RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/social-media-not-cause-our-social-dilemmas-jason-d-hill/

Jeff Orlowski’s documentary The Social Dilemma on Netflix is an interesting panoptic exploration of ways in which human minds are allegedly twisted, manipulated, and directed by social media to produce outcomes by programmed algorithms whose creators, in the end, must have had nefarious  motives. On the surface, we may cast them as players in a medieval morality play between good and evil. The evil operatives are the gnomic know-it-alls who somehow must have known that with the invention of the “Like” button on various social media pages and media outlets, they could send recipients into waves of euphoria — while those receiving a “thumbs down” could be sent into paroxysms of rage or, more commonly, paralyzing depression. The social media creators in the film, however, claim that they only wanted to “spread positivity and love in the world.”

The basic thematic thrust of the documentary is predicated on a dubious premise: the idea of an addictive media, the manipulative machinations of its architects and their unwillingness to confront their culpability in creating an addictive social media culture, and the latter’s contribution to the polarization of our society and the proliferation of “fake news.”

This film, which purports to gain some philosophical respectability by an identification with the anti-conceptual moniker, “surveillance capitalism,” presupposes a world of mindless victims; automatons in need of global marketplace regulation from “data extraction” invisible vectors that somehow predict our behaviors and, well, coerce us to do things that we would not do had our brains not been improperly hijacked by the artificially-driven analytics.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/critics-rush-defend-netflixs-pre-teen-twerking-mark-tapson/

The brilliant satirical website Babylon Bee recently posted another gem of a faux headline:  “Awesome: Netflix Will Now Just Pump Septic Waste Straight Into Your Living Room,” poking fun at the streaming entertainment service’s reputation for pushing increasingly controversial and offensive content. But Netflix’s latest offering is no joke: a French flick that veers into the realm of child pornography.

Cuties (originally Mignonnes), which debuted Thursday on Netflix, is the story of Amy, 11, a Senegalese girl growing up in Paris who rebels against her conservative Muslim immigrant family and seeks the approval of a bullying quartet of fellow 11-year-old girls who are absolutely clueless about sex but who nevertheless believe dressing and acting like prostitutes is the key to popularity (the ages of the actresses at the time of filming are unclear, but reportedly range from 11-14). Their aimless lives center on rehearsing sexed-up choreography to a rap song for a local dance contest.

As Amy becomes desperate to escape the stultifying, traditional expectations of the women in her family, she exhibits increasingly wanton behavior, such as posting a pic of her genitalia on social media and teaching the other girls how to rev up their dance routine by twerking (if you are mercifully ignorant about twerking, it’s a very popular move derived from strip-club lap dancing, in which females squat and shake their rear ends up and down like primates presenting themselves for mating; needless to say, this is wildly inappropriate for pre-teens). The movie culminates in an extended, raunchy dance performance in which the camera lingers repellently on the scantily-clad little girls’ pelvic gyrations, come-hither looks, and suggestive touching – of themselves and each other.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/emcutiesem_is_child_pornography_netflix_look_it_up.html

Netflix is distributing the film Cuties, which includes scenes focusing on the pubic areas of 11-year-old girls, including numerous scenes of girls “twerking” and “humping” in skimpy costumes.

The public outrage and massive cancellations of Netflix subscriptions have prompted Netflix and its media allies to “justify” Cuties as “social commentary” that exposes the sexual exploitation of children. They’re sexually exploiting children in order to protect them from exploitation. We right-wing rubes just don’t get it.

The claim is as indefensible as a scientist who poisons individuals and pleads that he was merely demonstrating that poison is harmful.

Netflix is essentially claiming that Cuties, taken as a whole, has a serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.  Assuming for the sake of argument that it might have such value, that does not constitute a defense to the production, distribution, transportation, advertisement or possession of child pornography, nor does the prosecution have to prove that, taken as a whole, it has no such value.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/the-coming-backlash-to-the-oscars-diversity-mandate/

Far from appeasing the hashtag activists, the Oscars have merely announced that the quota wars have begun.

