April 20 is a popular day for fake events, such as the 1999 Columbine massacre, the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the 1978 Korean Air jet being forced down in the Soviet Union. It is also Hitler’s (supposed) birthday. The Ludlow Massacre also happened that day.
First, the symbolic significance of that day?* The only thing I have ever suspected is a numeric connection. In a non-leap year, it is the 110th day of the year. Eleven is a heavily used number in freemasonry, along with eight and 33. That’s all I can do is suggest that, as many of the events attributed to that day are famously fake.
I read the Wikipedia piece on Ludlow last week, and have been sitting on it to let it percolate. Much of it seems very odd. The official story, and what I have believed without evidence or research for years, was that the Ludlow victims were machine-gunned down by Rockefeller agents. According to my reading, two children, Joe Petrucci, age 4, Frank Snyder (11) died of a gunshot wounds. Five other adults were shot to death. The remaining 13 died of asphyxiation and/or fire. All but two (11) were children.
Let’s backtrack. Why the confrontation?
In 1913 the United Mine Workers of America organized a strike in coal mines in southern Colorado. There was a lot of violence outside of Ludlow, with the reported Colorado Coalfield War (1913-1914) claiming the lives of “69 to 199” people. That if you notice, is terribly imprecise for what was called “the deadliest strike in the history of the United States.”
Generally the strike was justified, as working conditions were dangerous and terrible. Further, work done to improve mine safety, called “dead work” was often unpaid, leading to Colorado’s very high 7.06 deaths per 1,000 workers, meaning that perhaps 112 coal mining deaths could be expected in any given year. (In 1913 there were 110 deaths in Colorado coal mines, a circular number, that is, what is predicted is what already happened.)
In 1914 there were officially 15,864 coal mine workers in Colorado. In the period 1884 to 1912, there were more than 1,700 mining deaths in the state. The math doesn’t work here, as that adds up to 59 deaths per year, not the 112 calculated above. I can only assume fewer workers and fewer mines in operation.
We all have heard of the “company town,” though few have experienced it. It’s not a completely terrible thing, as company towns brought a better standard of living to miners than they would otherwise have. But if workers were to strike they would be ousted from the company towns, and were on their own. UMWA provided tents with wooden platforms for housing of striking miners and their families, hence the situation at Ludlow, a tent town.
On the morning of April 20, militia members installed a machine gun on a ridge near the tent camp, says Wiki. At the same time, two explosions were set off to draw the attention of National Guard units in nearby towns, so the people in the tents knew they were in danger. Miners took up positions at the bottom of the hill, and when the militia opened fire, “hundreds of miners and their families ran for cover.” Says Wiki.
There must have been some poor shooting going on, or more likely, the men operating the machine guns did not aim to kill. The machine gun at this point appears to be an intimidation tactic.
Three miners’ deaths had already happened by this time, says Wiki. Camp leader Louis Tikas and two others had left to negotiate with Major Patrick J. Hamrock. During “negotiations” two militiamen held Tikas as Lt. Karl Linderfelt broke a rifle butt over his head. Tikas and the two others were later found shot dead, Tikas in the back. Says Wiki. The bodies were put on display near railway tracks, again, says Wiki. They were sending a message.
By 7PM on April 20, the camp was torched and in flames. The militia then descended on it in order to search and loot.
Four women and 11 children were hidden in a pit dug under one of the tents. Two of the women and all of the children died of suffocation. This is what became the “Ludlow Massacre,” not Rockefeller agents machine gunning miners, but women and children holed up and perishing of smoke inhalation.
What strains credulity is this: Those women and children would have to have been abandoned by the men of the families, left to die. I do not see that happening. I see men, frail and faulted as we all are, attempting to rescue their wives and children.
“Ludlow Massacre” became a rallying cry henceforward. 13 people are said to have died under that tent, and three others (the Tikas negotiating party) were killed away from Ludlow. That is 16 of 21, one of whom is listed as an innocent bystander, meaning that there were a total of four gunshot deaths that day.
