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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   24629 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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“Citizen Vigilante" - some musings (omega-doxxing myself, hence the throwaway account)

I was 14 years old and bored on a Saturday afternoon at a friend’s house. We cajoled their older sibling into driving us and Shanghai’d a couple girls into a ‘date’ at the nearest movie theater.

Back in those days, one either called Mr. Moviefone for showtimes - please say the name of the movie you’d like to see, now - or just took pot luck when showing up.

And you really didn’t have to call Mr. Moviefone, because pot luck was always something great. For context, that year some of the top movies were: Spider Man 3, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Harry Potter 5, The Bourne Ultimatum, 300, I am Legend, Night at the Museum, National Treasure 2, American Gangster, Blades of Glory, Superbad, Ocean’s Thirteen, Evan Almighty, Beowulf, 3:10 to Yuma, The Kingdom, No Country for Old Men, The Heartbreak Kid, Charlie Wilson’s War, Michael Clayton, Stardust, Children of Men, Zodiac…yadda yadda, left quite a few out.

But on this particular afternoon the terrifically memorable movie we took pot luck on was some generic fantasy action thing called ‘In the Name of the King’ by director Uwe Boll. I don’t remember anything really about the movie except it starred Jason Statham and at one point my friend nudged me and said ‘this sucks, should we just leave?’. My buddy's instincts were spot on as that movie somehow lost more than $50 million back when that was a lot of money and Mr. Boll won worst director of the year.

To this day it's the only movie I ever walked out of after paying for, other than a few years later when watching the 2010 Robin Hood with Russell Crowe, but that was only because the guy working the sound system had it turned up to ‘permanent hearing damage’ levels. More to that story, but for another time.

Anyway, the point being my only previous exposure to Uwe Boll was that his product was genuinely unwatchable. Coming back to the present, you can imagine my surprise in seeing his name attached over and over in reference to the hottest new piece of media to-the-right-of Rosa Luxemburg.

‘Citizen Vigilante’ starring Armie Hammer (yeah, that guy from ‘The Social Network’ who got MeToo’d) is (roughly) about an American who goes to Europe and conducts a highly restrained and well-planned vendetta against foreign gang rapists and their institutional enablers.

The film begins with an extended sequence of a pretty-but-harried mother and her six or so year old son shopping in a typical tiny European grocery store. The boy asks for chocolates and the mother indulgently relents, but when he asks for another treat she says he’s had enough. Her son helps pack up their purchases in their reusable bag while she makes small talk with the portly-but-friendly cashier. As they're walking home, a visibly foreign man stabs her in the neck, and she bleeds out while her son tries feebly to understand what just happened.

This isn’t meant to be a summary of the movie as you can get that anywhere, and anyway it is not that complicated. This is about the cultural implications. I’m gonna make a listicle so you can pick and choose any part you’re interested in discussing:

  1. The movie is passably watchable enough that Mr. Boll must have really learned from his many, many failures to put this together. There are too many Dutch angles, too many quick cuts, the chronology is a mess, the dialogue is wooden, the soundtrack is a crime, but altogether this is a solid 5/10. Although I’m really trying not to be ideologically biased, the acting was quite good (especially the rape victims, which is relevant if a bit morbid), a fair portion of the scenes held some real tension, the effects were up to par enough to not take you out of the story, and, there was a verisimilitude that’s sorely lacking in a lot of contemporary productions.

  2. The topic covered is absolutely explosive, en vogue, and has some pretty undeniable aspects. Regardless of the numbers of victims or perpetrators involved, there is a culture of sexual violence common to non-European countries that’s produced some shockingly poor results. Not just upon introduction, but also with what I will laconically describe as a cheeky bit of help from above along the way.

  3. There’s a recurring motif in the film of social media accounts actively encouraging the protagonist about his work that's been reflected in reality as some fairly mainstream voices have picked up the call. Jack Posobiec is hardly a hard-right figure and he’s been tweeting about it all day.

