It has been a while. I am still grieving. But, I finally feel like writing in long form again, so strap in, this is going to be an omnibus.
Situation I Don't Know What To Think About
One of the few nice elements on the YouTubes is Jordan Owen, who I have been a fan of for well over a decade now. Mr. Owen is vastly younger than I am, so the fact that he impresses me is an indication that he is someone to be taken seriously. This is not to say we agree on everything. His views on economics tend towards Ayn Rand, who I regard to be a ripoff of Thomas Jefferson. My views on economics tend towards Alexander Hamilton and Otto Graf von Bismarck. Ayn Rand, for example, views government regulation as intrinsically harmful to free markets. In reality, the Hanseatic League--a medieval chamber of commerce--imposed restrictions banning the dumping of ballast from the North Sea and the Baltic Sea into the Rhine. This did not harm their ability to operate. The loss of Novgorod to the ruling Riurik warlord of the day was what signalled their demise as a power.
So, on to particulars.
Mr. Owen recently released a video explaining why the Bud Light Boycott is working. Fair enough. Mr. Owen does not drink Bud Light and I no longer drink, so we both can approach this as outsiders.
In that video Mr. Owen says that the poster child Bud Light uses in harming rather than helping. On this, I fully agree.
An aside here. Now retired adult performer Paris Kennedy once said "If you oppose gay marriage, but like lesbian porn, you are a hypocrite." That is one reason why I am gay-friendly. I am very much enamoured of the output of Sweetheart Video, Girlfriends Filims and have been so since before these studios even existed. (Another reason why I am gay-friendly can be found if you Google the names "Ernst Röhm" and "Eoin O'Duffy." Now, I have no use for the politics of either, but since O'Duffy raised a whole battalion to go to Spain to fight Stalin, there is no question that he was a brave man, in which sense Röhm's Iron Cross, First Class speaks for itself, something Ron DeSantis would rather you not know.) So, not being opposed to gay marriage, I also have no opposition to transgendered people being allowed to live the way they want.
However, I do think the Bud Light poster child harms rather than helps the cause. The thing about Röhm and O'Duffy was that they were gay in the bedroom,and good Americans, so to speak, outside the bedroom. They kept their private lives private. As South Carolina Governor and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley's Sikh parents told her "Your job is not to show how different you are. Your job is to show how similar you are."
Insert another "however," which is as follows. A recent CBC story reported that Texas, by law and not by lack of funding, is cutting healthcare for transgendered youth.
I do not like the Bud Light Poster Child, but I do not think that Texas transgendered youth should be forced to pay the consequences of the Bud Light Poster Child's excesses.
Likewise, a town in Ontario is dominated by fundamentalist Christians harasses shopkeepers who open on Sunday and who banned the flying of the Pride Flag on municipal grounds, while shooting at people who fly the Flag on their property.
This will be an unpopular opinion, but I think that the Bud Light Poster Child, the Texas Legislature and the Ontario fundamentalists are ALLwrong. There hasto be a middle ground between these extremes.
No Hard Feelings
Mr. Owen released a video on the aforementioned movie. I saw the movie after I saw his video.
In his video, Mr. Owen dispels the myth that this filim is about "grooming." On that we agree,and from there on, we part company.
Mr. Owen finds this filim to be quite subpar as far as the coming of age comedy genre goes, and expresses a sense of disappointment in how it turned out, particularly expressing a negative view of the young male protagonist of this filim.
I understand where Mr. Owen is coming from. This filim, much like The Family Stonesome many years ago now, is actually a drama that was deceitfully marketed as a comedy. That is why someone going into it expecting a comedy is bound to be disappointed.
Mr. Owen also says that it is odd the Jennifer Lawrence is thirty but looks like she is ten years younger. I, on the other hand, notice a distinct evolution between the Jennifer Lawrence of Winter's Bone, Silver Linings Playbook and Serena (this last one being my favourite filim of hers), and No Hard Feelings. She is more mature, more relatable and--in comparison to her two dimensional cartoon "archer" character of fame who shows exactly what NOTto do when drawing an arrow--more likeable.
As well, there is an entire subtext that, Mr. Owen, not being native to New York and not having lived there, is missing. I am not native to New York, but I spent my formative years there.
