Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
You Say You Want a Revolution, Part 2
Here’s what this post, and last week’s post are about: The cultural changes in the media that Ricochet readers don’t like didn’t happen by pure accident. They took decades. We propose equally patient, persistent, but ruthlessly effective efforts to push culture in another direction over the next 20-plus years. We are chewing over how to create or capture a big chunk of tomorrow’s media and the arts. It’s a myth that nothing can be done about the entertainment business. Success is Hollywood’s definitive history teacher.
@drewinwisconsin raises a tough point. He said, “So that’s probably why it’s important to try to change or break the current system rather than try to build an equivalent system that will have no users. Consider how much power and scope Google+ had, and it still couldn’t survive against Facebook. And that’s Google — already a malignant influence.”
@sabrdance asks, “What do we mean by a believable path to get there?”
I mean believable in real world terms. A Jonathan Edwards-style Great Awakening would obviously make all of this tactical maneuvering about the mere media moot. Let’s assume that won’t happen and we end up having to do this ourselves.
My distinguished colleague @Barfly asks: “I’m looking for a characterization of the state we’re aiming for. Society is trying to digest a major transformational technology, the educational system has been broken by affluence and tolerance, of all things, and the barbarians are at the gates armed with all of the above. We can’t expect any of these things to work out in our favor unless we know where we want to go. You must have some vision of where those six or sixty things lead – is that coming in the next installment?”
Here we are, now you be the judge. We’re facing a composite force with a dozen power centers. Among many other tasks, we first need to capture one or more of them or build its equal from scratch. We’ll get around to discussing both.
What’s a Long Game to capture a mindshare of Hollywood? Create something like the Sundance Institute and duplicate their success at making it the arbiter of what’s new and valuable. Like Sundance, win the credibility and the authority to hold screenings and festivals, to present awards and honors to praise the good and shame the bad. Hollywood is particularly susceptible to this. Sprinkle our “graduates” and allies widely through the industry, like raisins in raisin bread. Do you want to make heads explode? Let either the First Lady or Ivanka take a leadership role. Hire young women to make programs and announce a continuing scholarship and apprenticeship program, ours.
In the late Eighties and early Nineties, the street locations and bare breasts of underground movies turned into something more respectable called independent cinema, and people criticized Sundance for showing and promoting films that were, they sniffed, insufficiently political. Sundance said, accurately, that they were dedicated to pushing change through the choices of what they decided to show. When that was deemed not enough, Sundance has also bankrolled some independent films that leaned forward—that is, leaned farther Left–becoming in effect a competitor of their own partners. Like Android’s regular endorsement of a Nexus-quality mobile phone, rotated through the major manufacturers, the Sundance label on an “indie” is a trusted mark of quality. They don’t have to make all the radical films, just the key ones. Smart.
How would our first generation of film projects begin? Make an early (but affordable) splash to announce you’ve arrived on the scene. There’s only, oh, about a hundred ways to respond to the bizzaroid cultural atmosphere of our times. One suggestion: we constantly see efforts to honor women in history/herstory. Fine; great idea. Do our version, because nobody thinks we’d be interested in this. Elevate forgotten, politically unconventional female intellectuals like Clare Booth Luce and Dixy Lee Ray, as well as living writers like Liz Trotta and Amity Shlaes, and make an inexpensive bio series for streaming, to inspire girls and give them different role models than today’s dull lineup.
We can and should learn our Machiavellian lessons from how the other guys did it. Face it, they were good at it; look around you. For roughly sixty years, the culture of the media calls itself progressive, however broadly defined. No one central authority set that in motion, but over the decades, time and time again, lots of helpers stepped in to change movies and TV. It didn’t happen overnight. That change ebbed and flowed. Like King Canute, we can’t command tidal forces, but like good civil engineers, we can put them to work. Turn the tide in our direction.
As in politics, the progressive surge of Hollywood’s do-your-own-thing Sixties ran aground in the stagnating, crime-plagued Seventies. A couple of major hits can shape the attitudes and moods of a decade—think of the three years that took us from “The French Connection” to “The Godfather” to “Death Wish”.
Break that down for a moment, because it shows a persistent Hollywood weakness, a tendency towards unanticipated outcomes that resembles Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. “The French Connection” was rare in 1971 for declaring “The time is right for an out-and-out thriller”. It was a trend-setter. Cop movies took the place that westerns once had on the American screen; one bold, unappreciated real man up against smug, lawyer-sanctioned lawlessness. In other words, for all its vague gestures towards the supposed futility of the war against heroin, it had an objectively conservative effect on its audience. The filmmakers didn’t mind, but they were surprised.