  4. The movie was ‘banned’ in Germany (the director’s home country) by being denied a rating so it therefore couldn’t be released. What do the kids call the ‘Streissand Effect’ these days?

  5. There’s a door opening here for more media like this. Sometimes righteous movements find odd champions, maybe the guy who is colloquially known as perhaps the worst director of all time just became one? If this is the only cultural response to “One Battle After Another” it’s already firmly in the ‘not bad’ category. But if it’s only the first?

Curious for your thoughts, any signal here or just noise?

CV is porn. Not a sex porn, a revenge porn, but the idea is the same. Showing on screen something that some part of us feels good about imagining doing (even if higher brain functions tell us we are not going to do it and likely no people in real life do anything like that anyway). Or maybe not - a lot of porn looks disgusting to people that don't like that kind of porn. The message here is in the fact that this kind of porn appears to be in demand, and why. And, of course, in observing who and for what reason tries to ban it. By itself its of very low cultural value, but as an indicator of where the winds blow it is quite interesting.

I haven't watched it. I don't plan to. Don't really watch many movies at all anymore - who has the time to?

The controversy strikes me as predictable. Of course mainstream censors and commentators hate the movie for its blatant political angle but maintain that it's also just a bad movie, even as equally bad movies with similarly blatant political angles from the other side are given much milder treatment, often govenrment subsidies, and even outright praise. Movie-making has become a thoroughly politicized and instrumentalized industry.

I doubt much will come of it. If the movie were actually good, it might become a sort of cultural rallying point, but if it's merely political but of middling-low quality, then it won't manage this. Temporary outcry, partially effective attempts at burying it, and then everyone will move on.

Back in the seventies there was a series of "Death Wish" style vigilante movies that served as a B-movie critique of the dominant liberal legal order and its criminal consequences. No doubt something will serve that role in our current reprise of that history. Not sure it will all be movies, that seems a dead medium to me, but the ability to get it banned suggests otherwise.

To this day it's the only movie I ever walked out of after paying for,

Same, only movie I've walked out on.

I saw that movie at a dollar theater on a 100 degree day when my apartment didn't have air conditioning.

I still almost walked out.

In some ways it's quite an accomplishment, to have made a movie so remarkably bad that almost twenty years later we still have feelings about it

‘Citizen Vigilante’ starring Armie Hammer (yeah, that guy from ‘The Social Network’ who got MeToo’d) is (roughly) about an American who goes to Europe and conducts a highly restrained and well-planned vendetta against foreign gang rapists and their institutional enablers.

It sounds like a pretty straightforward remake of Taken.

Taken is so much more of a movie than CV is. It's like a painting by a professional 19th century painter compared to a Reddit meme.

It's an interesting affirmation that everyone understands and acts on racist phenomena.

"Taken" doesn't code 'the outsiders are harming us' i.e. whites, but this movie does. So the almonds of some German bureaucrat got activated and the movie is a no go.

It's probably the most ubiquitous and interesting dynamic in western media production and no one talks about it. But the incredible dance around never having the outsider victimizing whites is the greatest commonality all modern movies share. And if that is ever a theme, it's explored in such a way as to demonstrate that whites feeling victimized and acting on those emotions are wrong in some way.

On the flipside there's no shortage of 'brown person victimized by cruel evil white folk' movies.

Everyone understands this. Everyone knows. The only difference is whether ones brain can see the patterns or if it can and chooses to ignore it because 'evil white people' codes as real on some level in ones brain.

It's an interesting affirmation that everyone understands and acts on racist phenomena.

I haven't seen Citizen Vigilante but in regards to Taken I would say that this attitude says more about you than it does the movie.

"formal authorities are uncaring/ineffectual/complicit and it falls upon a square-jawed father figure to step in and correct the obvious injustice" is practically a genre unto itself. Death Wish, True Grit, John Wick, Dirty Harry, Die Hard, and The Equalizer all immediately spring to mind. Guys like Liam Neeson, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, and Jason Statham have built entire careers around playing this sort of role.