This filim takes place in Montauk on Suffolk County in Long Island. Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk Counties) is a "dormitory" for New York City financial industry workers--or, to put it more frankly, Wall Street Assholes. Long Island has never recovered from 2007-2008, and still remains devastated from 2012's Hurricane Sandy.
Jennifer Lawrence's character is is native of Suffolk County, one who, like many native Long Islanders, can barely afford to live there. Most of the people who live in her neighbourhood--people referred to in the filim as "summer people"--are Wall Street Assholes. Think "Gordon Gecko" in WallStreet. That is what the kid's parents are. That is what the asshole who walks into Jennifer Lawrence's character's place of business running his mouthhole full blast on his yuppie-yapper is. That is what the asshole in the bar wearing the NY Scumbags jersey is. That is what the yobos who steal the clothes are. That is what the jackholes at the party are.
I knew a lot of guys who grew up to be Wall Street Assholes in school. Even back then, they were coke fiends, arrogant and not particularly inclined towards thinking of anything else than quitting time on Friday. Most of them excelled on Wall Street, having nary a clue on matters outside, including being halfway decent parents and spouses.
It is no surprise at all that the young man protagonist's parents do not know what to do with him because they have zero clue as to the fact that, for someone of his background, he is actually an outstanding, well-mannered young man with a sense of honour, decency and propriety that is more at home at Downton Abbey or anywhere else in Masterpiece Theatre than it is in the progeny of a Wall Street Asshole.
A nineteen year old man who is decent to a woman, and who is not an arrogant yobo running his mouthhole like a Marshall Stack wired up to a perpetual motion engine is a good thing in 2023. The way this young man protagonist behaves towards women in this filim is exactly the way that, when he can resist his vampire urges, "Barnabas Collins" behaves towards women in Dark Shadows (the original TV show.)
Related to that is the actor who plays the young male protagonist's father. I do not remember his name. (I tend not to remember the names of actors who are not Jonathan Frid, Randolph Scott, Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson and Chuck Heston, and, as far as I am concerned, Schwarzenegger and Stallone are punks, no matter what their chronological ages are.) However, I immediately recognised his face as Ferris Bueller. This opens other avenues of comparison.
Ferris Bueller is a con artist. The young man of this filim is not. The young man of this filim is decent and honest. He is going to Princeton, not Parris Island, so there is no need for him to be anything other than he is at the start of the filim.
At the same time, the young man in this filim has far more in common with Ferris Bueller than he does with the late teen protagonists of The Lords Of Flatbush, Saturday Night Fever and The Wanderers, all filims which also take place in New York. The late teen protagonists of these filims are all markedly more assertive than both Ferris Bueller and the young mang of this filim. They are all also jerks who are barely likeable, and who are unreliable.
On the Lords of Flatbush connection, let me further expound. Mr. Owen says that the romantic denouement of this filim is disappointing. The romantic denouement of this filim is exactly identical to the scene in The Lords Of Flatbush that ends with the line "Oh, Chico! You made a mess!" This is something that happens rather often in canoodling.
Now, without giving away any spoilers, both Jennifer Lawrence's character and the young man character turn out to be decent people at the end. That makes No Hard Feelingsworth seeing.
The Flash, the new Spiderman movie, GothamKnights and Council Estate yobos
I saw the above movies and show. While none is Violent City/The Familyor the original Assault On Precinct 13, each is decent enough and enjoyable in its own right. This is not something you would know from the Council Estate yobos on the YouTubes who, claiming to hate them, churn out videos dedicated to them on an industrial scale like they were trying to surpass Red Bull in unit production. These yobos almost invariably whinge that these filims and this show "deviate from canon," despite the facts that a) each of the female characters in Gotham Knights has been in the canon for well over a decade now, and that b) not a one of these yobos seems to have noticed that the movie "Flash" is not wearing a WWI Doughboy "Tin Hat" helmet as in the original.
One other thing I noticed about the Council Estate yobos whinging about the above on the YouTubes is that they all have a passionate hatred of Disney...as does Ron DeSantis...who TheEconomist has documented as being Putin's stateside hatchet man...
In stark contrast, Nikki Haley is an avowed opponent of Putin, as is Italy's Giorgia Meloni.
Food for thought.