The pit under the tent was obviously dug to protect women and children from gunfire, but there had never been gunfire prior to 4/20. Digging a pit was a massive undertaking. By the time of the fires, most everyone had escaped the scene, many behind a railroad locomotive deliberately placed to provide escapees shelter from bullets. The militiamen and soldiers who set fire to the camp could not know they were there and would not deliberately murder them.
Strikes are nasty business, strikebreaking even nastier. But this incident was not intentional murder of innocent people. If real, it was a horrible accident. Who was responsible? The miners? No, they were merely attempting to protect the victims by digging the supposed pit. The militia and armed guards? No, even as strikers want to demonize them, they would not have intentionally killed all those women and kids. People do not behave that way.
John D. Rockefeller? No. He did not wake up on April 20, 1914 having decided to kill innocent women and children. However, he, as a major stakeholder in the company being struck, was accountable. He allowed a situation to get out of hand, and created the circumstances against which miners rightfully had grievances that, unanswered, justified a strike.
Prior to Ludlow, the UMWA presented seven demands to coal mining companies. They were
- Recognition of UMWA as bargaining agent.
- An increase in pay for miners based on reduction of daily coal mined.
- An eight hour work day,
- Compensation for “dead work.”
- Weight enforcement officers elected by miners.
- Elimination of company stores, that is, at least the requirement that miners use them.
- Enforcement of existing Colorado laws concerning mine safety and other matters.
All demands were reasonable. All were rejected by the companies. The ground was laid for a strike. In this sense, accountability for the alleged deaths of the women and children can be placed on the doorsteps of the mining companies.
In the wake of Ludlow, there was a ten day large scale guerilla war against companies and guards. Perhaps 50 people died. Here I would say that the miners were accountable, and the UMWA, which is said to have distributed weapons to the miners, as well. But remember that Ludlow itself, while (if real) was an unintended tragedy for women and children, was seven deaths, one a bystander. While all the deaths are tragic, in the bigger picture, it was a small death count compared to what had happened before and after. I would not call it a “massacre,” not in the sense of deliberate mayhem, but rather a smaller battle that was part of a larger war.
The Ten Day War ended, we are told, when President Wilson sent in federal troops to disarm everyone. John D. Rockefeller engaged W.L. MacKenzie King, a labor relations expert, to help him develop reforms. And the reforms (paved roads, recreational facilities, worker representation on committees dealing with working conditions and health) might have really happened. The miners voted to accept Rockefeller’s attempt at reform and reconciliation.
Indeed it appears that things improved in the aftermath of the Ludlow confrontation.
______________
* It is really odd that the preceding day, April 19th, the 109th day of the year, packs some heavy-hitting events, such as the start of the Revolutionary War and Paul Revere’s ride, Castro’s resignation, Charles Manson sentenced to life in prison, the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995 and the Waco Massacre in 1993. I have written about Waco in depth, but the rest should be labeled as “under review.”
Piece of Mindful 
Chances are this was a problem reaction solution scenario. It appears to have been a ‘staged event’ that perhaps got out of hand or perhaps is still mostly fiction.
Rock could not be the only miner giving these better working conditions or he would go out of business so it’s necessary to give the union some clout and force everyone else down the same road. Most of the things these billionaires do actually makes good sense.
The billionaires might be in on it all together but not all the millionaires are. Managing the world can’t be done by dictates it requires staged events.
Profits increase (prices go up) fly by night operations can’t work due to onerous regulations, conditions improve especially for management who aren’t hated anymore. Win win win
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I share your doubts about its authenticity, especially the 11 children. Add that to the 4/20 date, another 11 reference, and it appears a contrived event. Wish I could be sure. The Wikipedia account smacks of plausibility.
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This event can forever be used by labor organizations as a need for their existence. Has to be a catalyst for people to buy into and get onboard especially if it requres one to pay a percentage of their income to belong to an organiztion, that has their best interests and job security in hand. Those demands were not unreasonable, yet in those days things were different. Modern times would be a compromise with the bargaining unit and a small payout to the labor membership for a contract’s acceptance.
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Most of the things these billionaires do actually makes good sense.