I mean, yeah. I exemplify Taken in my post as a movie that does not code against foreigners despite it's theme explicitly being about evil immigrant foreigners victimizing white people and then being brutally murdered by a white man.

The topic being explored here is: If the bad guys in Taken were coded brown, would it be the same movie? Obviously not. And that's an interesting affirmation that everyone understands and acts on racist phenomena. And that this song and dance is being actively played in the productions of nigh every movie. As when this song and dance is not played and whites are allowed to take revenge on the brown outsider, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

FSK ratings in Germany even take intentionality of violence into account when handing out ratings. Brutal depictions of whipping a slave in Django Unchained are not bannable, since they are, in their terms, necessary to build empathy with the victims and a disgust towards 'slavery', which translates into disgust for a white character so we can later celebrate their brutal murder. So the regulating bodies take political deliberations into account when deciding if something is verboten or not.

Well, what about disgust towards brown foreigners raping white girls? What about disgust towards activist judges that let them go free? We can celebrate a black man brutalizing 'evil whites' but not a white man brutalizing evil browns?

The topic being explored here is: If the bad guys in Taken were coded brown, would it be the same movie? Obviously not.

I do not think it's obvious at all, nor do I agree with the claim that "Taken does not code against foreigners".

Likewise I don't buy the claim that "when a white takes revenge on the brown outsider, it sticks out like a sore thumb". Maybe in a German movie, but in the US Black gang-bangers and South American drug cartels exist as stock villains right alongside Nazis, Communists, and Arabs.

Again, I haven't seen Citizen Vigilante but I think your framing reveals more about you and how you view the world than it does the movie. You being a German would explain a lot.

nor do I agree with the claim that "Taken does not code against foreigners".

Weren't the bad guys there Albanian mafia or something? That's pretty foreigner coded as far as I can see.

Well it's obvious to German censors.

Aside from that, you're not engaging with the contention. Sure, the hero kills all the stock villains, who come in all shapes and sizes, but that does not mean the villains were depicted as victimizing whites. Taken is a great example, there is a wide range of villains depicted, so there is no avenue for direct racial animus.

Another example would be Sicario. The bad guys are explicitly Mexican. The good guys are not. Except that one guy who is Mexican and gets a very specific and dramatic victim narrative. Would the movie code the same without him? No. Now if we look at movies being made and expand on this, what does the pattern look like?

I think your unwillingness to engage earnestly with the topic reveals more about you and how you view the world than it does the movies. You being a whatever you are would explain a lot.

but in US media Black gang-bangers and South American drug cartels exist as stock villains right alongside Nazis, Communists, and Arabs.

They used to. Is this still a thing, post 2020?

Are movies still a thing post 2020?

Someone has to provide content for anti-woke YouTube tirade channels.

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I haven't seen Citizen Vigilante but in regards to Taken I would say that this attitude says more about you than it does the movie.

I thought he's saying there is no race angle in Taken, but there is in Citizen Vigilante?

I understood them as saying...

It's an interesting affirmation that everyone understands and acts on racist phenomena.

in response to...

It sounds like a pretty straightforward remake of Taken.

...which suggests that they see Taken (and by extension the other movies I mentioned) as "an interesting affirmation that everyone understands and acts on racist phenomena". Too which I replied "this attitude says more about you than it does the movie"

But also:

"Taken" doesn't code 'the outsiders are harming us' i.e. whites, but this movie does.

You can have two very similar stories going over the same beats, but having two different messages.

Perhaps, but I'm skeptical.

Taken is totally about a threat to white girls by scary foreigners, though.

Maybe to an American? When I saw the movie the entire concept felt a bit far fetched and cheap.

In reality the ones 'taken' are usually young eastern European women forced into commercial rape, i.e. 'sex work'. But in the movie it's evil eastern European men taking an American girl? Not to say that there aren't a lot of evil eastern European men driving up western European crime, there are. But the movie felt like a sanitized version of that reality.

