One more word on the hypocrisy of our times

 

I’ve talked enough about the hypocrisy of this world, about powerful criminals getting away with their misdeeds, because they have an uncanny ability to con millions of people into believing they are “victims” just like they are (Donald Trump). If Elizabeth Holmes is acquitted and “Sunny” Balwani is convicted, then we can be certain that there are two standards of what constitutes “guilt” in this country, depending on your gender and skin color. Who is looking out for the people who are lied to and cheated by such people? Maybe not no one, but certainly not enough to actually be able to turn back the tide even an inch, as we have seen in the past year concerning Joe Biden’s spending bill meant to advance the cause of working people and the future of this country.

Hypocrisy is just everywhere. I hate movies that are just an excuse to sell violence, which if you watch the trailer for The 355, you get the impression that women get off on violence just as they accuse men of doing. So much for being morally “superior”; the “good guys” in films like this are paranoid schizophrenic killers who mask their true selves to gullible filmgoers. I suppose it just isn’t “exciting” not to leave a trail of bodies as John Drake and MacGyver tended to avoid; you have to use your “head” and wit for that kind of thing. And make no mistake—the people who make these kind of films are in it for the money, feeding off certain members of the public’s own fantasies of mayhem and violence in a country that is rent with violence and mass shootings. How many people fantasize about being another Kyle Rittenhouse? Do we really want to find out?

Why is violence “celebrated” these days? Why do people “get off” on this kind of thing? Revenge fantasies? The premises of films like this (as mentioned, the trailer of The 355 focused on the “violence” part to “sell” it) is for a generation that wants cheap thrills written in red. In the “old days,” the “good guys” in espionage capers faced-off against those who also thought they were the “good guys” for their cause or country. Of course we can blame James Bond for starting the trend toward body counts, but then again Bond was “human” and needed gadgets, fast cars and brain muscle to get himself out of scrapes—not phony, unbelievable “prowess.”

But even Bond sometimes felt some moral qualms about what he was doing and who was hurt by it. As I pointed out in my post on Seven Samurai, violence in reality is a dirty, ugly business where the real heroes are those who sacrifice themselves for a moral cause—not merely being the “other side” of the same bad coin, just serving another “master”—and the survivors are rewarded with nothing more than the knowledge that they fulfilled their moral duty, not the “satisfaction” merely of the “kill.”

Keeping on the subject of hypocrisy in popular “entertainment,” if you are going to do a remake of a film that has an important Hispanic theme, you could do better by remaking El Norte rather than West Side Story, since people might actually learn something rather than having their stereotypes confirmed about jobs and gangs. Stephen Spielberg’s movie—which has received great reviews from everyone who isn’t Latino—unbelievably downgraded the Puerto Rican women from garment factory workers to charwomen. And let’s observe here that the most recent big-budget Hollywood films that were Hispanic-themed trend away from addressing current issues; for me the only “current” issue that West Side Story addresses is Hispanic women choosing to be Anglo men’s strumpets.

Is anyone interested in the stories—often dangerous—of families escaping violence in some Central American country that was stoked by American economic, social and political interference over the past 100 years or so? What about making a thousand mile trek to the border (i.e. El Norte), and what those people endured along the way for some “better” life? I mean, what is inside the minds of these people, especially bringing their children? What are they thinking when their children are separated from them? Don’t we want to know the stories of these people that are not just sound bites or static images, or racist or ignorant commentary on cable news shows?

And then there was the criticism of the film version of  Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage play In the Heights, which received great reviews but not enough interest to cover its budget (although it was nowhere near the Heaven’s Gate-like bomb that Spielberg’s film is turning out to be). This time the problem isn’t Hollywood’s failure to cultivate Latino stars (of course through violent action movies—but then again you can’t have anyone Hispanic taking vengeance on his racist oppressors), but because Miranda is not allowed to tell the story of his people without upsetting some other people, as if there isn't enough bullshit to deal with already.

Miranda, it seems, felt obligated (or was forced) to apologize to black activists because not everyone in the film is Afro-Latino. There are in fact plenty of “Afro-Latinos” represented in the film version, in fact two out of the four main characters are black, so that makes 50 percent. But no, they have to be all black in Washington Heights, or you’ll be accused of “colorizing” the neighborhood. Everywhere in the media, whether in films, television programming or commercials, blacks are represented to the point of being vastly over-represented. See, we are not “racist” says the white people who produce and bankroll the media; but no: you only have to be racist against one group to be one, and here we see black activists being racist too.

Blacks do not go to Hispanic-themed films—even “Afro-Latino” films. There were plenty of black faces in Encanto, but the demographic breakdown of theater goers to see the film was less than five percent black. Why should anyone be surprised? Remember when a baseball player, Tori Hunter, claimed that Afro-Latino players were “imposters”? But they can still be used to make a racial politics “point” if necessary. Secondly, the people indigenous to Latin America didn’t originate from Africa but from Asia (Afro-Latinos were originally “imported” for slave labor by Europeans).

But more important is the fact that American prejudice against Hispanics is not directed at “Afro-Latinos” but at those of “brown” skin for political and social reasons, and that is largely because they have no representation in the news media, and so their stories are not being told the way they want to tell their own realities. We only have to look at the differences in the way the media portrays black and Hispanic migrants: the media was so “outraged” by border agents using horses and lassos to “round up” Haitians that the Biden administration banned their use—but only in regard Haitians, when for decades no one seemed to have a problem with border agents using horses and whips on brown-skinned people—and apparently still don’t. What hypocrites.

I realize that people have a right to their own concerns, but that doesn’t give them the right to deny others their right to do so out of petty grievance, selfishness and “entitlement.” After all, “brown-skinned” people were here tens of thousands of years before some other people—and the “invaders” act like they still don’t know that, or want to; they've already spent their "guilt" on other groups they fear more.