“The Godfather” was supposed to be based on one central idea: crime and capitalism are deeply intertwined. Comparisons between the civilian authorities and the mob are always dismissive. Mario Puzo was angry at Francis Coppola for dropping what Puzo considered the single indispensable line in the novel: “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns”. Actually, this pseudo-Marxist quip has, I have to admit, spread across the aisle. It’s not without a point. But “Godfather’s” unprecedented success wasn’t based on its acute critique of capitalist ethics and the Mafia in Cuba, but in an unexpected emotional reaction: they loved the idea of a Godfather, because in a time when the cities had become dangerous, he was a protector, the dispenser of instant, final street justice. The biggest of criminals was a welcome force against random crime, the most widely despised feature of the era. “Dirty Harry” all but gave up on due process. “Death Wish” took it farther.
Lasting change must be persistent. The Sixties wave stalled and actually reversed by the dawn of the Eighties. What made 1977’s “Star Wars” so different, a turning point for stunned Hollywood, was optimism, faith, and fun. That can and does happen. It can happen again. Think of Pixar’s hits over the past quarter century. Could you imagine, for example, animation and storytelling of Pixar’s quality, but guided by a creative team from the Babylon Bee? I could.
Google wasn’t built in a day. Suppose that when Rupert Murdoch bought Fox, he not only created a different kind of news channel but a different kind of movie studio. Suppose he teamed up with fellow conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz, who created Walden Media to produce the Narnia films. Suppose they realized they needed tech in depth to create and own streaming platforms. The biggest and most durable computer trade show of the era was owned by conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson. None of these team-ups happened. But none of it was impossible; if they’d done it, none of it could have been blocked by other media players. And if Rupe, Phil, and Shelly had figured out how to make money at it, which those three guys were rather good at doing, everyone else in Hollywood would have been aware of the development potential of all that empty real estate they’ve left fallow in the center and on the right.
That’s one of the self-limiting factors of my suggestions: If we’re right about what the public really wants, everybody will slowly, reluctantly, grudgingly compete with us. I couldn’t be more pleased at that prospect. In a century of fascism and communism, Hollywood stands proud for what the town has always believed in: plagiarism.
Of course, plutocratic bosses willing to take a chance can only carry a social movement so far. Ambitious writers who see daylight between the pillars of today’s deadening culture are obviously crucial. Form some embryonic institutions that will staff and guide the project. We already have a few, so start by supporting and enhancing them. We’ll need a farm team, its talent discovered and promoted by a media-based tribute to the success of The Federalist Society, with an unbending vision. It should be led by younger people because they’re going to have to maintain that focus, energy, and clarity of goals for more than a generation.
When you read the words “international cinema”, many of your eyes glaze over. They shouldn’t. Filmmakers, liberal or conservative, like to see sympathetic new artists, and being the gatekeepers of foreign films and TV can have an influence on tomorrow’s directors and writers greatly in excess of their effect on today’s audiences. Conservatives, and social conservatives especially, should be watching the principled defense of traditional culture in central, southern and eastern Europe. Here’s one unorthodox suggestion of a possible center of cultural resistance to today’s culture: Orthodoxy. Many of the film and TV artists of eastern and southern Europe still act in confidence that they’re part of a valid, powerful way of seeing the world.
Naturally, I’m more familiar with my own guys in places like Ireland, Poland, and Lithuania, and they too bring topics into serious films that you’d never see in American ones. But at this moment Catholic culture is crippled; I wish I could say otherwise. The posts of @skipsul make a superb case that Orthodoxy, however it compares to your denomination or religion, is one of today’s most coherent cultural forces and critics.
We’re working to promote real diversity of ideas, not merely a stale future of subsidized, institutionalized conservatism on screen. Yes, if done right our project would certainly lead to more conservative and centrist projects being considered acceptable. It might very well lead to fewer films being green-lighted purely because of their ability to insult your beliefs. But it’ll also lead to more projects that are interested in American history, pure entertainment, and yet informed by a non-PC point of view. “Back to the Future” was written by a conservative, “Apollo 13” and “Saving Private Ryan” by liberals. In 1985, 1995, and 1997, no one to my knowledge supported or rejected their insights based on those political facts. It was still possible to hold a conversation. It wasn’t yet an abyss. We don’t just need some room carved out for conservative politics in culture; we need some room carved out for no politics in culture.