Regardless of that, calling the foreigner a foreigner or an immigrant like is done in the movie is different from actually depicting him as a foreigner. The distinction is best exemplified via depictions by Cleon Peterson.

But in the movie it's evil eastern European men taking an American girl?

And sold to evil Asians, IIRC.

Been a while since I saw the movie. The scene that stuck in my mind was this one. They all look whiter than the French director of the film. Tack on top of that a bunch of bad white guys who are pulling some strings. It was a very not brown coded affair in my mind. With a multiracial bad guy mix in the finale.

In an American context, the traffickers are clearly 'generic foreigners'. They could be Eastern Euros, they could be middle eastern, they're from a part of the world Americans don't understand and that's what's important. They might code as brown, probably do to most Americans.

As with @hanikrummihundursvin, I think the fact that your mind goes immediately to the race angle rather than the "daddy needs to step in and handle things" angle reveals more about you than it does the movies in question.

My theory is that whites are the most prone to racism (scientific racism pioneered by whites, etc) and so they should be protected from media that triggers their racism.

  • -20

In a list of 'least racist countries', western countries make up the top 17, as well as about 25 of the top 30.

Interestingly, Denmark, with its incredibly restrictive migration scheme, is No. 1 least racist country in the world.

Sounds like a canonical example of Rob Henderson's luxury beliefs concept. It's easy not to be racist when you never have to personally interact with someone from the Middle East or Africa. Much as "those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf", it's generally only possible to be non-racist provided other people (namely the people who enforce your borders and the lawmakers passing your laws) are being racist on your behalf.

Much as "those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf",

This isn't true. The early Christians, famously, did not abandon pacifism against the Romans.

It's more correct to say that pacifism (absent a non-pacifist protector) tends to get you killed or enslaved. But you can do it.

Orwell was writing in the era of atomic weapons, which I think changes the calculus rather dramatically.

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Well, yes. That’s why it amuses me.

Ah, I misinterpreted the tone, and didn't clock the username.

Interestingly, Denmark, with its incredibly restrictive migration scheme, is No. 1 least racist country in the world.

That seems logical, no? Negative experiences create negative opinions. I think "American History X" did a great job exploring the chain of suffering->hatred->more suffering etc.

Man, I can't believe we're 20, I was hoping for at least 50

Depends on what you mean by scientific racism. From my understanding of the term, White people didn't 'invent' 'modern science' because of racism, I would argue. It's because of other factors we generally associate with intelligence, industriousness, agreeableness and so forth. Scientific 'racism' is just a byproduct of that. So whilst there is some racist expression to be found in old 18th century anthropology, I'd argue most of that was also refuted by the better scientists at the time, who could make fact based observations about human population differences.

To clarify the point: Noticing that groups can differ on objective metrics free of 'group bias' is a very not racist thing to do. Even if those differences are 'racist'. Whilst ignoring or arguing against objective reality, based on 'in or outgroup bias' is a racist thing. So ironically, most people who are against 'scientific racism' are acting out a very base racist impulse, since they are not capable of parsing reality past it looking like a slight against their ingroup.

To that extent I'd argue most whites are less racist than other groups. As they are more capable of parsing reality and more capable of entertaining abstract concepts. A good example of this are mock jury trials.

“When racial issues arise in a trial, white mock jurors are on guard against the possibility of prejudicial feelings and maintain the appearance of fairness [...] Black mock jurors, on the other hand, do not demonstrate egalitarianism in any condition.”

On top of that, a lot of research into the topic drives at a similar conclusion:

On the other hand, there is evidence from the social psychological literature that the self-concept of ethnic minorities may be more dependent upon perceptions of race than the self-concept of the ethnic majority. For example, Clark (1985) reported that Black participants’ self-concept was related to their ratings of Blacks, whereas the same relationship was not found with White participants. Grier and Deshpande (2001) further reported that Black participants placed a higher importance on race than did White participants, and that this racial importance predicted consumer decisions. It is possible that group identity may be stronger among minorities than among majority race individuals, making minority jurors more likely to exhibit an own-race bias.

