaganda, right. “ANY story, with ANY uncertainty or doubt for ANY length of time, for ANY viewer, no matter how stupid…. NOTHING like that is permissible. Depictions of reality are to be avoided if at all possible: and NOT to be encouraged…. Go to church…. Keep the faith…. Gossip with your mother; play baseball…. But leave this propaganda business ~alone!!!”
But yeah: it’s interesting from the historical-cultural point of view, right. It’s what people would have had to face, if they ever decided to try to become a good person or whatever—if the very idea, ever, ever, REALLY occurred to them, right….
…. I remember once I saw a parody of one of those things, like if you’re Richard Jones you’re RJ so your blues name is like, Rolling Jelly, or whatever, but he did it as, like, enter in your credit card number etc. and then you win the game, and it was really obvious and fake-scam so that you start reading spy novels and protecting yourself, right—it was parodying those gamey things—but someone actually posted their financial stuff, and someone was like, replying to them, like—You lose; someone can go use your credit card now~ and the idiot was like, debating with them, right, back and forth, right: I followed the rules, I won the game; I should get a prize. Right?
-‘But something happened on our way to that place: they threw an American flag in our face!’ ~A lot of times Billy Joel is unbearable; but sometimes he’s right, you know. People are just so weird about America, and the flag, and…. I mean, I live here; it can work out, and things in other colonial paleface countries aren’t necessarily better, and a lot of the rest of the world got torched, right…. But people are like: No! In ~America~, people would never disagree or fight, people would ~love~; they would love…. I don’t know why they lie about us: we love…. We love…. ~It’s like, have you disagreed with anyone this week? ~Yeah, three times. I can tell you about each one. First— ~No. That’s not necessary. But: have you left the country over the past week? ~No, of course not. I only travel once a year out of the country, if that. I can’t understand the relevance of that to what we’re talking about, though.
…. It’s funny how we’re supposed to like the state but not the government, you know. The ~Ideology~ of the state/the ~Romance~ of the state…. (feel the love emoji) …. But the business of governing—eh. (embarrassed hands emoji)
And how there’s like the Good Girl and the Bad Girl: and how you can become the Bad Girl, before you’ve done, anything at all, right…. Especially with that, Frank Capra movies are, disturbingly enlightening forays into the American collective unconsciousness, you know….
And yeah: in the real world, a diabolical political operator would have been able to handle his goofy protege pretty well, you know. Just suggest a different site for the camp, right. Lie, bribe, misdirect. They would have figured out a way to allow those white boys of different religions and classes to have their quasi-paramilitary camp without the big party donors not getting their special deal, right.
But yeah: America has the cutest propaganda, right. At least it used to be cute, you know: the Old America propaganda is cute, certainly. We had to sacrifice a virgin of questionable morality in a folk Christian blood ritual, of course…. But it is certainly romantic after a fashion; a romantic political story, you know—like, why, it’s almost like “The Hunger Games”, right…. lol.
…. “You’re halfway decent; you don’t belong here. So go home.”
Crowley has one of his characters say in a novel—I don’t quite remember the exact words, but that sort of thing isn’t as important as people assume, ‘The law is just a ridiculous game people play to avoid doing things the sensible way’—and it’s funny how close Timeless American Propaganda comes to agreeing, right.
It’s entertaining. It’s cute.
…. It’s a very simplified, naive take on political corruption—lots of people influence Senators; many factions~ that’s why it’s hard to tease apart corruption from the sort of normal self-interest that is in the voters’ interest, you know—but it’s very suddenly much less deluded than you’d suppose propaganda would be. I guess that’s because it’s American propaganda, you know: and Americans distrust the government. Therefore, the propagandist reasons—since we all need to get on the same page—Americans, Should Not, trust the government, right.