Published in General
Gary, I know, this is tough.
What in the world does “homophobia” mean? Your comment suggests that it means “hatred of homosexuals.” I strongly disapprove of homosexual sodomy, but I don’t think that I “hate” the people who engage in such conduct. “Homophobic” is the term used to refer to any disapproval or criticism of homosexual sodomy. This seems to be one of the effective tactics of the radical Left — equate disagreement, disapproval, or criticism with “hate,” which is “dangerous” and perhaps is even “violence,” and is therefore impermissible.
Yikes!
It’s very hard to come up with neutral language on this.
Further, I think that it should be permissible to “hate” people. Frankly, we all know that we are allowed to engage in”hatred.” It is perfectly acceptable, and perhaps morally obligatory, to “hate” Nazism. Should we also “hate” Nazis? Strangely, the very people advancing their Leftist agenda by insisting that we cannot “hate” are full of hate toward Nazis, real or imagined (usually imagined).
There is the whole Christian “hate the sin – love the sinner” thing, but I don’t know of such a rule in any other religion or ideology.
I appreciate our differing view of the sodomy question, which goes beyond whether the conduct is right or wrong (or no one else’s business). I see it as an integral part of the entire Leftist agenda, brilliantly exploited in order to paint a traditionalist like me as a horrid, bastard child of Hitler and Dana Carvey’s Church Lady. I see it as the latest in a long line of policies undermining family and traditional values, which I think have had disastrous results.
You see it as harmless behavior of consenting adults who should be left alone, which I must concede is a very powerful argument.
Back to the original issue — how do we unite against the Left, when we have such significant disagreements among ourselves?
Skip, I have to confess that the “sodomite” routine is getting a bit tiresome for me. I note, however, that this is the terminology used by SCOTUS when it last upheld traditional values, in the 1986 decision Bowers v. Hardwick. It generally referred to “homosexual sodomy” in the decision, stating (for example):
This is what I mean by the Left’s weaponization of politeness and civility. Even you, and doubtless many of our other Conservative friends and fellow travelers, find this term “uncivil” and close to unacceptable. I think that this is precisely how the radical Left has moved the Overton Window, which is Ahmari’s main point.
The Left is brilliantly Orwellian in its use of language to shift opinion and frame the debate, relentlessly repeating their deceptive, misleading, or propagandistic terminology:
[Continued]
[Continued]
Skip, moving on to your comment about Ahmari’s article — I just re-read it, and I didn’t find anything uncivil. I struggle to see how you can find incivility in an article that states:
Can you give examples of anything that you found unacceptably uncivil in Ahmari’s article?
It would be helpful to understand what it is about activity that goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults that makes you so upset.
Personally, I hate it when people smack their food or their gum in public. I don’t hate the people who do it necessarily… But it’s precisely the public nature of that action that causes me irritation. If they do it in the confines of their own home who am I to complain that they eat with their mouth open?
Also what are the outer limits of your disgust at this? Does the idea of two women engaging in sexual acts also make you similarly disgusted or is it merely the thought of two men engaged in coitus that is so deeply upsetting?
I will admit I’m not a huge fan of it myself if only because I’m a straight male. But then again what people do behind closed doors is none of my business and should be none of yours or the government’s.
The difference I think is that it seems to me you are perfectly willing to use the power of government to harass, bother, or otherwise mess with people who are engaged in an activity which otherwise has no bearing upon your life. That’s the thin end of the wedge of authoritarianism that Ahmari seems to be calling for.
If your objection has no rational basis simply admit that your objection is not rational and it’s a matter of personal distaste and be done with it. But certainly don’t insist that your personal tastes ought to be transmuted into public policy whose aim is to enforce your vision of the greatest public good.
Those of us in the Ahmari camp share a desire to win some space to live better in this life. It seems to me that those in the French camp are content to remain losers in this life – no, wait. I mean that the Frenchians seem to be content for us, the MAGA crowd, to remain losers.
I don’t pretend to know their motivations, but I do observe that the “principled” never-Trump conservatives I read, and those I meet, seem to be comfortably situated.
Gary, did you refine the topic in this installment? I didn’t realize we were specifically focusing on “media and the arts.”
I hate it when people toss around loaded words with no agreed meaning. Hate is the habit of anger and fear. Nobody but a preppy twit, for instance, could ever actually hate broccoli.
One discriminator that I’ve found useful in following the Ahmari-French debates is who finds an authoritarian tendency in Ahmari’s arguments. Be aware that those of us on the Ahmari side don’t see any of that at all, in any form, to any degree.
