"How The Elite Rigged Society (And Why It's Falling Apart)"
David Brooks Talk To British Audience
Queridos,
To begin, I will mention that my favorite Oscar-nominated films for 2025 (at least of those I've seen) include "A Complete Unknown," "Real Pain," "Conclave," "Wicked," "Emilia Perez" and "I'm Still Here." All of them are immeasurably more worthy of the Academy's "Best Picture" Oscar.
*****
I do not know if I will get around to writing a proper review of Anora which Cynthia and I saw yesterday.
Leaving the theater, my initial comment went something like this...
"That was a mediocre B movie - maybe a mediocre C movie - the kind of softcore porn that the Academy would predictably applaud as its members love nothing more than sexual titillation and "the next frontier" in gender-bending. It's the kind of movie that liberals and progressives would typically despise, were it not for the fact that somehow "the avant-garde" must cheer on sex workers and hedonists who live "at the cutting edge of degradation."
The characters in "Anora" are fundamentally ignorant, unread, self-seeking people who think they have glimpsed the innate hollowness of life - or what they take to be the innate hollowness of life.
These Xanadu-dwellers feel there is only one "enlighted choice," and that is to devise (in the absence of joy or happiness) a neverending cascade of pleasure -- almost entirely induced by sex and drugs -- attempting to fill the void where, at some point in their stunted, short-circuited lives, they decided to discard the deep satisfaction of joyful family-and-community, thinking they could reconstitute a simulacrum-of-joy by reassembling "sheer delight" as a piecemeal mosaic of purchasable pleasures.
Behold! Enter the almighty UPC code as arbiter of happiness.
I knew that Anora was fundamentally deluded when I watched the following trailer in which both protagonists identify their heart's desire. https://www.youtube.
For Anora (aka Ani) her heart's desire is "a three-carat diamond ring."
Vanya's heart's desire is paying a prostitute's "bride price," boldly declaring that it doesn't matter to him if the prostitute's wedding ring "is 4 karats, or 5, or 6!"
Vanya will purchase his prostitute, and -- by God! -- he will use his parents' money to buy anything she wants.
The above meme is six years old, and there's been another flood of water under the bridge by now.
If you do not recall Trump buying off his consorts du jour, you're in a much deeper moral quandary than His Malignancy when he paid $130,000.00 to bang a porn queen while Melania was at home nursing Baron.
First Wife Ivana Trump's Rape Allegation
Floozy. World's Worst Person. Vamp.
It would be hard to create a drama more vapid or more fatuous, but Anora does its level best.
An aside...
Anora ranks #5 on the all-time list for most uses of the word "fuck": the expletive is uttered 479 times during the movie, or 3.45 times per minute. [17]
You know you're not in the best good company when "fuck" is the leitmotif.
In pointing out that Anora resorts to "fuck!" once every 18 seconds, I am not arguing on behalf of prudery.
I am arguing on behalf of learning, reverence, wonder and -- at bottom -- the deep literacy that makes Civilization possible.
An aside: It has been said that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization." And, as I see it, Americans are no longer willing to pay for civilization.
Here is what Warren Buffett has to say, but, apparently, no one is literate enough to pay attention to anything that matters:
By Concentrating Our Electoral Efforts On Warren Buffett's Revelation At Berkshire-Hathaway's Shareholders Meeting Earlier This Year (2024), We Now Know That Income Tax Deception Burbling From The Right-Wing Noise Machine Is Entirely Fictitious Propaganda Whose Purpose Is To Keep "Everyday Americans" In The Dark, Squabbling Among Themselves, And Never, Never Giving A Thought To The Origin Of The Ruse
What "Anora's" trailer touts as "a wild, profane blast" --- Oh, be still my heart... what could be more wonderful than a "profane blast" --- distills to "full-frontal" hedonism reminiscent of Caligula and the mythic vomitoria of ancient Rome.
Anora is a proudly degenerate advertisement for the end of Civilization.
And, as the film nears its end, viewers are abused by an indulgent, tedious romp from one hedonistic playground to another to locate "the apparent hero" who has gone missing.
After half an hour of this nonsensical goose-chase, Vanya's pursuers find him in a whorehouse where the whores (like Anora herself) go livid when anyone calls them "whores" rather than "exotic dancers" or "escorts."
I know it has become "de rigueur" to "champion sex workers" and their "right to choose."
But I say that sex work is intrinsically degrading, and anyone who champions sex work - as if it were a noble "cause" - is just flat-out wrong. (Sure, let sex work remain legal. But don't think it's the high moral ground.)