I t’s easy to make fun of the Oscars’ new set of diversity requirements: Are we going to have to watch Lieutenant Colonel Anne Hathaway tossing grenades at Jerry in the next WWI movie? In the media, the initial response has been to gush praise for this “landmark,” “watershed” moment in which the Academy Awards have mandated hiring quotas for any film that wishes to be eligible for Best Picture (but not any of the other awards).

In about ten seconds, I predict, the Left is going to be furious. “We’ve been had,” they’ll surely scream. Let’s look at the details.

In order to qualify for Best Picture consideration, films will have to meet two out of four specified criteria. The first is the showiest but also the silliest, calling for diversity in casting and themes; it’s unworkable if you’re starting, as do a great many Oscar contenders, with an established historical record. You can’t pretend that Ford v. Ferrari or The Irishman was about minorities or women or gay liberation or handicapped people. Most producers of top-quality films will simply laugh off that top-line requirement and try to hit two of the other three. Which won’t be that hard.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/it_didnt_seem_possible_but_the_oscars_are_going_to_be_even_woker_than_ever.html

The 92nd Academy Awards show was one of the last big events in 2020 before life stopped for the Wuhan Virus. If people had known about a future of masks and isolation, maybe more Americans would have watched than the record low of 23.6 million viewers. But then again, perhaps not, given that winners cannot seem to stop lecturing Americans for being hate-filled, racist, misogynistic yutzes.

The smart thing for the Academy to do in the face of a seemingly unstoppable ratings hemorrhage would be to make the Oscar show more friendly to the viewers. The Academy could nominate movies people like to watch and then limit the speeches to conform to the old rule that, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Instead, as part of its “Academy Aperture 2025” initiative, the Academy has opted to make the nominations even more politically correct, promising Americans that future films will showcase stifling politically-correct orthodoxy.

On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put out a press release announcing all of its impossibly woke requirements for movies beginning in 2022 (meaning films produced in 2021).

The press release has created four “standards”:

“On-screen representation, themes and narratives”
“Creative leadership and project team”
“Industry access and opportunities”
“Audience development (i.e., marketing”)

Under each standard, the Academy lists a variety of mix-and-match quotas that must be met for a specific standard to qualify for Oscar consideration. For example, lead actors must include one of every victim-identity race or ethnicity group. Ensembles must include gay people and handicapped people. Storylines have to touch upon intersectionality, victim-identity issues. Apprenticeships and internships must have all the underrepresented people represented. Thirty percent of a film’s crew has to meet victim-centric intersectionality metrics. Here, for example, is the buffet menu for movie-makers listing the choice of possible requirements for what the audience sees:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/larry_elders_uncle_tom_the_little_movie_that_could.html

Did you know that there’s a documentary called Uncle Tom that IMDB ranks as one of America’s top documentaries? Released only six weeks ago, it’s currently the sixth-highest rated documentary on IMDB, with over 2,000 viewers giving it an extraordinary 9.5-star rating. The movie also doubled Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine opening box office revenue. Nevertheless, not a single mainstream news or entertainment media film critic has acknowledged it. I spoke with Mr. Elder to learn more about the movie and the media’s passive-aggressive efforts to ignore it into extinction.

One would think that, when a nationally-known radio and TV personality, who is also a best-selling author and columnist, writes and produces a documentary about blacks in America, the media would be all over it. That doesn’t happen, though, if he challenges the mainstream narrative that the Democrat party is American blacks’ only friend.

Uncle Tom’s use of historical footage, contemporary political events, and interviews with black conservatives both well known and unknown exposes viewers to the reality that’s unacceptable to the monolithic Democrat media: Since 1856, Republican Party policies allowed American blacks to thrive, while Democrat party policies consistently harmed them.

https://clarionproject.org/amazon-pushes-white-slaves-in-new-show/?utm_source=

The history of black slavery is a horrendous part of the American narrative, but does it help to heal the wounds by normalizing the concept of whites being enslaved by blacks? That’s what director Dale Resteghini envisions with his series Cracka.