The study linked above also highlighted that in mock jury trials, the whites are a minority in their racial fairness. At least when compared with American blacks. Who are a lot more prone to racial bias in their decision making.

Considering all of that, I'd say it's clear whites are not being protected from their own racist tendencies, a concept explored in the movie 28 Days Later but are being marginalized, otherized and attacked precisely because they are not racist. This is easily proven by simple logic. If whites were racist, they wouldn't be in this position in the first place.

Considering all of that, I'd say it's clear whites are not being protected from their own racist tendencies, a concept explored in the movie 28 Days Later

I haven't watched the whole video (that narrator sounds like AI), but what I have appears to be straight-up schizophrenic delusion on par with A Beautiful Mind. The rest of your post is pretty solid, but, uh, are you okay?

Really? The bad guy is called Major Henry West. I thought it was kind of on the nose.

But yeah, I get it. It's a point that's hard to explain to those who're not big on film in the more pretentious artsy sense. The idea that screenwriting can be intentional in this way goes over most people's heads unless directly pointed out. And even then the concepts here are esoteric and dramatic enough that most don't want to entertain them regardless of anything else.

On top of that '28 Days Later' is 'entertaining' enough and the subtext is marginal enough that you could say it's not intentional at all in isolation. But if we recognize that screenwriting, including subtext, allegories and foreshadowing via various means in film are often intentional, even if they are not always tied to a subtext or narrative, then these things warrant explanation. Even if only to entertain the notion that, by coincidence, we can gleam this out of the film.

A better and more undeniable demonstration of explicit racial subtext in film is the Gattaca review by the same person. There are names and shots that only make sense in that context.

As far as I can tell these are generally 'inspired' by Mark Brahmins work. I find these to be more accessible and less pretentious than the blogposts though.

I don't need to see a video to notice that there's racial subtext in Gattaca. The film's message can be summed up as "even when scientific racism is 100% obviously true and a master race demonstrably exists, it's still false and the master race aren't actually any better than the rest of us, fuck logic". The Wikipedia article cites at least one review pointing out the racial angle.

But I can't even construct a particularly-consistent explanation for 28 Days Later being secretly about white rage. If it's meant to be about racial hatred being good, why are those with it portrayed as literal zombies? If it's meant to be about racial hatred being evil, why didn't anyone involved cash in on belatedly noting it the way the Wachowski Brothers Sisters did?

I did not ask you to watch the video to understand that the very explicit theme and plot of Gattaca is about an an alleged genetic inferior proving genetic determinism wrong. When I say subtext and you say subtext we are not talking about the same thing. Which is why I implore you to watch the video. I know it's 25 minutes and I know the guy has a depressing delivery. But it hits on all the notes, especially by the end where the effect of the subtext is contextualized. They're not making movies about Germanic ubermench heroes named Richard Europson who belong to the majority and dab on the minority, after all. Well, outside of Uwe Boll.

As for 28 Days Later, it's about a zombie outbreak and the stories of our main characters and side characters. That's what the movie is about. There's no secret. There's no hidden agenda. But there is subtext!

In case you won't watch the Gattaca video, let me put my definition of subtext to you this way. I don't believe the directors, screenwriters or anyone else were necessarily intentionally making an explicit commentary on how much they hate white people and think they are all one move away from dooming everything through racism and are otherwise beyond saving outside of a baptism through fornicating with brown people. But I am telling you that it's nevertheless the subtextual end result of their work.

The rage virus and those who have it are obviously not good. They are represented by white actors in nigh every dramatic scene. At least until a slave presenting black person uses it to take revenge on his white captors. Then it is good! There's subtext there. Coincidental enough to be intentional? Slavery bad? Revenge justified? Hmm.

