What CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND(dir. Steven Spielberg) tells us about the Trajectory of Jewish American Experience from Leaders of People Power to Hoarders of Elite Power — HoloCovenant as the New Definition of Jewishness

Even though Jews have produced many influential thinkers in the 20th century, we can learn as much or even more about them through their use of popular culture. Granted, some degree of esotericism is necessary to decode the message. In other words, just like adults and children see things differently and laugh for different reasons when watching TV, it's likewise between Jews and Goyim when watching, say, a Steven Spielberg movie. For the goyim, it's just a big thrill ride. To Jews, it's a game of 'wink-wink, nudge-nudge, get it?'

Take CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, the only movie that contended with STAR WARS for box office in 1977, the year following the Bicentennial. For most people, it was a grand sci-fi fairytale, like a Disney Movie for adults. And in many ways, the spirit of the movie seemed 'as American as apple pie'. But if ever there was a statement of 'We Jews Shall Inherit the Earth', it's this movie. The movie is at once mainstream-populist and Jewish tribal-elitist. It depends on who is doing the watching with which set of cultural references. A goy might go around saying "Did-you see it?", but for the Jew, it's a case of "Jew see it?" Jew know? It came out in the year of ANNIE HALL that won Best Picture Oscar.

The core source of Jewish Power is the force of prophecy. This potential is latent in all groups but failed to come to full fruition among most. Jews attained it to the furthest degree. (One might say Arabs did too with Islam, but Muhammad mostly copied and revised Jewish prophecies.) In the movie, the space aliens as cosmic power reach out to all humanity. They send signals even to Mexicans(who are mostly drunk), Mongols(in the middle of nowhere), and Hindus(who think Vishnu sang to them). (But apparently not to Negroes, thank Todd.) And among the called are white goyim as well. But the one who is mostly burning-bushed is none other than the Richard Dreyfuss character Roy Neary. Roy is like a Jew-Toy, and he's Neary to God. (As Pinocchio goes from puppet to a real boy, Roy goes from ersatz goy to a true 'Jew'.) So, even though there are two modes to its aura — nationalistic as space aliens choose America among all nations, especially the famed Devil's Tower(though not Mt. Rushmore), and internationalist as space aliens shine their rays and send signals to all peoples of the world — , the real blessing or cosmo-covenant is with Roy who, though not spelled out as JEW, is clearly Jewishy with Dreyfuss's physiognomy and pushy over-the-top performance. Roy stands for Jew as impassioned seeker, climber, and ultimate victor, the heartbreak kid. The two other notable Jewish or Jewishy characters are Lacombe by Francois Truffaut and Laughlin by Bob Balaban. Balaban represents Neo-Talmudism. His expertise is cartography, making and reading of maps, modern version of Jewish numerology. (Upon his realization that the space aliens' signals are coordinates, his colleagues roll a giant globe into a room to pinpoint the whereabouts. It's as if the world is being prepared for Jewish Possession: The World is Ours because the hidden covenantial code can be cracked and revealed only by us Jews.) Truffaut had his own awakening of identity — he grew up thinking he's entirely French but later discovered through a private eye that his father is a Jewish dentist. So, even though the grand ending is ostensibly about space aliens meeting with humanity, it becomes almost like a tribal Bar Mitzvah or Jewish Wedding where space aliens as cosmo-gods choose Jews Uber Alles. It's very much a closed affair, a Closed Encounter as well as a close one.

In preparation for the Encounter, the scientific community, the US government, and the military conspire to keep the public away. One military commander says: "What I need is something so scary it'll clear three hundred square miles of every living Christian soul." Now, there are two ways of making sense of the statement. It's just a figure of speech and has nothing to do with Christians — just scare the population away so that serious people can pull off a diplomatic coup with the aliens, a kind of like Olympics for the scientific community. And yet, even as the movie panders to goy audiences, including lots of Christians, it is indeed about excluding Christians and goyim from the blessed communion between cosmic power and the chosen. Of course, there are plenty of goyim, from top scientist to technician, present at the Encounter, but most serve as background to the Jews who command the center stage; someone even remarks that Albert Einstein wasn't only right but 'probably one of them(the superior aliens)'. Also, on the ground is some piece of metal that looks like a fallen crucifix, as if to imply Christianity is over and to be replaced by the new faith beamed across movie and tv screens dominated by Jews.

There are certain allusions to Jewish culture and history, some more obvious than others, like the broadcast of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS on TV. But some are easy to miss, like the difficulty Roy Neary's son has with fractions in math. For advice, Neary talks about fractions of the number 60. The six figure is likely a reference to the Shoah where supposedly 6 million died. Neary asks his son what one third of 60 is and demonstrates the lesson with a toy train set: One third of the train is exposed on the intersection, so how much would the train have to be moved to avoid a collision with an oncoming train? The son fails to answer fast enough, and the trains collide. It seems Spielberg was suggesting the Jews(and the world) didn't react fast enough in WWII, and many Jews got destroyed. The train itself is of course an allusion to the Shoah as many Jews were sent to the camps on rail.

While Roy and his son discuss fractions, another son in the background stands inside a baby playpen and fiercely attacks a blonde doll, smashing it to pieces. Spielberg uses the kid in child-play to channel his rage at the blond Aryan race. In a way, it sums up the essence of Spielbergism: Jewish Rage masked as child's play. Indeed, the kid's antics seem funny, even cute. Boys will be boys, right? But the scene is also disturbing as the boy keeps smashing the denuded doll until it's head comes off. It anticipates the murder of the nude pro-Palestinian German woman in MUNICH, not to mention all the anti-Nazi bloodbaths in Indiana Jones movies.
No movie director in movie history has been as violent and family-friendly at the same time. The fun-quality of Spielberg's movies(akin to amusement park rides), starting with JAWS(or THE DUEL), makes people forget how aggressive, destructive, and even blood-thirsty they are. Incidentally, the fact that the boy is inside a baby playpen could suggest that the Aryan Race must be snuffed out in the cradle. Or maybe it's a dig at Christianity, a subconscious wish to kill Jesus as baby, fantasy-accomplishment of what Herod failed to do.