It’s not authoritarian to keep the streets clean of human feces, used needles, aggressive panhandlers, – and of exhibitionist perverts. It’s simple public health.
If they’d keep it behind close doors I doubt that anyone would have a problem with it. Or even know about it.
It seems to me, though, that the “your best isn’t good enough, milquetoast!” attitude Ahmari seems to favor is more likely to discourage, not encourage, creative types who might have genuine interest in creating conservative-friendly works and institutions.
If, as a hypothetical, some conservative women decided to collaborate on artistic works about Kassia, how likely are the Ahmaris of the world to say, “You go, girl!” Or, are the Ahmaris of the world more likely to drum up complaints, a la James Damore, that when we leave sophisticated work like art up to women, we’re not leaving it up to our best talent? Or that the subject of the work shouldn’t be Kassia, but a man, since focusing on Kassia contributes to the distortion of history by artificially promoting historical women at the expense of more history-worthy men?
What if the most effective means of getting good Christian art done involved the buy-in of moderates or even some on the left?
How many nits would Ahmarites wish to pick with those they deemed insufficiently belligerent? It seems like a lot, and considering artists producing conservative-friendly art might already find many doors closed to them, the risk of having doors on the right slam shut on them, too, if their “fight” is deemed insufficient, doesn’t seem like an appealing proposition.
Maj, here we go again. I do appreciate your input.
No moral objection has a rational basis. There is no rational basis for any morality. There is only revelation, if it exists, and personal preference.
You have a libertarian moral outlook, I think. This means that you are willing to use the power of government for certain purposes, such as to protect your property or your physical safety or to punish fraud. You have no rational basis for these views, either. They are equally a matter of your personal tastes, as a matter of rationality. I do happen to agree with you on these issues.
You probably base your views on these issues on a Lockean natural rights argument. You probably don’t know that Locke explicitly relied on the Bible in his arguments.
[Cont’d]
[Cont’d]
You apparently consider any disagreement impermissible. I am invited to admit that my view is irrational and solely a matter of personal preference, so I should shut up.
I do think that I have solid consequentialist arguments for favoring traditional family and sexual morality. Even consequentialist arguments, however, ultimately rest on either personal preference or revelation, because the basic form of a consequentialist argument is to demonstrate that a particular policy will make things “better” in some way. What constitutes “better” is either personal preference, or revelation. Or, I suppose, you could outsource the definition of “better” by polling or voting, but that would simply amount to a mathematical averaging of the arbitrary opinions of others (which are based on either personal preference or revelation).
Here is the consequentialist argument, for what it is worth. I think that human society will break down if we are not careful about moral rules, particularly regarding family and sexuality. I think that we are witnessing this breakdown right now, with declining birth rates, declining marriage rates, soaring illegitimacy rates, and increasing suicide rates. I think that it is going to get worse and worse. Heck, there is evidence that many kids aren’t even dating anymore.
We had a traditional morality governing family and sexual behavior, which has been largely abandoned and undermined. I think that the traditional morality leads to a much better world. I don’t think that it’s too late to return to our traditional values. I also think that the traditional morality is a “package deal.” The “package” is Christian morality. I don’t mind if we want to call it Judeo-Christian morality, because I do not deny the Jewish roots of Christianity.
This “package deal” does not work as a buffet, because you can’t get the broad, societal consensus required to enforce such necessary rules on an issue-by-issue basis.
It is perfectly fair for you to disagree. I think that it is unfair for you to dismiss this reasoning as irrational, accuse me of authoritarianism, and essentially tell me to shut up.
I think that was in the first one. I’m talking about this because it’s a field I know. I don’t have any special expertise in publishing or academia, the other major centers of culture manufacturing. I am claiming that IMHO, successes that everyone is talking about in entertainment drive interest in publishing, more than the other way around. And academia is also downstream of media. People watch TV and read things their whole lives. They’re only in college for four years.
I sure didn’t see that in what French wrote. If Ahmari thinks he can win where French will lose, he sure isn’t spelling out how. Bluntly, Ahmari’s big vision requires his ideas to be a helluva lot more popular than they are now, or his big takeover can’t work. Unlike Ahmari, I’m willing to spell out in tactical detail what I think could work, so everyone here is free to criticize.
The only reason we want you to shut up is that you talk too much. Ok, we don’t really want you to shut up, but I do wish you’d pare down your screeds to the essentials. Trying to keep up here.