It’s taken me a long time to see the truth of this. I’ve been at a disadvantage–as I think most people are–because I’m always looking at the world through a “greater-good,” “love-of-humanity” lens. From that perspective, the billionaires’ actions often seem crazy and even self-defeating. I want to believe that their psychopathy blinds them to important truths and that this blindness will bring about their downfall. After all, that’s what always happens to the bad guys in the novels, movies and TV shows that the billionaires fund and distribute through their publishing companies and studios. But they fund and distribute those stories for our consumption because they know it’s a lie, and they know that as long as we believe in that lie, we’re fucked. In the billionaires’ world, the real weakness, the real Achilles’ heel, is empathy and a concern for the ultimate good for mankind.
I know little about the Ludlow massacre, but I’ve been following the current Writers Guild of America strike, and it seems to me that the writers are loudly and passionately demonstrating exactly how and why they’re going to lose–or, perhaps, have already lost. In their minds, the billionaires are too stupid or crazy or short-sighted to see that if they turn writers into mere gig workers who simply re-write and polish AI-generated material and get paid little for their efforts, the entertainment industry will collapse. Of course it won’t. Audiences will accept garbage, and the billionaires know it. They also know that many, many hack writers in the WGA have long been generating garbage that has benumbed and dumbed-down audiences enough to the point where they will now accept computer-generated garbage. As long as they’ve got human actors and human directors/overseers to sprinkly enough tingly emotion atop AI-generated junk, the billionaires will be fine. And, over time, the need for those actors and overseers to be human will diminish as well.
I really want to believe they are wrong about this, but I don’t think they are.
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Interesting points.. on a related line about those wish fulfillment stories, I’ve long been mystified at how the heroes are often iconoclasts, who have to defy their organization, buck the system, think independently, etc.. so evidently viewers fantasize about being that person, even as most are tribal, company men, my team is always right, types, in the real world.. Also just the incredible idealism and integrity of many movie heroes, apart from any iconoclasm. People consume all this programming that exalts noble ideals, and then find that all compromised in virtually any organization they might work for or join (unless they can accept whatever fig leaf is offered to cover it.) Of course, in the past couple decades there have been more anti-heroes in entertainment that reflect these conundrums. And gangster movies have long appealed to a fantasy of outlaw self interest.
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TimR, yeah, although the anti-heroes and gangsters are just as normative as the Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford heroes. They may buck or defy the system, but they don’t reject it or go to war with it. They’re just battling for some form of personal gain or concession from it. And I think fictional heroes and anti-heroes feed the same sort of complacency that keeps people invested in politics and the news, perpetually deluded by the idea that some new leader will emerge who will fix everything for us. Some people in our outsider demographic are excited that RFK Jr is talking about Big Pharma fraud and Covid chicanery. But only a hero in a fictional movie would get anywhere by publicly exposing status-quo-upending views and intentions the way he is doing. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd continues to stand by its anti-hero.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the fake news people believe in is already AI-generated. If it’s not, it will be soon enough. Why shouldn’t movies and TV shows be too?
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They do sometimes go to war with the system for noble ideals… Wasn’t James Bond always going rogue? To do the right thing? I used to watch 24 and that was often the dilemma for Jack Bauer.. defying orders in the name of a greater good, and/or if his superiors were secret bad guys and so forth.. or just innocently mistaken, idiots and so forth. I guess it could promote a savior complex, but doesn’t the audience identify with the hero, and thus get “programmed” to embrace similar ideals? Years later in real life, confronted with some ethical dilemma, will they feel more conflicted about obeying orders they know are harmful.. or is all that programming just brushed aside effortlessly. And why is that message so often the one being programmed, anyway, if “they” want a bunch of lackeys? Maybe it’s just “good entertainment” (sells tickets) and doesn’t really have much impact, so who cares..
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Maybe a bit of a different perspective here … writers’ strike. My frame of reference is very limited, but I remember watching Jon Stewart’s Daily Show during the last one. They put out a show every night, but it was not funny and he was not very witty. i thought perhaps he was a fake. Could it be?
I think there are many, but I will mention two professions where you really have to be good to survive, comedy and writing. Comedy is the one I pay most attention to, as I intuitively know when someone has it or not, as do most people. Comedians get immediate feedback via laughter. Screw the critics. (As Jerry Seinfeld said, he did the show, got his check, and was leaving town now. Why would he care what a critic thinks?) It is a very hard profession as good comedians have to be both original and genuinely funny. Many of them simply go blue to survive. This is especially true for women, as men are generally better at comedy than women.