Roy insists that the family should go see PINOCCHIO than go for Goofy Golf. Given golf's association with Wasp country clubs, Spielberg could have been suggesting that Jews should focus on taking over the mythic narrative(as Walt Disney did) than waste time with useless recreational activities. Golf is only for the players, whereas entertainment is for everyone. In golf, a player wins over other players, whereas in entertainment the creators of fantasies come to conquer all the souls of the world. They get to mess with the world like space aliens mess with humanity in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.

Later, there maybe another allusion to the Shoah in the UFO conference. A government official asks just how is it that, what with all the many millions of cameras in the world, not a single irrefutable image of space ships/aliens has been produced? The figures given by the official is that 7 billion photos are taken each year in the US at the cost of 6.6 billion dollars of equipment and processing. Again, we have the figure of the SIX. It could be Spielberg is suggesting that not a single photo of a Jew being gassed by the Nazis exists, but the gassings took place. So, in a way, Roy's pursuit of the truth about UFO could be Spielberg's sublimated obsession about the hidden truths about the Holocaust, and of course, the HoloCovenant is what defines most Jews today.

But the most dramatic allusion to the Jewish Experience is the 'tower' as metaphor for circumcision. After the burning-bush encounter with a space ship, Roy Neary kept envisioning mountain-like figures and turned to crude sculpting to erect the shape of these visions. The result is something like a towering boner, but it's not quite right. Something is a bit off. And then, just when he's frustrated and about to give up, he goes about pulling at the 'tower' mound of his making, and the top comes off, and finally, the vision is complete. It's like the Covenant between Jews is about removal of the foreskin on the penis. That COMPLETES the Jew. Jewishness isn't just about the towering erection of man-meat but the sacrificial offering of the foreskin to God. And then, when Roy watches TV and makes the connection between the circum-tower and Devil's Tower(in Wyoming), he has to go to the American Sinai to realize the fullness of himself as the Chosen, the special one.

The TV is instrumental because it signifies the Jewish control of the Media. Once, the Jewish Book was the source of Western Spiritual and Moral Imagination. Christianity was an outgrowth of Judaism. However, it turned against Jews and made them out to be Christ-killers. One way for Jews to cope with this problem was insularity, but they would always be seen as outsiders, the Other. Another way was to assimilate into the goy world, but (1) it meant loss of rich identity & culture (2) there were sufficient differences between Jews and Whites(or Aryans) that made smooth assimilation impossible. In Germany, even assimilated Jews were targeted as subversive Semites. In the US, whites were happy to welcome and accept Jews as fellow whites, but Jewish supremacism didn't want to become one with sappy bland white culture, and furthermore, Jews became contemptuous of white weakness.

So, the third option was a new universalism, this time controlled by Jews. Marxism had appealed to many Jews as the new universalism that could overcome antisemitism — Karl Marx thought antisemitism would never go away as long as there was capitalism as Jews were the greediest and most compulsive practitioners of it. But as communism came to favor mediocrity and statist stasis over meritocracy and individual enterprise, Jews came to see it as chain-and-ball around their legs.

In the US, Jews favored Marx-Brothersism over Marxism. Make the goy laugh. Make the goy laugh so hard at Jewish wit and humor that they will see Jews as entertaining and endearing(even though much of Jewish American Humor was along the lines of Dumb Polack Jokes, i.e. at the expense of dimwit or bland white goyim, especially Wasps). Jews gained tremendous leverage as comedians. Woody Allen and Mel Brooks became household names. Jerry Seinfeld entered every living room and became like member of the family or personal friend. But the problem with humor is it favors irony, sarcasm, and mockery. Jews can make people laugh but can also be laughed at, and being laughed at isn't far from being ridiculed. Notice how many people soured on Woody Allen after a series of scandals. He became the joke than the joker. Also, as Jews gained in influence and privilege, they became more anxious about humor as edgy satire of power. Notice Jews don't care for the humor of 4Chan types, not even Babylon Bee that pokes fun at Jewish-led agendas like globo-homo and tranny-wanny.

This is where Spielberg has been so valuable in scripting and evangelizing a special brand of Jewish Power. He understood and mastered the power of myth at the psycho-popular level. Richard Dreyfuss's character goes from funny and ridiculous(often associated with Jewish Comedy) to impassioned, heroic, and ultimately quasi-spiritual. As Pinocchio turns from wood to flesh, Roy goes from an ordinary American terrestrial to a Cosmic Jewish prophet on the precipice of divinity. He becomes pop-Moses. In THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the Aryan Charlton Heston took on the role of the great Jew, as he would once again in BEN-HUR, the ultimate message of which is Jews should accept Christ. But in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, it is really the Jewish-looking Jewish personality of Richard Dreyfuss who takes center stage.
At once, he becomes both More Jewish and More American as the story moves along. How could this be? How could someone become more tribal and more Jewishy in a white Christian majority America and still come across as All-American? This is where Spielberg's genius pulls off the magic. The movie is such a visual-aural treat, like a biggest Christmas Tree ever, that the awed audience just swoons along(especially aided by John Williams' all-encompassing and all-embracing music) and fails to sense that something isn't quite right in the equation. The music and circus-like effects cast their spell on everyone, but what is really happening is the crowning of the Neo-Mosaic Jew as the new christ.