Who is good in the movie? What do they represent? Who are they represented by? Is the bad guy called Judas Israel or Henry West? These questions have answers. Decisions were made. What emotionally perturbs the decision makers? What drives them to make the decisions they make? A million different things, of course. But this is what we ended up with.

These stereotypes aren't just racial, they're not just gendered or whatever else. But they are there. Black frizzy hair really is not accepted like straight blonde hair. This is true, at least in many peoples minds. There are also those who want black frizzy hair to be accepted. What kind of decisions would they make?

You could argue, as is often done, that the only subtext to be gleamed from any of this is from the racist who noticed because they are irrationally emotionally perturbed by any positive depiction of a brown person. But by the same token AdLand does exist. The creative output of artsy UK shitlibs being anti-white coded shouldn't be a shock to anyone, and the video linked demonstrates plenty of evidence to that being the case much better than I could ever do with words. It's a visual medium, after all.

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My point was that whites need to build this elaborate system so that they don’t trigger their inborn natural instinct towards racism too often, the natural instinct which is significantly higher than that of other races (who do not need this elaborate system because they are not anywhere near as racist, genetically speaking).

Yeah, I know that was your point. I'm just not buying the premise that whites are significantly more racist than other races. In fact the opposite seems to be the case. Along with everything I mentioned in my previous comment, I don't understand why whites, if they were so racist, would ever bother to create a system to curb their racism.

But then again, we might just be running into a problem of how we are measuring racism. I'd measure it as the intensity of your ingroup and outgroup bias expressions. I have a feeling you are measuring it as ability to carry out acts of destruction. In which case I'd argue that's not a function of racism but capability. Whites would in a similar sense be more dangerous than blacks, but not because they are prone to random acts of violence, but precisely because their violence is organized.

Regardless of that, I'm not terribly interested in hearing you simply restate a claim I already addressed. I'd rather you support and expand on it if you feel something is going amiss.

Almost, but not quite. 'Taken' is an actual movie with a coherent inciting action, rising action, conclusion, etc.

This was more like an angry letter to the editors that was just a middle finger drawn onto the page.

I'd watch 'Taken' again for fun on any lazy Sunday afternoon - I wouldn't recommend 'Citizen Vigilante' to anyone who wasn't already interested in it as an anthropological exhibit

Back in those days, one either called Mr. Moviefone for showtimes - please say the name of the movie you’d like to see, now - or just took pot luck when showing up.

Wow, I never knew that Moviefone had gotten voice detection. Back in my days, it asked you to punch in the name, and presumably the Moviefone database had mappings of the first few digits that corresponded to letters of the common movies out at the time.

I recall Uwe Boll being a somewhat household name among gaming nerds in the 2000s due to him directing a number of video game adaptations, including House of the Dead, Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark, and even Far Cry. By all accounts, all of these films were incredibly awful (I never watched any), and he was reportedly barely more than a scammer who took advantage of Germany's laws around tax breaks around filmmaking or something to earn a living while pumping these out. He also famously challenged negative critics of his films to boxing matches, at least one of which actually happened. I don't remember the results, but I recall watching some grainy footage of the fight.

Culturally, it seems pretty clear that right-wing media is the subversive, rebellious one right now, even moreso in the filmmaking industry. Given that, it's perhaps unsurprising that what seems like such overt right-wing propaganda is made by someone who's generally been rejected (for quality, rather than any political reasons) by the industry like Uwe Boll. The western film by Ben Shapiro's company which starred Gina Carano, who was kicked off of Star Wars over some, IIRC, right-wing tweets, also come to mind. Thing is, with AI, the costs of producing films is going down very quickly, and so I have to imagine it's only a matter of time before a lot more films with this kind of messaging and this level of production value come out. With that democratization, it won't just be right-wing but all kinds of propagandistic Hollywood-level feature films that will likely come out from all over the spectrum. Should be exciting to see which ones end up winning out, if any.