As to writing, it is level of expectation. I do not expect a Michael Connelly detective book to deliver a tale so enthralling as the script behind Sixth Sense, truly good writing in my view. They have to deliver.
Pundits, editorial writers, climate scientists, politicians, virologists, physicists, medical doctors … can all fake it. Add to the list for your own enjoyment.
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Writing is more subjective than comedy. As Truman Capote said of Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac, “That’s not writing; that’s just typing.” I actually liked On the Road” , feeling the emptiness at the end was the writer’s intent. If it was good comedy, we would all know to laugh.
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I’ve mentioned my shaky public suburban formal education before, maybe that is the reason I had never read On The Road. However, just recently I checked it out from the library. I made just one chapter… and I was counting the pages until that ended. Nothing for me there – especially stylistically. Just typing”, indeed.
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Not sure in what sense you mean Stewart was maybe “a fake”?
I agree and disagree about comedy.. I think there is a craft/ technical element that most anyone could learn or improve with practice, expert instruction and study. Of course unlike other craft skills, one must hazard the pain of bombing on stage, which makes the idea of learning it much more intimidating than taking up knitting. But there are formulas, principles, rules even lol that can be internalized.. I base this on a book I read once by an old emcee, Fred Allen I think, called How to be Funny. Sounds absurd, but he actually had many practical insights, and what looks like spontaneous brilliant wit on stage, is often just application of some general principles.
That will only get you so far though – no matter how much desire and persistence, even basic aptitude, there’s still a line between that and being some comedy genius who’s inimitable.. I agree it’s a unique artform, the comedy gods don’t smile on us all equally.. alas. But we could all do better if we tried 😂
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I saw Conan O’Brien interviewing Mel Brooks, and at one point Brooks said to him matter-of-factly that he was “naturally funny.” I was only barely aware of O’Brien at that time, but on Brooks’ word, I looked into him and found perhaps the funniest man alive. The concept of naturally funny is something that Lorne Michaels has commented on, that (his words as I recall) there are only 900 funny people on the planet. With Saturday Night Live his job is to spot them and develop them. He’s got a remarkable eye, aand has spawned scores of successful careers. The show had a great cast in 1975 when it first aired, and then in 1980 when Dick Ebersol took over, it went into decline. Michaels returned in 1985 and rescued it. Ups and downs of course, close to cancellation at times, but still, a remarkable 48 year run.
Conan was a former SNL writer working on the Simpsons with no television time to his credit when David Letterman was promoted to CBS Late Night. Michaels suggested to the people looking for Letterman’s replacement that they should give Conan a shot. Rocky start and all of that, 28 years later O’Brien retired after an illustrious career. He credits Michaels for giving him his start.
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If you receive this as a duplicate comment, could you please delete it? I’ve already written almost the same comment and tried to post it, after I’d copied it to be sure, but alas, nothing.
I’d written about my own experience with a well-known natural comedian and a well-known comedian who’s not funny at all in real life.
When I was 21 years old, in 1978, I was leaving Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland to go home. In order to avoid Milano Malpensa and Alitalia, I took a three hour train ride to Zurich, with two guys who had me crying with laughter and grabbing my stomach from the pain of laughing so hard. After a while, I asked one of the two guys, “Where in the hell did you get your incredible sense of humor?!! You should be writing for television!! Seriously!!” I’m now 65 years old and have never forgotten that voyage. The natural, innate, wit that both guys had was beyond belief!! One of the two was Montgomery” Monty “Bancroft of” the” Bancrofts and I have no idea what he did with his zillionaire life, and the other was a guy named PK Simonds. PK now has an IMDB page as long as my two arms, for both comedic and non comedic writing. I knew it even back then, when he was only 19. I’ve never met anyone so comically talented in my life!!
The second person is a different story. My daughter’s best friend growing up was Al Franken’s daughter. Because of that, I spent plenty of time with Al and his wonderful wife, Frannie. In all the years that our daughters were best friends, I never once heard Al Franken say anything funny at all. Nothing. Not even once. His comedy wasn’t innate. He wasn’t a funny guy, though he was a good person.