In JAWS, Dreyfuss played a side character. Roy Scheider who took the main role is also Jewish but didn't play the role Jewishy, whereas Dreyfuss did. In CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, the Jewish Dreyfuss takes center stage. He begins more or less as typically American but then becomes ever more Jewishy in his feverish search for his personal 'lost ark'. (Something similar happens to the Jewish character of David Mamet's HOMICIDE. Initially, he thinks little of his Jewishness but becomes more aware, more angry, even to the point of vengeful paranoia. He goes from cultural amnesia in all-embracing America to tribal awakening as a member of the Tragic Tribe.)

In earlier times, many Jews sought to prove their American-ness by trying to act white(and look white, especially the women with nose-jobs). Many altered the names to sound more Anglo. Many repressed their Jewish personality and tried to act genteel like Wasps. Being American meant having to suppress some of that Jewishness which came to be equated with uncouth vulgarity. Of course, some Jews played up their Jewishness to the hilt, but this was mainly in comedy. For many Jews, the social ideal was embodied by Kirk Douglas who didn't even look all that Jewish. For some Jews who couldn't repress their Jewish idiosyncrasies but didn't want to be identified as Jewish, radicalism was the solution. That way, they could act pushy and neurotic in the name of some Social Justice cause, thus creating the false impression that their difficult personalities had more to do with ideology than identity. Take Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, archetypal problematic Jews in roles as anarchists or socialists.

But as time passed, there was too big a gap between the real Jew and the idealized Jew. Most Jews didn't look like Kirk Douglas. If they resembled certain European types, it was more the Southern European. Many Jews looked more like Joe Pesci than Clint Eastwood. Also, the personality traits of Jews really came alive when unfettered from pressures to act 'wasp'. If Dustin Hoffman's character in THE GRADUATE exhibited some of these Jewish anxieties, FUNNY GIRL that came out a year later was like a declaration of Jewish Personality Emancipation. The first Jewish Emancipation was about laws and rights. In contrast, the Jewish Personality Emancipation was about the right, indeed the necessity, for Jews to FEEL and ACT Jewish. If Marx Brothers' Jewishness was obviously caricatures, the New Jewish Comedians were meant to be genuine Jewish personalities than mere cartoons. So, Barbra Streisand was about how the Jewess could be totally Jewish and be sexy. And Woody Allen was about how a Jewish comic could also be a serious artist and 'thinker'. Still, if Streisand and Allen remained unmistakably Jewish, distinct from goyim, the strange thing about Roy Neary of Spielberg's imagination is he is so indelibly Jewish and yet also vividly American. In a way, his apotheosis lends the impression that the Jew is more American than American because, all said and done, the true fulfilment of the American Dream came with the Passion(or the Obsession) of the Jew. And this minority-centric view of America eventually led to globo-homo as the New Normal, i.e. homo minority is more the true exemplar of Americanism than anything associated with straightness. And notice how globo-homo celebration and symbolism are as outlandish, ostentatious, and obnoxious as anything by Spielberg.

What is most instructive about CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is it provides us with an arc of Jewish History from Jews-as-social-climbers to Jews-as-kings-of-the-hill. Roy Neary's adventure and transformation from Ordinary Joe Populist to Extraordinary Jew Elitist reflects the trajectory of Jews from challengers of American Power to champions of it(in their own image... or shadow).

Like Roy Neary, so many Jews in the 60s claimed to be for the Little Guy, the small fish. They were for the workers. They were for the downtrodden. Their radicalism had an element of populism. Jews would stand and march with the have-lesses against the Power Structure of Wasp elites and the Military Industrial Complex. Jews attacked the FBI and CIA. Jews subverted trust in institutions and authority. Jewish activism back then was ostensibly for the little guy, the ordinary joes of America of all color. Some Jews even took up farming or opted to work in factories(at least for awhile to prove their bona fides). Jews demanded answers from the Power. Jewish assault on Wasp privilege was supposedly for all Americans. Not just for equal opportunity for Jews but for ethnic whites, Catholics, blacks, browns, and etc. Jews even made a big fuss about the poor American Indians. Jews made documentaries like HARLAN COUNTRY USA and movies like NORMA RAE in the 1970s.
So, even though Jews, as radicals, subversives, or climbers, were clearly distinct from other groups(who were less intelligent, capable, and driven with ambition), they operated in the clothing of Everyman. Saul Alinsky is a good example. And the ACLU claimed to protect the free speech rights and civil liberties of ALL AMERICANS, yes even for Neo-Nazis and KKK. Jews put on a big show of WE THE PEOPLE against Wasp-ruled America and the Military-Industrial Complex that was said to be perpetuating the Cold War and killing many innocents in Vietnam and Latin America. (But, of course, mum about the Palestinians.)

Through much of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, Roy Neary is like a combination of Jewish radicalism and Ordinary Americanism(or the populism of the Ordinary Joe). He joins with other Americans(who look goy) against the government establishment that isn't telling the whole truth and carrying out a secret project(one that makes the Manhattan Project seem like an open house). Roy demands to know the truth. He serves as spokesman for other Americans at the UFO conference. He is with the People against the Government. There are times when the US government seem almost crypto-fascist Nazi-like, an American Gothic take on Leni Riefenstahlism. And there were reasons for Jews to be worried about statism. After all, the National Socialists weren't a bunch of libertarians. And the Soviet Union, which eventually became an enemy of Zionism and an ally of anti-Israeli Arab nations, was about state power also. And in the Sixties, Jewish radicals denounced Amerika as a police state.

