DIVISIVE

 

The term divisive means “causing disunity and dissension,” such as “partisan and contentious quarreling.” It isn't just between political parties; sometimes this is occasioned by bickering between competing states of "victimhood," particularly between minority groups, white women and the LGBTQIA+ community; anyone "curious" about what the "+" signifies is illuminated for us thusly:

 

Whatever. Occasionally you can find divisiveness on Amazon’s product review pages, especially those involving matters of "taste" in films.  Frankly, once you sift out the one-word or one-line “reviews”—which tend to be positive—you get a better sense of what people really think of the product, especially for films you are unfamiliar with, especially more recent ones. 

Not that all “old” movies—even from the Seventies—is worth watching. You can hate a movie so much it can be more “fun” to review than one that is a “consensus” pick. The Seventies were certainly the greatest decade for “art” films, especially of the foreign variety, but there was a few “art” films that had no excuse ever to have been made, such as Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (whose director was murdered not long after its release) or the only film I examined on this blog that I did not think had any redeeming social or political value: Sweet Movie, to be found here https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/search?q=sweet+movie

Incredibly, 82 percent of Amazon’s customer reviews were four stars and above; my addition happened to be the “top critical review” with a one star rating:

 

 

I pointed out that this film was meant to follow the “misadventures” of the character played by French actress Carole Laure, who apparently quit the film halfway through production (I imagine it had something to do with either the scene where she was forced to wallow in a vat of chocolate nude, or there was something even worse for her to do up the director’s sleeve).  I noted that

This film includes scenes of coprophilia (if you don’t know what that is, you don’t want to know anyways) and emetophilia (same thing). Pedophilia is also present, and if scenes of the remains from the Katyn massacre site was supposed to have some political “point,” it escaped me. The eating scene with frequent bouts of vomiting makes one wonder about the mental state of both the director and the “actors” who agreed to do this.

Oh, and there is a scene when a musical heartthrob shows up and there is a "medical emergency" when his "member" gets "stuck" in the Laure character's "love muscle" during sex (don't ask, it's not even meant to be "funny"). The “pedophilia” by the way was part of the “subplot” that was apparently hastily inserted to fill the runtime after Laure’s exit, involving Polish actress Anna Prucnal (who played Snaporaz’s wife in Fellini’s City of Women, which I also looked at on this blog), which she consented to reveal what was between her legs to young boys. 

Of course in Europe, "pedophilia" isn't automatically assumed if an "adult" exposes themselves to a "minor," and nudity by itself is a less "divisive" subject for scrutiny than it is in America (when I was in Germany the film poster at a theater for Eighties American sex comedy Private School just showed a character  riding a horse topless). A film can be rated as low as a "6" without much quibble about content, meaning that only those below that age required "parental guidance" even if nudity was present. But while  the depiction of sex in regard to observation by minors is a different matter, but its is unlike the U.S., where  attitudes concerning nudity and “sex” since the Puritans first landed have become indistinguishable. 

In fact a "rebirth" of puritanism has taken hold in this country; in the "old days" a film rated "R" was assumed to have nudity, but today it might just be for "language," "drug references" or just "sexual situations" not involving either  sex or nudity. In fact, "violence" alone is rarely a reason for a film to clapped with an "R" rating, which suggests the level of violence tolerated in this country--even by the "law and order" Right.

Depictions of female nudity cause great divisiveness whether in red or blue communities; but then again, who is to “judge”? The Seattle arts community was given a $1 million donation by an "art enthusiast" to create a sculpture on the condition that one of the subjects was a male in his “natural” condition. Why I have no clue; but if it was decided that there was to be a companion to this nude male, shouldn’t it a nude female of similar age? 

Of course not; it all its wisdom, it was decided that a nude man would depicted preparing for the embrace of a nude boy. That makes three sculptures of nude males in downtown Seattle, and none of females; hell, even Starbucks was forced to redesign its mermaid logo because it depicted a woman’s breasts.

Yesterday I had to find something to do because the library was closed, and I encountered said sculpture with a family with children playing around it (that's one of the kids, not a jogger). Note that two separate water fountains are concealing the figures, the man entirely:

 

 

These people obviously had no idea of the controversy about this “artistic” display and its suggestion of pedophilia (at least in minds of some people, perhaps in others a source of “amusement”). I suspect that when the fountains shut down they split when they realized that this might not be for “children’s eyes:

 

Likewise, Sweet Movie certainly isn’t fit viewing for children, and those who gave this film five stars for no good reason save that it was “courageous” to make a film with this taste for the execrable—a “cult film looking for a cult,” says one glowing “review”--don't have any "boundaries" in taste.