*****
Except for the value that might be found in Anora's gift for softcore titillation (and Mikey Madison's seductive lubriciousness), the actual movie rivals the turpitude of Dante's "Inferno."
Back when I was a kid, the Catholic Church published weekly movie reviews, sometimes limiting its commentary to the single word "Condemned," meaning that the movie-in-question had NO redeeming social value.
Zero. Zilch. Nihil. Nil. Niente. Nada.
If Anora has any redeeming value, please enlighten me.
7 karats?
8?
9?
10?
*****
To be sure...
Finger-wagging is at least futile, and almost certainly counterproductive.
But in Truth, it needs to be said that Trump, his softcore-porn wife, and friends like Roger Stone and Jeffrey Epstein are at bottom --- and it is a very deep, Mariana-trench-like bottom --- bereft souls who have no moral compass, people for whom the word "perdition" was once used to describe their utter lostness. They live in worlds so lost that they would never be able to find their way home. (Technically, this "eternal separation from the presence of God/Home/Mystical-Oneness" was once the very definition of endless damnation.)
Consider.
If you wouldn't want your wife, daughter, sister, mother - or the president's wife - selling their bodies to make money by appealing to prurient interest, then it's bedrock-hypocritical to side with those who say this movie is "the best" - or even to say it crosses the threshold of "good."
Anyone associated with the production of Anora is apparently clueless that "we are not punished for our sins, but rather, we are punished by them."
Our sinfulness (our "missing the mark" which is the etymological origin of "sin") obliges us to live, forevermore, in a moral void with no meaning beyond the momentary satisfaction of getting fucked, getting high, or boasting one's meaningless billions, as if sheer size meant anything.
By way of conclusion, I must point out that I am not promoting prissy morality as it relates to "a punitive, vengeful, bearded guy in the sky."
In fact, no psychospiritual progress can be made until THAT guy is "left behind."
Rather, I am saying that love, kindness, generosity, creativity, harmony, economic justice and championship-of-the-downtrodden are real, meaningful, and satisfying behaviors.
In the end, we either align ourselves with the lineaments of virtue-and-goodness, or, the outcome WILL NOT BE HAPPY.
Lest we forget...
Virtue is its own reward.
And vice is its own punishment.
I am not railing against the near inevitability of youthful misadventures.
I had my full share.
But I now realize why Easter Vigil Mass -- the most important event in the Catholic-Christian liturgical year -- invites us to renew our baptismal vows, the most striking of which is to re-state our resolve to "renounce the glamor of Satan."
The glamor of Satan.
Anora is a poster girl for the glamor of Satan.
*****
Einstein observed that there are only two ways to engage Life.
One way is intrinsically meaningless.
And the other approach, by virtue of deliberate collaboration between humans and The Ground of Being, is self-evidently meaningful.
"Science Depends On The Religious Attitude," Albert Einstein's Writings On Religion
"While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements."
Einstein
Do Scientists Pray? Einstein Answers a Little Girl’s Question about Science vs. Religion
Who Woulda Thunk It?!? Shakespeare, Einstein, J. B. S. Haldane And Wendell Berry Converge On Truth
"Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling and The Redemption Of The Modern World"
To know what I mean by "meaningfulness," please see:
The Philosophical Sequel To My Back Deck Debate With Son Danny/Caribou About "The Meaning Of It All" And How We Rise - Optimally - To The Occasion
On the other hand, "meaninglessness" can be easily understood by anyone - anywhere - who conjures his or her personal image of Donald-Trump-Liar-Cheat-Felon-
Trump Is The Most Gifted Criminal Genius In The History Of The World - A Houdini Who Can Make Personal Responsibility Disappear. "Malignant Messiah" Can Shoot Someone On 5th Avenue -- In Broad Daylight -- And Not Lose Any Voters. But "Getting Away With Murder" Is The Least Of It. "Lingering Orange Fart" Attempted A Coup D' Etat And Then Persuaded Half The People That He Deserves A Mulligan
Love
Dman
The Bonus Round
The Quandary We Are In: Hannah Arendt And The Necessary Primacy Of The Supersensual. (And what, prithee, do G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis and George Carlin's praise for nuns have to do with it?)
Pope Francis sees coprophilia as a real problem.
And it is.
Pope Francis Compares Fake News Consumption To Eating Faeces
I believe that a strong case can be made that "Anora" (and Trump) embody similar attempts to force-feed feces.