Of course, during World War II, Jews couldn't get enough of FDR's warmongering statism to destroy Germany and Japan, but because many Jews were on the left, the Cold War not only brought the Republicans back to power but began to prosecute people suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies, especially in the aftermath of revelations about the Jewish Rosenbergs(who gave Stalin the Bomb), the 'loss' of China to Mao, and the Korean War. This set the grounds for Jewish trepidations about state power, and in the Sixties many Jews took to styles of neo-anarcho-syndicalism that fused with chaotic youth-pop-culture. Jews, who'd been pro-statist during WWII, became anti-statist during the Vietnam War. It was partly out of sympathy for the communist Viet Cong but also because it's deemed anathema for Jews to die for goyim. Jews hated being drafted to fight wars on behalf of non-Jews. Of course, Jews couldn't say, "We don't want to serve in the military because Jewish lives are too precious to waste on saving goy lives from communism", and so, they made a big fuss about how they supported the Anti-War movement to end the war and its slaughter of civilians.
In the early 70s, New Hollywood put out a bunch of paranoid movies. Partly, it was a reflection of Jewish Anti-Nixon-ism, but it was also part of the Zeitgeist as the Sixties had done much to shake confidence in US institutions. And CLOSE ENCOUNTERS reflects some of the paranoia in movies like PARALLAX VIEW and THREE DAYS OF CONDOR. Roy Neary is positive that the government is lying and treating people like stupid children. He demands an answer and takes the law into his own hands. He goes rogue vigilante, smashing through barriers erected by the government to get nearer to Devil's Tower.

It's Roy as People's Hero against the State. He seems to embody the populist spirit. But there's a difference. Whereas the essence of populism is 'leave us alone'(as in "Don't Tread on Me" on the Gadsden Flag), the essence of Jewish Nature is to intrude into the power center. Whereas most populists don't care what the state does AS LONG AS it leaves them alone, Jews want to peer inside and see what's really happening inside the power. Their motto might as well be, "Let Me Tread on You." This is why Roy goes further than the Goy in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. Though plenty of goyim have also been beckoned by the space aliens, most of them don't make the connections or give up half-way. But Roy pushes all the way. Like the Negro staring into Harry Callahan's barrel of Magnum 44, Roy gots to know. Throughout the adventure, Roy suspects the government is up to something sinister. And Spielberg even includes a train scene as if to suggest the US government could be like the Nazis rounding up Jews. It's Spielberg's way of saying a country is all about WHO HAS THE POWER. Is the power pro-Jewish or anti-Jewish? Roy the populist hero acts against the state through most of the movie, and Spielberg was surely channeling Jewish paranoia that goes back to the so-called McCarthy Era and re-emerged during the Nixon presidency. Could America really be Amerika?

And yet, Spielberg offers a revision to the paranoia. What if the government, though far from perfect, is mostly good and has reasons to keep the project a secret? What if the superior space aliens wanted it that way, i.e. to meet with the best and the brightest than with the unwashed idiotic hoi polloi among the human species? Also, what if Roy and others chosen by the space aliens had to undergo a trial to prove their worthiness? It's like the race of life itself from the beginning. Every human life is the product of a single sperm winning the race over all the other sperms. And Roy is the winning sperm who makes it through Devil's Tower(as the giant circumcised Jewish Penis) and enters the space ship as cosmic womb. If Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY had a Wasp being reborn as Star Child, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS alters the vision with a Jewish Guy as Spacenik. Even though the goy-controlled state once placed obstacles against the Jew, it was ultimately meaningful as the obstacles demonstrated the superiority of Jews who won the struggle to overcome them. Thus, Jewish challenge to the Power didn't so much prove Jewish commitment to equality as Jewish Superiority as the only people who could topple and gain mastery over the Wasps. Unlike National Socialist Germans who were determined to keep the Jews down at all costs, Wasps had a 'good sport' culture and welcomed Jews as the rightful winners and owners of America.

Roy, who'd been so anti-government and anti-authority through much of the movie, comes to feel that the state had been right all along. This special moment cannot be for all the world. Too many people are idiots, boors, retards, undeserving of the cosmic-covenant. No, this encounter with cosmic gods must be for the best of the best among mankind. The brilliant scientists and the like. And even though he was an ordinary joe, just another working man, he too deserves to be there because he's proven his resolve and mettle through trial by fire, by running roughshod over all obstacles. He earned his marks, and he belongs among the best-and-the-brightest. In their company, he is no longer complaining about the government, the secretiveness, and the deception to the public. He comes to understand the need for secrecy and even duplicity by the powerful, at least if the powerful isn't nazi-like or anti-Jewish. As it turns out, state power in the US isn't filled with anti-Jewish Nazi-types but many Jews and Jew-friendly goyim. Also, as the superior space aliens choose him, a Jew or crypto-Jew, over all others, we must trust in the power because its ultimate manifestation is about the Covenant of the Jew and Cosmic Power. Roy's example suggests that Jewishness is so special that even a seemingly Ordinary Joe/Jew is among the very best, part of the natural elite favored by cosmic power. The whole spectacle is more fun than sneaking into a drive-in movie. 

Roy's transformation from Ordinary Joe populist to Extraordinary Jew elitist is illustrative of the change in Jewish attitudes, outlook, and values over the years. Jews, who used to challenge deep state institutions, are now their biggest defenders. Jews, who used to speak of civil liberties and free speech for all Americans, are now the biggest agents of censorship or censchwarzship. Jews who used to decry the warfare state are now the biggest warmongering imperialists on the basis that the 'adults in the room' know what they're doing. Jews who used to challenge the official narratives are now the biggest pushers of officialdom. Many Jews know the narratives are bogus but push them anyway because the dimwit goyim simply cannot handle the truth, or so they believe. It's like Roy becomes part of the powerful crew once he makes it over the mountain and is accepted by the best and the brightest.