Time to once again roll out the official “Greatest Onion Article of All Time”:
https://www.theonion.com/gay-pride-parade-sets-mainstream-acceptance-of-gays-bac-1819566014
A few excerpts:
All true, except for the four years thing, it’s more like six nowadays. Must take a long time to learn all that intersectionality.
Let’s not forget about the 13 years before that.
Excuse me, people. I know this is tangential to the subject, but, does anyone know if books 2 and 3 of Andrew Klavan’s “Another Kingdom” are available anywhere yet ? I don’t see them on Amazon.
Maj, one more point, on your accusation of “authoritarianism” against Ahmari (and, frankly, me).
The traditional morality in matters of marriage, family, and sexuality at issue — the morality that Ahmari and I favor — was the overwhelming consensus in America from the founding through the 1960s. Traditional morality was enforced by law, mostly at the state and local level, and also by social convention and exclusion of those who deviated. There was some federal enforcement, an example of which is the prohibition of polygamy in the Utah territory (which led to one of the early religious clause cases at the Supreme Court).
You say that this approach is “authoritarian.”
I think that this is intended as an epithet. I think that it is intended to equate my traditionalist view with the monstrous regimes of the Fascist and Communist powers.
But my view is the traditional American view, prevailing for almost 200 years. If this is “authoritarian,” then you must condemn the entire American project as “authoritarian.” This puts you firmly in the camp of the radical Leftists.
It’s quite a strange position for someone generally on the Conservative side to take, particularly on the Third of July.
Now, Maj, I know that you don’t like the radical Left. So, frankly, I don’t think that you are thinking clearly about this.
Jerry, I “liked” this comment for the way it ends, not the way it began. I don’t object to phony “hate”; I object to actual hate. “Hate should be permissible” Towards anyone, for any reason? That’s no doubt a powerful philosophical point in some circles, but you do realize its political suicide, right? I don’t mean with Democrats. I mean with almost anybody.
BTW, you think the New York-raised Trump family would refer to gays as “sodomites”? Objectively he’s said nicer things about them than any previous president.
Yes. He is the most vocally pro-gay President ever. So someone please explain why the left keep telling us he’s oppressing gays and putting them in gaycentration camps and crap like that.
It’s almost as if the left is just using gays as a wedge issue.
Do gay people realize how they’re being used by the left? Evangelicals certainly understood that the right was taking them for granted, which is why they voted for the former Democrat, Donald Trump, giving David French and his pundit pals at NR a fatal case of the sads.
Evangelicals voted for a conservative over Hillary. That’s not exactly a stretch or a revolution. I don’t think massive numbers of gays are going to go right wing; in fact, there aren’t massive numbers of gays, period, and until Trump the Republicans have never been friendly to them. I’m not saying we should move heaven and earth to grab more of that 3%; it’s electorally insignificant and tends to be concentrated in districts where it couldn’t flip an election anyway. I am saying that Jerry’s “sodomite” and “philosodomite” language campaign would repel more than enough straight people to make it a very costly mistake.
You guys should check out “Solovki Power”, (1988) about the destruction of a 15th century monastery to build a Soviet prison camp. We had the L.A. premiere with the director, Marina Goldovskaya. For some reason the title was originally transliterated as “Vlast Solovetskaya”, a bitter pun on “Soviet Power”.
It’s possible feelings of abandonment are more mutual than you think. You feel abandoned. I can understand that. But it should also make it easier for you to understand there are also those who feel abandoned by, for example, Ahmarite enthusiasm.
Worries that @garymcvey‘s idea of conservative culture might abandon the partisans of traditional morality raise the question of where do you (or not necessarily you, personally, but perhaps SoCons who feel Ahmari has the better approach) expect the threshold of non-abandonment to be?
I can’t imagine Gary requiring depictions of “deviants” to always be unsympathetic or tragic in order for work to count as conservative. Real life is not so tidy, and there’s no reason for art to be, either. That wouldn’t prevent Gary’s version of conservative culture from holding up people living traditionally-moral lives as sympathetic, interesting, indeed often heroic characters. Works which paint characters’ decisions to avoid, say, sexual entanglement, abortion, or humiliating their parents as noble, sympathetic decisions don’t have to be works which also roundly condemn every “deviancy”. Indeed, if they were, they’d be stilted and unbelievable. A guy like Gary seems perfectly open to having decisions upholding tradition like the one I described portrayed nobly. Not every tradition-minded character might be a good guy, because that’s not how life works, but many would be.
What say you? Would the approach I described count as supporting traditional morality or betraying it?