Keeping to the subject of films, "divisive" could also characterize what happened at this year’s Oscars ceremony, when Native American actress Lily Gladstone was the “upset” loser when she didn’t win the Best Actress for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon as many expected. Count me in that group: this was a "battle" between past racist history and the "feminist" ideology of Poor Things and nominee Emma Stone, who already won an Oscar for La La Land. 

So what "ideology" would win out? That real-life historical “CRT” stuff not involving entitled blacks, or gender victim fantasies? What do you think? It's about voters: even far-right politicians like Ron DeSantis, and those in Congress who are running for their lives in the wake of the Alabama IVF ruling (hypocritically allowing the courts to do their dirty work) try to avoid alienating white female voters by not talking about girls empowerment programs in public schools and "critical" women's studies departments in colleges while decrying "CRT" and DEI departments. Teachers in Oklahoma are fearful of mentioning Killers of the Flower Moon book to students because it might run afoul of a state law that bans books or anything that might make white students feel “bad.” But it's "OK" to make boys  feel "bad" just because they are boys, unless who want to get "canceled" by complaining about it. 

I knew that Stone had the “inside track” on the Oscar because for a lot of academy voters doing frequent nekkid scenes by an actress previously reticent of doing so is considered “artistic” if done within the “framework” of feminist “sensibility.” According to Mr. Skin’s count, Stone made 14 separate appearances in Poor Things in some form of undress, which must be some kind of “record.”

While it's bad enough that female-made gender politics films beat you on the head with their self-serving hypocrisy, I’m probably like a lot of males who are also sick of male filmmakers “speaking” for “me” with their sado-masochistic self-flagellation (more like self-flatulation) fantasies about women. Stone hardly looks like the “sex fantasy” of men we are supposed to believe she is in the film (unless you think Frida Kahlo was a "sex symbol"), in fact I think she was the only “name” actress the director could find who was agreeable to do this as long as it was in the name of “gender empowerment,” with men treated as more or less objects to (eventually) undergo various forms of “comic” abuse.  Some of us just see abuse.

More amusing was that despite rave reviews for this on Rotten Tomatoes, the divisiveness Poor Things caused for most reviewers on the Amazon.com product page was pronounced:

 

Note that there are no four or two star reviews; outside the fence-sitters, you either loved or hated this film (the definition of divisive).  This film didn’t make any money until it received all those Oscar nominations, and people were “curious” about it, and thus discovering what its political slant is and its stereotyping of both men and women. 

Before mulling over whether I wanted to add this to my video collection, I perused the reviews on Amazon, particularly the negative ones; by far the most “liked” review had 40 “likes” and was savagely negative. Yet at the time the “top critical review” was from a person who complained about a broken DVD case. The review in question has apparently since been deleted by the “monitors” who didn't want to discourage sales, but I took a screenshot of it for this post before it was removed:

 

It wasn't a  “mystery” to me who was going to win the best actress award (yes, they still use the gendered term “actress” at awards ceremonies): making “history” by giving it a Native American actress wasn't a high priority on the "woke" totem pole. Gender politics shoehorned into colorful sets “trumped” the ugly truth; Killers of the Flower Moon was nominated for 10 Oscars and didn’t win a single one, while Poor Things won four, including Best Actress. 

Such is life; divisiveness creates two subsets of agendas who either “love” ore “hate” something, and it is up to people in the "middle" to decide who “wins,” and apparently in this case shameful "lost" history lost in favor of the more powerful agenda that people fear more. 

Meanwhile, we face an election year so divisive that it makes the few people striding the fences that much more powerful. In the “old days” more people strode the fences, but today, you have more politicians who strive to compel hate of the “others” from their followers, and you are either compelled to be on one side or the other.

Now, it is fairly easy to “hate” what Republicans are doing to this country; my “impression” is that the reason why Republican voters are so stoked with hate is because they don’t like their own evil tossed in their faces (we'll talk more about that next time). But more to the point, Republicans and their "base" absolutely thrive on divisiveness and hate to a much greater degree than relatively more unself-conscious-about-their-motives Democrats, who are more apt to "compromise" to achieve something useful,  basing their policies on what they believe is for the public good.

And not, as the other side has shown itself to do, resorting to juvenile name-calling and choose to do nothing at all save pout and whine if someone takes their clubs away so they can't spend their time beating on their culture war foes like playground bullies, the "enemy" which happens to be most people in this country.