Most Jews arrived poor to America in the late 19th century and early 20th century. They had no choice but to struggle alongside the working class and white ethnics. So, many Jews back then believed in the shared struggle alongside poor white goyim against the Wasp Establishment. Jews and the People vs the Power. But Jews were different from other groups. They were smarter and savvier than the Dumb Polacks, Greasy Italians, Drunken Irish, and the like. Indeed, they were even smarter than the ruling Wasp class. So, it was only a matter of time before Jews would not only outpace the white ethnics but wrest power from the Wasps. They had no choice then to shed their Ordinary Joe clothing and put on cloak of Extraordinary Jew. It's like Roy goes Royal.

The mother-and-son element of the movie reminds us of the Madonna and Child, but alas, the goy child is returned to Earth while the spaceship carries the Jewishy Roy to the heavens. It suggests Judaism is ultimately higher than Christianity, a faux-knockoff of Jewish Spirituality, albeit something Jews can draw lessons from in their neo-spiritual quest to conquer the world via modern mass media and entertainment. 

And so, we are now in the age of Covid. When Covid Hysteria broke out, the first image that came to my mind was the scene in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS where Roy figures the government is practicing psychological warfare to fool the public. Whatever threat Covid poses, what honest person can deny it's been vastly exaggerated and manipulated as political tool to hoodwink and control the dimwit multitudes(and even alter and pervert political processes, not to mention used for raking in massive profits).

Now, given that Steven Spielberg made CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, do you think he would side with the Covid Skeptics who are like Roy as Ordinary Joe? NO, because Spielberg is Roy-gone-Royal. He knows his Tribe has the power. His Tribe is smarter, superior, and wiser. His Tribe is more deserving of more money and more power. And so, just like Roy learns to stop worrying and love the power(that finally aids him in the fulfilment of destiny), people like Spielberg have stopped worrying about the power because they got all of it and intend to control us as dimwit hoi polloi who should just yammer about Big Foot and leave important matters to the Power, the adults in the room... the Jews.

Roy Neary from Ordinary Joe to Extraordinary Jew to New Christ

Why Fred Reed's Sentimental Standard-Boomerish Pleading for Jews is So Utterly Pathetic and Misguided — Jewish Intelligence Is Real but Talent Isn't Synonymous with Virtue

Do Jews Contain Microchips? by FRED REED - https://www.unz.com/freed/do-jews-contain-microchips/

A few weeks back I wrote a column suggesting that Jews have become successful because they are smart.

It’s more like Jews are Schmart. Jewish IQ is real but it’s really the combination of Jewish IQ, Jewish pushy-personality, Jewish pride(rooted in the Covenant), Jewish cunning(honed as merchants), and Jewish resentment(mainly that goyim are either tougher and/or more attractive) that explains Jewish Power. After all, Episcopalians have been said to have IQs equal to that of Jews, but they lack the personality and the sense of destiny that Jews have.

Imagine two kids. Both got the same IQ of 150. But one kid is just nice and bland whereas the other kid is neurotic and pushy. Who is going to demand more from life and others? Who is going to achieve more? Jews have an obsessive quality, and that fuels their IQ. Take Ron Jeremy who had the chutzpah to suck his own dick, an incredible image seared into my brain in grammar school by some Jewish kid who showed us one of his dad's secret video collection.

I predicted–it didn’t take much predicting—that there would follow great fury and anguish and thundering that Jews aren’t really that smart

Such people cannot handle reality. They are like the ones who say blacks aren't more muscular and athletic against all evidence, which is obvious and overwhelming by now. They are living in denial.
However, it is true that not all of Jewish wealth and power owe to merit. Many Jews have wealth or power way beyond their talent because of connections. It’s like smart Jews in the US pull strings to aid ALL Jews in Israel, even the dim ones. And plenty of Jews who are smart-but-not-too-smart got ahead due to nepotism or tribalism. Hollywood is full of these people who are smart-but-not-too-smart. In contrast, many smart goyim are shut out of many institutions and industries because they are deemed ‘antisemitic’, ‘racist’, or ‘homophobic’, made all the worse by our ‘cancel culture’. In contrast, a Jew can be full of hatred toward Arabs and Palestinians(and whites), but that won’t stand in the way of his rise to fame and fortune. Look at all the Neocons who messed up the Middle East but are still in business and favored by elite institutions. If you're Nick Fuentes, the state takes all your money without explanation. But if you're a Jewish crook, you either get pardoned by politicians or never charged in the first place. If you're white and call out on Jewish Evils, you are deemed a 'hater', but Jews who pervert foreign policy into carrying out mayhem against Arabs and Muslims are hailed as statesmen.

But if those doing the resentful hissing and snarling really believe that every aspect of our lives is run by Jews, perhaps from a control room deep beneath Manhattan, does this not imply we, the controlled, must be weak, feckless, dim, easily led and, well, contemptible? Are the rest of us really as helpless and docile as the hissers hold us to be? I mean, honest, I can actually dress myself.

Most people are weak, feckless, dim, easily led, and well… contemptible. Look at the German masses spellbound by Adolf Hitler. Even when Der Fuhrer brought ruin on the nation, they followed his every command. Look at all those Chinese youths who attacked their own culture and heritage at the behest of madman Mao during the imbecilic Cultural Revolution. So, it’s true that many people are idiots swayed by manipulation from above. As Jews control the white cuck elites who represent the white masses, white folks today are mostly retarded.