The two people, both known for comedy and for writing comedy, are worlds apart!!
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One of our best comments ever, and thank you. I do not know why your comment went to Spam, as I saw nothing in it that violated any WordPress guidelines. They are magical and mysterious. If you had not asked me to resurrect it it would have been lost forever.
Al Franken is worth some research, as there is no way an SNL comedian ascends to US senate without juice, and then gets taken down as well, Weinstein style. He lives in a different world, and I agree, is not funny.
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I used to drink with the daughter of comic actor Steve Franken, Al’s second cousin. She was theatrically tragic rather than funny, but our father’s both worked with Jerry Lewis from time to time and Jerry- hoo boy- what a piece of work. Not funny- outright dangerous.
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I tried my hand at stand-up comedy for the first time, at the age of 52, a couple of months ago. A friend who is a recent graduate of almost every class and program Second City offers told me that my years of experience as a stage actor wouldn’t be as helpful as I was sure it would be, and she was right. The dynamic back-and-forth of energy between a stand-up comedian and an audience is completely different than it is for an actor, a public speaker, or any other kind of performer. I didn’t bomb, but I petered out pretty quickly because I’d been treating the material I wrote like a monologue instead of a playbook. I now think of stand-up comedy as being a sport as well as an artistic craft. You have to work with laughs in much the same way, I think, that tennis players have to work with balls. (I was trying to think of an analogy that wouldn’t require me to use the word “balls,” but maybe it works.)
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Hahaha, yeah awkward analogy :’)
As a mere observer, I would agree that sounds right and the great comics seem so in tune with the audience, constantly reading them and playing off their response. Kudos on getting up there, can’t be easy.
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P.S. Since we’ve talked about Stephen King at length before, this may amuse you: I have been told many times that I look like Stephen King, and the first line in my stand-up act was: “If one more person tells me I look like Stephen King, I’m gonna kill him.” This line got such an unexpectedly huge laugh that I was unable to top it, although the rest of my Stephen King bit did well. It ended with me pretending to get up in the face of someone who had been rude enough to compare my youthful-looking 52-year-old self with a 75-year-old senior citizen. “Do you think I look too old to beat the shit out of you? I’ll go Cujo on your ass you say that shit to me again. That crazy bitch from Misery will look like Mary-fucking-Poppins when I get done with you. I’ll make you scream and cry and beg for forgiveness like Shelley DuVall in The Shining. Heeeeeeere’s Scotty!” I got laughs, but an experienced stand-up would have gotten much bigger laughs, I’m sure.
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DSKLAUSLER: The Beat writers, I have no doubt, were extremely mediocre talents, assigned to pervert and corrupt, and were artificially promoted and praised WAY beyond their actual popularity.
That is, they were psy-ops, strategically employed to at first titilate, and then to confuse, but ultimately to replace real art and to harm society.
Just like Bob “Dylan”, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, David “Bowie”, “Prince”………
The list goes on for pages. It’s all a trick.
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On the Road read to me as primitive, deliberately so. Kerouac was too plugged in to be a genuine primitive- what we would call ‘outsider’ today. Artists experiment with form all the time and if there is a buck in it, some of it may get promoted, especially if it serves the agenda. In the Beat’s case, the demolition of generational continuity was their assignment; rebelling against forms, like dress, relationships, investment strategies (they promoted none)- basically laying the ground work for the perpetual adolescence that has metastasized and destroyed the best minds of the last couple of generations.
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Quoting Ginsberg?
“I watched the best minds of my generation..” .. flame out or something, I forget.
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Tyrone: Excellent analysis!
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Not a coincidence that April Fools takes place on that particular month, albeit weeks earlier than this event. It’s also the month of the fake Titanic disaster and the Armenian ‘genocide’, among other things. It’s like this month is one of those periods where The-Powers-That-Shouldn’t-Be take a piss on the masses with their fables.