There's the whole distribution-control as well, of course. Democratic governments have been locking down the Internet more and more, so maybe we're in for ideological filtering of feature films via distribution in the future that's just as strong as it is now via production. I'd hope that Twitter can act as a release valve, as well as torrents, but the latter are too niche, and the former can be censored or brought to heel if governments are motivated enough.

This led me down an interesting rabbit hole as to how this guy keeps making movies if he's so bad. Apparently in his early career the tax and subsidy combinations offered by the german government were so substantial films could be major flops and still be financial successes. He claimed subsidies were often as much as 50% of production costs and any losses were full tax writeoffs, so it was at worst basically a risk free investment. Meanwhile his 'more successful' films that actually broke even at the box office would sometimes sell 3-4x their total box office run in home video sales, House of the Dead alone is likely more than half of the money his films have ever made. A lot of this information eventually sources back to the man himself though (After laundering through interview -> wikipedia), so possibly worth taking with a grain of salt.

I don't know if this is an argument for or against government subsidies.

Unless he's of the Tommy Wiseau school of inexplicable unrelated fortune it does feel like a more plausible explanation than anything

It sounded to me like he's one of those serial entrepreneurs whose main skill is talking people out of there money. Adam Neumann sorta type, equally happy to spit his game on a government committee or private art investor.

Wait Uwe Boll made a passably watchable movie? Someone warn the airports that pigs are likely to be a takeoff and landing hazard! I don't think I'd have ever expected that to be possible!

IIRC Uwe Boll was making bad movies on purpose as part of some scheme to generate tax deductions and receive subsidies (as essentially an RL Springtime for Hitler). If he's stopped deliberately sabotaging his movies, well, that'd explain a jump in quality.

@BurdensomeCount

Yes, this is the most newsworthy thing of it all.

I slightly object to Armie Hammer as being described as someone who got cancelled for being "MeToo'd". If I remember right a bunch of texts got leaked where he talked about wanting to eat a girl, not just cunnilingus, but cannibalism.

I'd say he had a very weird kink, and it got aired to everyone. His former roles were perfect looking bland white guys, and that leak ruined that type of role for him.

His family is also apparently very weird, and so some of that got aired out during this as well.

Free speech is a pressure valve. The more open the speech the faster that pressure dissipates.

Too many leaders in the West seem to want to emulate China, Russia, and the middle eastern censorship regimes without copying the most important aspect of those systems: they kill or imprison the dissenters for life. When you silence someone they don't go away. They are still there, but now even more angry that they have been silenced, and more certain that they are right. Do this to enough people and those people can build a coalition together purely on the energy of "we hate you". I think this is what helped Trump win both times.

Its silly to ban a mediocre movie by a terrible director starring a celebrity with a cannibalism fetish. The aspects of the movie itself are enough to tank to it as a piece of effective propaganda. The only thing it has going for it is the censorship.

Can't find the citation because it was video but I did see a Critical Drinker video recently where one of the plugged into Hollywood guys was implying that something about the Hammer accusations was bullshit and that he might have gotten looped into the #MeToo hysteria.

The whole cannabalism thing seems to be a bad look but at least one person with privileged knowledge (although not un unbiased narrator) is questioning the narrative.

Post still filtered at this time so not sure of the context.

I've always felt acting is the one field I have the least issues with somebody being randomly discarded on vibes. Maybe I'm too autistic but I feel the vast majority of even A-list actors are pretty interchangeable and just as much a product of snowballing investment from studios as having any real inherent magnetism that couldn't be replaced by finding somebody else 95th percentile attractive. It's not like Arnie Hammer is/was some unique character actor with a quality nobody else could bring, his square-jawed broadly handsome niche has legions of replacements. If you've been lucky enough to get selected to have millions of dollars airdropped on you for a role like that, you should be minding your P's & Q's.

the top level is filtered.

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