But it’s not just about stupidity or dimness. Even smart people tend to bend to the will of the strong and bow before what’s officially deemed sacrosanct. Albert Speer was a smart, sophisticated, and talented man, but his personality was weaker than that of Hitler. Hitler exuded strength, will, determination, a kind of sorcerous spell over others. It’s like Steve Jobs was no high-tech genius and relied on others to do the heavy-lifting, but he had the power of personality, and so the geeks flocked around his feet. Zhou En-Lai was smarter than Mao Zedong but did the latter’s bidding because Mao was such an indomitable figure, a relentless force of nature.

In the test of wills(or game of chicken), Wasps lost out to Jews. So, there are plenty of smart whites who bend to Jewish Will. Ayn Rand wasn’t exactly the most rational person(despite her so-called Objectivism), but she was such a force of personality that she developed a mass cult following among goyim. Pauline Kael’s fame owed not only to her talent(which was real) but her zealous personality. Some smart whites can’t stop gushing about Tom Stoppard. White folks came to revere the Bible because it was written by Jews with prophetic vision, a quality lacking among whites. We know Fred Cabbage-Head Reed isn’t Jewish because he’s such a mellow melon-head. He sounds like someone who’d be content with a can of beer and a bag of pretzels.

But Jews, being clever, knew that force-of-will wasn’t enough to ensure white obeisance to Jews. After all, the power of will may elicit admiration and awe in others but not necessarily guilt and reverence. In order for Jews to totally own whites, they needed to concoct Holocaustianity as replacement for Christianity. The Cult of Shoah proselytize that Jews died for the sins of the white race. Jews are the new christs, the Jew-sus. White folks have been raised on the Holocaustianity cult and feel tremendous guilt about Jews. If you don’t believe in the orthodoxy of the 6 million, you are a DENIER, akin to a heretic. You must be burned at the stake. So, it's the combination of Jewish Talent and Jewish Tragedy that makes whites so submissive to Jews.

For the record, I have found Jews other than some Israelis to be pretty good people,

As individuals, most people are pretty good people(with the exception of Negroes and maybe Gypsies). If you walked around National Socialist Germany in the 1930s, most of those Nazis would come across as decent people, even to Jews. Courteous, helpful, and kind. Same with most Japanese as individuals in the period of Military Rule. Likewise, most Jews as individuals are not monsters. They don’t kill babies and eat them. They are not going to hack you with an axe. So, the problem isn’t the monstrousness of every individual Jew. Rather, just like the Germans, though mostly nice, were supportive of a radical ideology during the National Socialist era, most Jews are supportive of globalist agenda that is essentially Jewish Supremacist and destructive of humanity. Jewish Power has grown cancerous. If you take any single cancer cell, it is no big deal. But all the cancer cells taken together threaten the very fabric of life itself. There are cancer cells even in the bodies of those who aren't stricken with the dreaded disease. The immune system keeps them in check. But when cancer cells began to grow and gain momentum, they become dangerous and fatal. One Matt Yglesias is just some funny eccentric kid. But a whole bunch of them, especially in elite levels, means the acceleration of the globalist agenda and taking in a billion immigrants as peons for Jews, thus destroying the Core West.

Just ask the Palestinians. A honest Palestinian will tell you that most individual Jews are not monsters but people just like you and me — people with families and jobs dealing with mundane problems. But that doesn’t change the fact that Jews are invested in Zionist Imperialism that aims to wipe out all of Palestine.
It’s like most Americans(minus Negroes) are nice people but their idiotic fixation with the notions of the ‘exceptional nation’ and ‘support the troops’ have turned them into knucklehead shills of globalist supremacist lunacy.

Most of the squalling and fulmination aforementioned supports my not very astonishing assertion that Jews get ahead for the obvious reasons that explain the advance of any brighter group operating among the less bright: Indians and Chinese in Africa, Chinese in Indonesia, Australians and abos in Australia, and so on.

But your assertion implies a fallacy, i.e. certain groups are smarter and work harder, therefore their success owes to virtue and honesty. In truth, a people can be smarter and work harder and earn more and STILL be a bunch of a-holes. This is certainly true of Hindus in Africa or America. Sure, they work harder than most people, but Hindus are among the most insufferable two-faced a-holes in the world. Chinese aren’t big on principles either. Sure, they are smarter and work harder than the ridiculous Indonesians, but they're also corrupt, vain, snotty, shallow, and full of contempt. Look at Hong Kong Chinese. Just because they got a leg up on making money, they thumb their noses at Mainlanders. They act like honorary whites or Americans and look upon fellow Chinese as a bunch of 'deplorable' hillbillies.

So, just because Jewish IQ and hard work are real doesn’t mean that Jews are virtuous or play fair. It doesn’t mean that they use their hard-earned wealth and privilege in ways that are good for most people or ethical by world standards. Take Paul Singer. I’m sure he’s a hard worker, but he’s still a lowlife dirty crook. Take Jewish casino moguls. I’m sure they are smart and work hard, but gambling is mass theft. And I’m sure those Jews in Wall Street are very smart, but they’ve been cooking up all sorts of dirty schemes to rip us off. And even though they’ve been preaching free markets, when their fortunes go south, they use whore politicians to get massive bailouts… as in 2009.

Talent is not virtue. A Negro can meritocratically succeed in sports but could still be a lowlife punk. A Jew, Hindu, or Chinese can use smarts and make lots of money but still be corrupt and abuse their wealth and privilege.

Personally, I used to be pretty pro-capitalist. I didn’t care if some people became billionaires and zillionaires. I turned against the rich because they use their power to take away our rights, freedoms, and guns. Because they use their power of media and culture to spread globo-homo degeneracy. Because they use their monopoly in big tech to shut down alternative and dissident voices. Because they use their power of finance to deny services to people who dare speak truth to Jewish Power. I don’t mind others having lots of money but do mind when they use the money to corrupt the process and take away our basic rights.