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April 19th is also the date the Titanic inquiries commenced in America and Britain, a few days after that fake maritime disaster. Those proceedings contain a plethora of contradictory testimony from “survivors” as to what happened, such as some claiming that the ship broke up while others said she sank intact.
https://titanicinquiry.org/
The Armenian genocide would take place three years and five days later, on April 24th. Like the previous example, this story is accompanied with staged and fake photos posing as realistic illustrations of what supposedly happened to the 1.5 million ‘victims’ of the Ottoman Empire’s wrath towards its Armenian subjects, and even a silent film about the tragedy made in 1919, starring an alleged survivor of the genocide, Aurora Mardiganian (sound familiar to Saved from the Titanic? It also starred an alleged survivor and silent film star named Dorothy Gibson.) Cue the melodramatic music and the crocodile tears.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
Oh, and don’t forget our favorite crypto-Jew, U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr., one of the main promoters of the Armenian genocide story and friend of Aurora. His family were prominent cigar merchants in Germany and America and his descendants would also author tales of fiction such as The Guns of August.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgenthau_Sr.
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Not sure if this helps or hinders. https://saxonmessenger.christogenea.org/pdf/rothschilds-and-genocide-armenia-and-germany
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Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out now.
I find it most interesting that the above document highlights the similarities both so-called genocides share, despite being separated by decades from each other.
Not to mention their connections to the developing oil industry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, steered by the crypto-Jewish Rockefeller and Rothschild dynasties of renown.
Both of which confirm my belief that these psyops are all interconnected in some way and originate from the same usual suspects who appear to have a tendency to recycle old fables as new ones when it suits their bottom lines, which includes monopolization of natural resources (oil, in this case).
The second point also brings me back to the Titanic psyop, as some have theorized that story was manufactured to achieve similar goals, such as the conversion to oil from coal/steam for ships, which transpired several years after that fake nautical disaster.
https://www.mol-service.com/blog/transition-in-ships-fuel#:~:text=Oil%20production%20began%20in%20the%20United%20States%20in,fuel%20tank%20on%20board%20and%20expand%20cargo%20space.
This happened to the Olympic, Titanic‘s older sister ship, in the 1920s (as shown in the video below at 3:30). It’s public record that she has underwent numerous changes throughout her extensive maritime career, but that’s for another discussion. Wouldn’t surprise me if Olympic & Titanic was the same ship the entire time, further proving the latter’s existence to be fake.
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The only thing I contest with that document is it maintaining the alleged genocides were real tragedies rather than psyops. There’s no attempt at questioning the validity of the stories, only adding onto them with the suggestion that corporate greed and corruption by the then-growing oil business was, at least, partly responsible for the reported mass culling of Armenians and Jews in Europe and the Middle East. At best it implies that both were large false-flags, despite compelling evidence out there that proves the Holocaust was fake and the same is likely true for its older Armenian counterpart.
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And about those phony Armenian genocide photos I spoke of previously, here is some info below which demonstrate my points perfectly in detail. Some of the pictures are really ridiculous fakes or staged takes.
https://no-genocide.org/post/114
http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/forgeries-fotos.htm
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/crucified-photo-is-not-of-actual-armenian-event/
Another thing that needs to be asked is if the Ottoman Turks were so eager to not only eliminate a sizable segment of their population but also destroy any damning evidence of their crimes, why didn’t they try to do a more thorough job of destroying or hiding the above pictures alleged to capture their atrocities for all to see? And why would those promoting the Armenian genocide as fact go so far as to fabricate or mislabel pictures supposedly proving their case if they have nothing to hide and are telling the truth? Something’s not right here….
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Young Turks jew
Young Turks ( Turkish: Jön Türkler or Genç Türkler) was a political reform movement in the early 20th century that favored the replacement of the Ottoman Empire ‘s absolute monarchy with a constitutional government.
Dönmeh Illustration of Sabbatai Zevi from 1906 ( Joods Historisch Museum) The Dönme ( Hebrew: דוֹנְמֶה, romanized : Dōnme, Ottoman Turkish: دونمه, Turkish: Dönme) were a group of Sabbatean crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire
douglasreed.org/excerpts-2.html
Young Turks Rise. The Jews took power during their Young Turk Revolution, a movement entirely overshadowed by the Chinese Revolution (1911)
The Young Turks were communist Jews who pretended to be Moslems. They were thus doubly hateful of Christian Armenia, being both Turk and Jew.