Slated for a fall 2020 release, the series asks, “What if the roles were reversed?”

‘You took our breath away, what if we took yours? You raped our daughters, what if we raped yours? You stole our freedom, now we steal yours.’ — Title Card for the upcoming TV show Cracka

But it’s more than just reversing the roles. While the series “boasts” of reliving all the horrors of slavery, including the rapes, beatings and lynchings, it also takes a very disoriented approach toward history, as All Hip Hop describes,

The movie offers a present-day so-called white supremacist who is magically thrust back in time to an alternate past where Africans enslave whites and rule the land known as America. … the protagonist – tatted with racist Nazi symbols – begins to harass an African American motorist. It is at that point that the violence starts. After the lead character rains down blows on the motorist, the pseudo-Nazi returns to his home. He then finds himself staring at the barrel of a shotgun and enslaved.
In Cracka, it’s not “enough” that whites are the slaves in this alternative world, rather all whites must be depicted as Nazis (which, intentional or not, gives off a message that, unlike the blacks who were enslaved in the American South, the whites in this alternative universe are racists and deserve such punishment).

A show like Cracka might look like it’s aligned with pro-black, anti-racist narratives, i.e., by allowing whites to really feel what blacks went through. In actuality, it promotes a distorted vision of that reality, similar to what is being advanced by the woke movement of today, where perverse new strains of reverse racism are being embraced as social justice:

By reversing slave roles and making whites look like beasts and savages, the show plays into exactly the same racist narratives that advocates of slavery used to justify the torture and bondage of African Americans.
The show essentially functions as a free marketing campaign for the real (and violent) neo-Nazis of today — a kind of “call to action” in the war of extremes, giving them good visuals for the propaganda they use to increase their ranks.
The show ensures race tensions will be emboldened by pushing into the public consciousness more crude imagery and rhetoric similar to that of snuff films. It is a scientific fact that the human subconscious (with child-like innocence) completely accepts as reality whatever it sees, even if it rationally disagrees with it or rejects it. To have this type of content normalized by a major distributor is genuinely worrisome for the mental and spiritual health of the human race.
Let’s be crystal clear on one thing: Cracka is not just “entertainment.” It is extremist propaganda, whether or not it is intended to be.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/hollywood_is_falling_victim_to_its_relentless_virtue_signaling.html

During the 1930s and 1940s, there were many genuine communists, as well as fellow travelers, working in Hollywood. Once the Cold War began, Hollywood turned against those people and instituted its blacklist, which made it impossible for anyone with communist sympathies to work openly in Hollywood.

Of late, the further left you lean in Hollywood, the more you are to be applauded. That’s why it’s incredibly ironic to realize that Hollywood is once again blacklisting people – only this time, blacklisting means that the only people listed for employment have to be black.

That at least is the story that Caroline Graham tells in the Daily Mail. According to Graham, the message has gone out in Hollywood that, if you want to work, you had better not be white:

A revolution is under way. White actors are being fired. Edicts from studio bosses make it clear that only minorities – racial and sexual – can be given jobs.

A new wave of what has been termed by some as anti-white prejudice is causing writers, directors and producers to fear they will never work again. One described the current atmosphere as ‘more toxic than Chernobyl’, with leading actors afraid to speak out amid concern they will be labelled racist.

The first sign came with one of the most powerful black directors in Hollywood, Oscar-winning Jordan Peele – the man behind box office hits such as Get Out and Us – stated in public that he did not want to hire a leading man who was white. 

‘I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie,’ Peele said. ‘Not that I don’t like white dudes. But I’ve seen that movie before.’

As one studio executive responded privately: ‘If a white director said that about hiring a black actor, their career would be over in a heartbeat.’ Few doubt it.