Gary, I may not have expressed myself well.
First, when I say that “it should be permissible to ‘hate’ people,” I mean that the mere fact that there is “hate” involved should not make an opinion impermissible. I was trying to take things to extremes, to demonstrate the point. I think that it is OK to “hate” Adolph Hitler, or Josef Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or Osama Bin Laden. They were committed to evil and monstrous ideologies, in my view.
I did make the point about the Christian idea of hating the sin but loving the sinner. I do wish that the monsters listed above, from Hitler to Bin Laden, had rejected their evil ideologies. It was the ideas that were the true evil, and the ideas that — I think — are a legitimate target of “hate.”
By the way, I don’t generally go around arguing that I “hate” something or someone. I raise moral or ideological objections to certain ideas or behaviors, on a wide variety of subjects. This particular thread has focused on sexual morality, but I have strong objections to other things ranging from racial discrimination, to identity politics, to radical feminism, to criminality, to Islam.
Let’s take Islam as an example. I strongly object to Islam. I do see much in it with which I agree (belief in a monotheistic God, the importance of prayer, the value of charity). But overall, I find it to be a rather dreadful and false religion.
I think that I should be allowed to think this — just as I think that, say, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris should be allowed to believe that Christianity is a dreadful and false religion. I think that they are wrong, but I don’t think that the objection is somehow impermissible.
The “hate” syllogism works like this. If I object to Islam and say that it’s a bad thing, this is characterized as “hatred” of Islam. This is further characterized as “hatred” of all individual Muslims. I am then characterized as a “hater,” which means that I must be a horrible person and that no one should listen to me. If fact, I can be characterized as a dangerous “Islamophobe” who makes nice, innocent Muslims “unsafe.” Indeed, perhaps I’m on the verge of attacking peaceful Muslims exiting their mosque, perhaps with an assault rifle or perhaps with a truck.
I hope that this has clarified my point. It is troubling to me that this argument, which looks to me like Leftist sleight-of-hand, appears to be so effective.
Oh, I understand that what you’re saying, but it seemed like a good time for me to interject a point about how the right should stop taking evangelicals for granted (and the left needs to stop taking gays for granted. And blacks, and hispanics, and . . .)
But it wasn’t just that evangelicals voted for Trump over Hillary, President Trump also won their support during the primaries. This makes the right-wing pundit class very, very upset, to the point that they continue slandering evangelicals for their votes for the President nearly three years after the election.
I don’t know if it’s possible to build a conservative coalition with people who would rather toss Trump voters out of the party instead of trying to understand why they voted as they did and work with them.
Sorry. I think that there’s a lot to say, and the issues are complex. Also, I’m sorry for “hijacking” this thread, to some extent. Maybe we can get back on track in response to Midge’s # 85.
Re my prior comments — my proposal is that everyone can have a shot at what I said, if they like, but I won’t respond any further on those issues.
Gary, I think that you’re right. I’ve been using this thread, and a couple of shorter ones before, as a test of the “sodomy” terminology. It does not appear to be helping, and I’m thinking that I should revert to the more neutral “homosexual” in most discussion. Perhaps I should reserve “philosodomite” solely as a rejoinder to the use of “homophobia.”
I agree with Jerry that hate should be allowed, inasmuch as I oppose the notion of “hate crimes.”
Midge, thanks for the prompt to get the discussion back on track.
I do not think that depictions of “deviants” must always be unsympathetic or tragic. I take “deviant” to mean a departure from traditional family and sexual virtue in one of many ways — homosexuality, or adultery, or premarital sex, or having an illegitimate child, for example. I think that it should be perfectly acceptable and permissible to present a sympathetic, and even heroic, character who is “deviant” in one of these ways (or more than one).
Indeed, to fail to do so would be to inaccurately reflect reality. Even the Bible presents such flaws, almost everywhere, from Abraham to David and Solomon to Peter. This is the way that we are. Art must reflect reality.
One troubling thing would be presentation of the “deviancy” as a virtue. It seems to me that this would be a betrayal of traditional morality. Another troubling thing would be minimization of the consequences of the “deviancy.” The consequences don’t need to be overwhelming, but there should probably be some.
I also agree that it is perfectly permissible and appropriate to have villains who are traditionalists. The troubling thing is when it seems that all of the traditionalist characters are portrayed negatively. The joke about this — admittedly an exaggeration — is that openly Christian characters appear in most shows only as the child molester or the mass murderer.
I have a few examples, to follow.