It’s a funny country. Since we burned away the Native societies instead of integrating with them, (even more so than in the Latin American countries), and since we cut ties with Europe very early, (earlier than Canada), and since, whatever we did, and as colonial as we wanted to be, we were in fact separated from European society by thousands of miles, by a huge ocean, and were in fact on a different territory, and needed to build up a new society, from the ground up, right—we were after all burning away the Native society in place, and not using it, right—then…. I don’t know, we didn’t have the same unbroken tradition since times immemorial, and trust in the state, characteristic of much of Europe, including England, you know. Something about violent burning away and the consequent break from the past, the breaking of tradition, puts some of the power with the little men at the bottom, men who were farther away from the centers of colonial power: more power went to the rough men at the bottom doing the breaking and burning of building an empire, you know. (An empire that rules over what was once 500 distinct nations, right.) So yeah…. Americans distrust the government. The monied elite and the educated men, the upper-class men at the center is there, like in any society, but more people at the bottom feel ambivalent about it; more people in our country want to be “loyal” to America somehow, but feel that our loyalty isn’t due to…. “corrupt Senators”, or whatever. (chuckles) We think our loyalty is due to “boy Rangers”, or whatever the hell they called him.
The USA certainly has its own culture, you know. I wouldn’t call it more distinct from other countries’ cultures than many other countries’ cultures are distinct from their own neighbors, right…. (Although we have had a unique amount of power since 1945, I guess), but yeah…. The different flavor of American culture doesn’t really come from a unique school of philosophers or professional thinkers, you know: just a slightly unusual vision of what propaganda should be, and what the relationship between loyalty and the obeying the state, should be, you know. Usually loyalty and obeying the state are pretty much the same thing, right. “The American” (if there is such a person), tends to have a more ambivalent opinion about it. In ways, we are unique, you know—funny; weird, even. We are what we are, certainly….
…. This term originated in a LibraryThing review, although I don’t suppose I’ll define it, you know—bit you could figure it out, I’m sure: but re: the “conservative id”, right; the conservative id is pretty strong everywhere, far more than we admit, but it’s especially strong in America…. America is kinda a certain style of atavism, in that sense—emotionally, if not by doctrine or by thought, right…. But yeah: the conservative superego is much more English, in the American context…. I guess jazz music, today if maybe not in 1939, is also kinda the conservative superego, but now I’m making it too complicated, lol….
…. But yeah: it’s definitely propaganda, because it’s dressing up the conservative id, and making it, honest, and rational, you know, (wtf?), and OMG, handsome—like, he’s a New York City model, is what he looks like, but he spends all his time out in the woods, probably in Missouri, or somewhere, right….
It’s interesting. We have very interesting propaganda, in this country. It doesn’t make any more sense than anybody else’s: but we put a lot of thought into it, lol.
…. But yeah: it is simplistic/naïve, right. “I’ve run that Senator’s life for twenty years!” Corruption isn’t like marriage, lol…. You can find a variety of stimulating…. Business partners. (LOL.)
…. And yeah: it’s curious, right; Man desires to have his girl be his strong, armed ally in the day of battle, right: at the most critical moment…. Although he is no way moved to oppose the laws & customs that make this eventuality even a strong possibility, right. Who is Man, right? What does he want? What does Man want? Does he want to be happy? (Hmm….)
…. But yeah: I don’t know; certainly one of the decent features of our empire is that you don’t have to literally believe in American propaganda to be an American citizen…. Although on a practical, informal level, it Can be surprising the things you’re expected to believe, to “fit in”, yesterday, and also today.
And yeah, legally: the government is not, romantic, you know. I don’t know what “romantic” means; I don’t know whether that would be good or not, if it were so—it might depend on what it meant, lol…. But yeah, the government is not romantic. It’s not romantic in 2024, and it wasn’t romantic in 1939, either.
…. It’s like a romance between two straight men, lol.
…. He was a quiet American. Very quiet, and, realistic.
…. It’s a romance between two straight men: Senator Smith, and Senator Jefferson Davis, lol….
~It’s the Lost Cause, Virginia—guilt!…. lol….