I have not actually heard anyone saying that Jews contain microchips or nanoparticles to alter our DNA, but I expect this any day now.

Jews got something even better. Control of the airwaves. In war, the side with air supremacy has the advantage. It’s like the Gulf War. US had total air supremacy, and Iraqi soldiers and tanks became shooting ducks. In WWII, the Allies gained air supremacy over Germany and Japan and bombed those nations to smithereens at will.
In the Culture War, it’s all about Airwaves Supremacy. Jews control the airwaves that enter through our TVs and radios. And Jews now also monopolize the biggest platforms on the internet. So, Jews control the flow of information. That means Jews control our brainwaves. Fred the Cabbagehead Reed is a chump boomer whose brainwaves have been altered by Jewish messaging. So, he repeats the same boomerish mantras we’ve all heard a million times…

As for the ‘vaccine’ or ‘toccine’, why should we take it? If Covid were as horrifying as Polio or Small Pox, I would bite the bullet and take it. Or, if medical trials over several years deemed the ‘vaccine’ pretty safe, I might consider taking it… like I’ve gotten flu shots once in awhile. But Covid is not a mass-killer, and who knows what the long-term effects of the ‘vaccine’ are? Also, there is no denying that Covid hysteria was manufactured by Jews to rig the election, to enforce social controls, and to rake in massive profits.

This is not the time to be Mikey of the Cereal commercial. If Fred the Cabbagehead wants it, I say take it and all the booster shots. But keep it away from us. “Fred likes it! He likes it.”

For example, CTs believe not only in black helicopters, FEMA camps into which conservatives will be stuffed come the Reset, and a half-dozen (at least) conspiracies involving the virus, but also that Jews destroyed the Twin towers and killed JFK. I sleep with a loaded pistol.

Jewish Garland pretty much declared all Trump supporters as ‘domestic terrorists’. What’s happening now in Australia? They are seriously talking of ‘vaccine mandates’ all over the West. I don’t know about JFK, but one thing is sure about 9/11. The Israeli intelligence kept tabs on the Islamic terrorists. Israelis knew what was up, and if they knew, Neocons in the US knew. But nothing was done to foil the plot. Larry Silverstein’s actions prior to and on the day of 9/11 are awful suspicious. So, even though Muslim nutjobs did it, who can deny they were nudge-nudged by Jews who were looking for a New Pearl Harbor to sway the American Public in supporting Wars for Israel? People like dumbass George W. Bush and John McCain were dupes and shills of the Grand Plan. And it’s almost like the Jews are doing the thinking for Fred the Cabbagehead Reed. Nudge Nudge.

Jews of course tend to be politically liberal and so regarded as enemies by the anti-Jewish folk, mostly conservative. Note that liberals are highly inclusive in outlook, regardless of whether it makes sense in a given case, while conservatives are by nature hostile to outgroups, whether it makes sense in a given case or not.

Jews are POLITICAL liberals, which means they are NOT principled liberals. Jews use liberalism to weaken white identity and unity, all the better to serve Jewish unity and identity. Jewish liberalism is selective, not universal. So-called Jewish Liberals in the US will support the ultra-nationalist Israel that is into racial identity and pride of heritage and blood-and-soil thing.
Jews are ‘inclusive’ to the extent that they want goy societies to INCLUDE Jews and let Jews climb to the top and subvert goy majority power. Jews demand to be included by goyim, but that doesn’t mean Jews are inclusive of all goyim. How many Palestinian-American columnists have written for New York Times or Wall Street Journal or Washington Post? How come all Jews, ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, use their power to push anti-BDS laws? That isn’t very inclusive of justice for Palestinians.

And when Jews insist on more inclusion by mass immigration, they mean to increase diversity in goy nations so as to play divide-and-conquer among diverse goyim. Notice what Jews push on Hungary and Poland doesn’t apply to Israel. Surely, Fred the Cabbagehead knows about this, so why is he pretending otherwise?

Mainline conservatives believe in small government, lower taxes, states’ rights, individual liberty, traditional morality, and such.

Mainline conzos believe in taking it up the arse from Jews. They are into ‘muh Israel’, and that is why the GOP and even Donald Trump have been utterly useless. If anything, they sound just like Fred the Cabbagehead Reed.

Better to listen to BroNat, one of the ten greatest Jews of all time, the man who brought together the will of Moses, the vision of Jesus, humor of Marx Brothers, and wit of Bob Dylan.

THE REAL AFGHAN FLOP by Brother Nathanael

Notes on Review of RED SHOES(by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) by Trevor Lynch

https://counter-currents.com/2021/08/the-red-shoes/

Finally forced myself to see the whole thing. Not my cup of tea but I can see the attraction and understand its high esteem among film lovers. Martin Scorsese for one always lists it in his top five or ten of the greatest films.

A happy ending seems, however, to be in the offing until the screenwriter contrives a perversely tragic finale in which Vicky Page dies. Both Lermontov and Craster live on, but they are utterly destroyed as human beings.

Not true. As RED SHOES the movie is based on a tragic tale by Hans Christian Andersen, it was designed to end madly; 'Red Shoes' story serves as a darkly romantic metaphor for art as tragedy(and transcendence). RED SHOES isn't just about the people involved in the production of the ballet but how its tragic themes leap out into life itself. At the end, Craster is certainly heartbroken, but Lermontov, though shaken and saddened, triumphs in a way in the creation, both inadvertent and destined, of the ultimate dancer. It's like the jump-to-the-death by the priest in THE EXORCIST signifies both death and victory. RED SHOE's ending isn't 'contrived' in the conventional sense of the term: implausible, arbitrary, ludicrous, overly clever, gratuitous, etc. Rather, it's a necessary coda within a story idea that is itself one big contrivance: The Tale of Red Shoes as story, as performance, and ultimately as life itself. It has to be appreciated like Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO where every character operates within a logical construct of doomed love and tragedy. In such stories, characters live out their fates without any recourse to free will.

