One Stereotype After Another

Lest I neglect American propaganda, last night I watched 2025's One Battle After Another, directed by the eternally overrated Paul Thomas Anderson. Arguably, it's not so much propaganda as an adventure set in a world that was created by left-wing American propaganda. As is often the case with Anderson's movies, it has one aspect I found interesting while I could have done without 85% or so of the rest of the movie.

The first 20 or 25 minutes or so are really interesting and I was pleased to see someone finally address the weird sexual energy between the American right and left. Ever since so many leftwing women became obsessed with seeing Trump's penis after his first election (I typed election, right), I was amazed that very few of them seemed aware of what was motivating their compulsion. And, of course, rightwingers have always lusted after leftwing celebrities, even if they would pull their media braids, so to speak.

Now here's the character of Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a leftwing American terrorist who holds the rightwing Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) at gunpoint and demands he have an erection. Their taunts and manoeuvres slowly morph into a secret affair. They meet in hotel rooms and bathroom stalls while her comrades are raiding detention facilities to liberate illegal immigrants and his subordinates are trying to stop them. Finally, I thought, someone's delving into the subconscious underpinnings of this maniacal, two-headed American beast.

Maybe that was even Anderson's intention. But after this first segment, the characters are firmly located in the picture painted by leftwing news media of an American government secretly controlled by a white supremacist group versus a "resistance" of freedom fighters. It's removed from a reality that's populated by a racially diverse rightwing faction and a leftwing faction whose most significant acts of violence have not involved freeing innocent immigrants but assassinating or attempting to assassinate podcasters and government figures.

The film is very loosely based on a Thomas Pynchon novel from the '80s but I couldn't help thinking of Star Wars. The Sean Penn character is kind of like a Darth Vader character relentlessly pursuing a new young heroine called Willa (Chase Infiniti), who was raised believing she was the daughter of Perfidia and fellow terrorist Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) but who, of course, might secretly be the daughter of Colonel Lockjaw. I was actually expecting a scene where Lockjaw said, "No, Willa--I am your father."

All the white characters are portrayed as pathetic dweebs. But when was the last time Leonardo DiCaprio played a character who wasn't a putz?

Regardless of what I think of the movie, though, I want to take this opportunity to say how much I'm sickened by the actions of ICE under the Trump administration. The big news this week is that Trump has suddenly taken over Venezuela, deposing its dictator, Maduro. And Maduro was a bad guy, to be sure, But the brutal tactics of his police are not dissimilar to the deeds of ICE in the U.S. involving the draconian enforcement of immigration laws on average people who've done nothing truly wrong. These people absolutely should be taken to task in art and in court, which is why I wish the filmmakers, like Anderson, who decide to do so would make a better effort than preaching to their own echo chamber choir.

I hear One Battle After Another is on HBOMax in the U.S.

X Sonnet 1973

At times, the mirror pair look after two.
The glassy green of ghosts would catch her eye.
She rubs her neck and glances round the clue.
A candle stub has sunk below the pie.
It seems the kitchen fell behind the wall.
Or somewhere buried back, beyond the light.
She seeks to walk along the phantom hall.
And find in there what ghostly meats she might.
But food beyond the looking glass is wrong.
It twists her gut and turns her eyes around.
So backwards brains inform an eerie song.
It seems she sees the hard intrusive sound.
But no-one stalks the kitchen, hall, or glass.
Could naught but dust await the wayward lass?