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Notes -
Imagine the following hypothetical movie:
The protagonist is a middle aged white divorcee, whose ex-wife has unjustly poisoned his daughter against him, leaving him with very little to live for. He is very bitter about the state of the modern world, and believes America has gone down the tubes. Finally, he snaps, and with the help of a female accomplice, goes on a cross-country Natural Born Killers type murder spree, mowing down all the people he blames for the deterioration of society. And it's not a dark Oscar bait psychological drama, it's a light-hearted comedy that encourages the audience to cheer on the bloodshed.
First of all, such a movie would almost certainly never be made. Second of all, if by some miracle it was, it would be abundantly clear to everyone that it was shamelessly partisan wish-fulfillment produced by particularly bitter, particularly edgy right-wingers.
In fact, such a movie does exist. It's called God Bless America and it came out in 2011. But no one who saw it when it came out would have mistaken it for a right-wing manifesto; just the opposite, the Bush-era liberalism of the film's creators is so unabashedly on display that it feels like a screed from the other side.
I saw this movie back then when I was in middle school. Most of the politics went over my head, and I enjoyed it on the level that most teenage boys enjoy movies where a lot of people get shot. I rewatched it recently and found it fascinating what a political time capsule it is.
The protagonist, Frank, is exactly as I've described him above. While "middle-aged white man who thinks America sucks now" is a wholly and purely conservative caricature in 2023, the film is almost totally on his side. In the opening scenes, before Frank embarks on his killing spree, he gets to deliver a few author-insert monologues about how society has gone to hell. This scene is pretty interesting. "What happened to America?" is firmly right-coded, but the things Frank is angry about in particular are things that 2000s liberals didn't like. He's ranting about the vulgarity of "gay-bashing" and "xenophobic" radio shock jocks, which he views as emblematic of the decline.
What finally sets him off, is he gets a terminal cancer diagnosis. Since his life already sucks in every other way, he decides to commit suicide, but while he's about to shoot himself in front of his TV, one of those "Sweet 16" reality shows that were big a few years ago comes on, and he finds Chloe, the bratty, spoiled star so annoying that he decides to kill her first. So he tracks her down to her school and murders her, and then goes back home to commit suicide.
However, one of Chloe's classmates, Roxy, who also hated Chloe, witnesses the murder. She follows Frank home and ultimately convinces him that there are so many more people who need to die. So together they embark on their killing spree.
Not all of Roxy and Frank's targets are political (for example, people who won't shut up at the movies, and inconsiderate drivers), but filmmakers' politics come through pretty clearly when they mow down thinly-veiled stand-ins of the Westboro Baptist Church and a thinly-veiled stand-in for Limbaugh/Hannity type conservative commentators.. In the finale, they go down in a blaze of glory while shooting up a thinly-veiled 'American Idol' stand-in show.
This wasn't a monster hit or anything, and as far as I know it got pretty mixed reviews when it came out. But I think it's sort of fascinating in that filmmakers with the same politics, apparently mainstream US liberal, would never make a movie like this today.
The basic premise of likable spree shooters you're supposed to root just wouldn't fly now for one. Which is interesting on its own. Mass shooters have been present in the national consciousness for decades, but this sort of plot feels more taboo than it would have been even a decade ago. Nowadays "spree-shooter" is more likely to suggest in the popular imagination a political extremist, while back then it was more something that people just did because they were nuts or because they had personal grievances at work or school.
Frank's murderous hatred of modern American society and longing for the good old days, even if the specific things he calls out are things liberals think are bad, is much more firmly right-coded now. And some of the specifics, such as railing about consumerism and the shallowness of modern entertainment, have also become more common on the right over the past couple of years.
When Frank kills Chloe, we're supposed to get some cathartic enjoyment out of it, because who doesn't hate reality TV stars? Nowadays with sexual harassment having so much more salience in political discourse, I doubt any director would film a scene where a middle-aged man murders a teenage girl because she's just so vapid and annoying, and portray him as the good guy in the situation.
There are a bunch of jokes through the movie about how Roxy and Frank are totally not fucking, which would be unlikely now for the very same reason.
Watching this movie in the 2020s is a very bizarre experience for me. It was like a time machine. I don't have any more conclusions to draw from this, just that it's interesting how strongly art can reflect culture, and how strange those reflections can look a few years down the line.
I watched Idiocracy (2006) recently and had a similar experience. Sure, it takes hard swipes at Bush-era conservatives, but the fundamental premise is about how intelligence is heritable (this is, in fact, just assumed without discussion) and how educated populations aren't having kids.
Also Team America World Police hit differently in a 2023 in which opinion seems to have swung back towards "actually, some intervention might, hypothetically, be for good" with wars of violent conquest ongoing in Europe and potentially elsewhere.
I wouldn’t call Idiocracy particularly conservative for that reason because the mainstream right doesn’t particularly believe in the hereditability of IQ either, that’s extremely online DR types.
The mainstream right absolutely believes in the heritability of IQ, they just don't think about it much and don't believe in group differences. I think in fact almost all normies (mainstream left or mainstream right) believe in the heritability of intelligence, in that they'll predict that smart parents will have smart kids and dumb parents dumb ones, but when you make it explicit those on the left go into social respectability mode.
I have read this take so many times on this forum and every time I read it I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone. Where did you grow up?? I grew up in the midwest in a non major city and group differences were so obvious and apparent and openly talked about my entire life that I don't understand how you think half the country doesn't believe in them. The mainstream right absolutely believes that group differences exist, I would estimate that the most mainstream portion of them believe that the differences shouldn't matter and we should try to broadly accept the differences if not correct for them, and the bulk of the rest believe that the differences shouldn't matter, but do, and that trying to do anything to correct it is a fool's errand at best and a recipe for harrison bergeron style dystopia at worst. I don't think this is an extreme online position at all, I can imagine anyone in my grandfather's generation saying it implicitly to friends and family and anyone in my father's generation understanding it but perhaps not saying it.
Note by group differences I'm talking about innate differences in intelligence here. I think the mainstream right (and much of the normie left, though they'd never admit it) believes in behavioral group differences. And certainly my grandfather believed in group differences in all sorts of thing (and not just for blacks) and would tell you about them -- but he represents the mainstream right only in as much as he passed away some time ago.
I think everyone knows about innate differences in intelligence. Growing up everyone knew advanced classes in school are mostly white and Asian and very few blacks. The school I went to in the suburbs had few blacks and none of them were in advanced classes while all the Asian kids were. I can guarantee you I'm not the only person who noticed this, even in elementary school I think everyone knew that Asians are smarter and blacks are less smart. If you think no one has this figured out I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah it always shocks me how many people seem to sincerely believe in blank slateism despite 1. Recognizing heredity in individual families and 2. Noticing racial stereotypes being so evidently true in real life. When I was a kid and all the adults said that the reason Asians were smart and blacks weren’t as smart was “poverty” or whatever I always assumed it was just being polite. Like it registered the same to me as when little league coaches would tell kids they were batting last to “balance the lineup” or something. I always just assumed everyone privately believed in innate group differences but didn’t like talking about it, but tons of people insist it’s a crazy idea even on anonymous forums so I tend to believe they sincerely think that
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