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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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If you've not seen this one, it is a story about an unusually talented blue collar laborer played by Matt Damon, presumably because everyone liked him as an unusually talented blue collar laborer in Stillwater, Good Will Hunting, and, uh, that artist guy in Titanic maybe? (Kidding!)

I'll engage with the rest of the post later, but I realized that The Departed wasn't a movie about multiple personality disorder like a third of the way into it.

Just checking my memory: That's the one where Matt Damon is secretly groomed for a job in the police and a gang by the gang and the police, then becomes an undercover officer and a mole and has to investigate himself and himself? The most unbelieveable part was when his girlfriend was assigned as his police psychologist. That's a clear conflict of interest.

No, that's the one where DiCaprio is secretly groomed for a job in the police and a gang by the gang and the police, then becomes an undercover officer and a mole and has to investigate himself and himself.

Speaking of the girlfriend/police psychologist, I made a reverse mistake to orthoxerox when watching the film, thinking that they were 2 different people. I found myself wondering why they decided to add another contrived parallel, not only casting 2 very similar looking actors as the 2 lead roles, but also casting 2 very similar looking actresses as love interests to those characters. It was close to the end of the film that I picked up that they were the same person.