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Hi! Sorry about this! I wonder if you could check your inbox or spam for the two comments I’ve made? They’re both basically the same, but neither will post no matter what I do. It took me a while to type them with one finger and I think they’re relevant to the part of the discussion regarding comedy.
Thanks very much!! 🙂
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Since we’re talking a little movies and culture shaping above, I’ll gratuitously offer some comments on recent flicks I’ve watched..
Three Billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri
I passed on this when it came out and generated a lot of political chatter. Sounded stupid and annoying. Then lately I learned it was written and directed by one of our “auteurs” – guy who did Banshees of Inisherin. I had watched the first half of that, in slavish adherence to MMs advice that the second half was intentionally twisted and disturbing.. okay that’s a little silly of me but I did. Who needs twisted and disturbing?
Anyway.. Three Billboards IS stupid.. but, to me at least, wildly entertaining in its stupidity. Bizarre, overt if ambiguous propaganda and stirring the pot. Thank goodness for auteurs who get to do such things, among all the cookie cutter paint by numbers movies out there.
More later..
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I skipped Three Billboards, but my first directing job was for a production of The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, who wrote and directed Three Billboards. Pillowman, like most of the dystopian stuff I’m familiar with, seems deeper than it is. It’s fun, theatrical, and I had a blast working on it, but when I think back on the play itself, it kinda gives me the creeps. It wallows in–luxuriates in–the various imaginative, Kafkaesque horrors faced by its Joseph K-like protagonist, encouraging the audience to find parallels to the reality of real-world government evils while stirring up lots of delicious revulsion and horror. From my perspective, it seemed to fetishize the authoritarian evil it pretended to be outraged about. But I guess I feel that way about most dystopian stuff.
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That’s true, there’s only so long you can pretend they’re all cautionary tales.. but fiction does thrive on suffering and misery so I guess dystopian programming and fetishizing has a natural advantage over blandly happy tales.
Radiant Girl sounds interesting, thanks.
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Can’t recommend Radiant Girl highly enough. Anyone who is awake to what’s happening now should be able to relate to it. I was startled to recognize the various ways different characters reacted as the world around them changed in rapid and alarming ways, everyone clinging to the hope that things will work out for the best if they simply follow the government’s increasingly intrusive, dehumanizing and absurd rules.
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Tar (accent over the a)
Another auteur movie, but one it’s possible to take a little more seriously. This one too turns out to be stirring the pot politically, dipping into the culture wars. But in a much more refined and subtle way. This is the sort of movie I can enjoy just for its atmosphere and cinematic qualities.. a little Kubrickian.. even if half the time I have no clue what the hell is supposed to be happening. It has that veneer of intelligent actors, script, cinematography and editing.. subtle, reserved, ambiguous.. screw clarity! It is long though, I had to break it up into two parts. I can imagine many would find it incredibly wordy and tedious, and indeed that’s seen in comments at review sites. Having some reviews, and diametrically opposed interpretations, I now have a little more of a handle on it, and perhaps interest in rewatching.. left to my own maplessness, I would not be inclined to, at least for a long while. Slate, in its review of the reviews, had the best insights I found. Lots of spoilers of course.
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Recently watched A Radiant Girl–a French film that deals with the Holocaust in a rather wonderful way. Set in 1942, it’s completely told through the subjective viewpoint of an exhuberant and charming 19-year-old girl who lives with her financially struggling family while trying to get into a prestigious conservatory to study acting. The brilliance of it is that the actual encroachment of the Nazis is entirely off-screen. We spend the whole movie watching the protagonist and everyone around her (with the exception of her grandmother) double down on their collective denial and desperate hope that things will get back to normal soon. The “radiant girl” of the title is trying to be the main character in her own girly, rom-com coming-of-age story, and we as the audience want that to be what we’re watching. But deep down, we, and she, and everyone else in the movie, knows better. I thought it was great. (The fact that the film’s progression felt so much like my own lived experience of the New Normal invasion made it extra-special, though I don’t assume the writer/director was trying to make a statement about that.)
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