(RED SHOES) actually puts ballet on the screen, most spectacularly in the form of a 17-minute original ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale “The Red Shoes,”

It is impressive but also full of gimcrackery. It's fancy high-toned kitsch but kitsch just the same. Garishly arty and overdone with razzle-dazzle, rather like the later films of Federico Fellini. It's all too much. Also, Powell lacked the subliminal savvy of someone like Orson Welles whose images slipped through sensory crevices. The deft Welles was always two or three steps ahead of the viewer. With every stroke, he drew us into his hall of mirrors that reflected both classic order and cubist incongruities. In contrast, Powell was nothing if not obvious, and every trick is right in front of us, plain and simple. For all the complexity of production, the effect is rather crude, like a more elaborate version of the cinema of Jean Cocteau whose trickery was merely updated version of outdated silent cinema techniques.

The dance would have been so much more effective if Powell had relied solely on editing, lighting, sound, and pacing to convey mood shifts between art and reality. That truly would have been dreamlike and hypnotic, weaving a new way of seeing. But the bag-of-tricks-photography is so glaring at all times that it feels more like pictures in a gallery than a flow of imagery. A more effective use of cinema would have sensorially drawn us in than made us all too keenly aware of what's on the screen. It remains apart, in front of us than enveloping us. How more artful it would have been if Powell moved between reality and fantasy without laying so obviously bare the shifts. Then, we would have been lulled INTO the dance than merely looking AT it. It would have been magical than mechanical, evocation than affectation.

No doubt a great deal of care and preparation went into the much celebrated dance sequence, but it isn't quite cinematic. The overall effect is superficial than substantive because it amounts to glittery trickery than wholeness of visioin. It's like playing with fonts than with words. While pretty fonts are nice in poetry, the decisive factor is the use of words to conjure imagery and moods. Mastery of words than their stylized presentation on the page(as font) is the real heart of poetry.

The heart of cinema is composition, movement, and editing(montage). And even though Michael Powell knew the language of cinema, he had a tendency to fall back on trickery and superficial effects that cheapened his works — the kind of tricks that got tiresome already in the era of George Melies. In the case of A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, the effects were soon badly dated and now seem gauche. The effects in RED SHOES fare better but are still register as effects, over-done, imposed, and at odds to the trance-like aspects of the dance number. The tricks are so obviously tricks(no matter how well-crafted) that they keep reminding us that it's a bag of tricks than a call to magic. They amount to fonts than the grammar of cinema.

The Red Shoes is about the relationship between art and life. Early in the film, they are likened to one another, because they are both compulsions:

Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?

Vicky: Why do you want to live?

Lermontov: Well, I don’t know exactly why, but I must.

Vicky: That’s my answer too.

Not exactly because Vicky and Lermontov see life differently. Vicky doesn't see dancing nor life as compulsions. She sees them as natural. She's happy to be alive, and she's happy to dance. She dances for joy. She dances when she wants to. It gives her pleasure. Dancing is something she's willing to give up if she tires of it and finds joy in something else. For her to say that dance is like life means it's good to be natural. It's like animals run around because it comes naturally to them. They don't run to win races or to be the fastest animal. Even though Vicky isn't without ambition and hunger for fame, she dances for joy and pleasure. It is a natural extension of her view of life. For her, life and art/dance are not in conflict. This accounts for the misunderstanding between Vicky and Lermontov.

To Lermontov, art isn't merely like life or its extension. After all, most of life is routine and humdrum. One must do what one must to live: Eat, sleep, work, and etc. Life as necessity is about going through the motions, true regardless of whether one is genius or idiot, king or serf. At any rate, art isn't necessary to life. One could live without reading a serious book or watching a single ballet and live to a ripe old age. Indeed, many people with no interest in the arts lead pretty good and happy lives, which is the story of most of humanity. So, whereas life is about necessity, art is about obsession with the unnecessary.

For Vicky, dance is an extension of her view of life: pursuit of happiness. She came to love dance, and she sees dance as an expression of her joy. So, dance need not be a compulsion with her. But for Lermontov, art/dance is a pursuit of perfection even if it means agony and torment. It must be pursued to the very end. He is the dark and extreme side of the Red Shoes as metaphor, which represents both the joy of dance(as favored by Vicky) and complete intoxication(as envisioned by Lermontov).
Same goes for sports. Most people play sports for recreation and fun. It's an extension of our natural need to run around and play. For most people, sports is merely a part of their life. But for those who seek to excel in sports and possibly be the very best, sports becomes life itself. It becomes all-consuming, even to the point of self-destruction, as when any boxer steps into the ring. This is also true of spirituality. For most people, a bit of piety is enough. But what differentiates the saint is the willingness to devote one's life entirely to God. No wonder Martin Scorsese loves RED SHOES. It can seen as yet another false-messiah parable paralleling the life and death of Jesus who went all the way.

Anyway, there is a misunderstanding between Vicky and Lermontov. When Vicky says she dances for the same reason Lermontov lives, she assumes he is like herself. Vicky is naturally a light-hearted person. She feels joy in life itself. She would have been happy even if she'd never come upon dance. In her mind, life and dance are one and the same, an expression of joy.
In contrast, Lermontov seems to find little joy or zest in life itself. He lives not for life but for art, for ballet. Without that, he would find life gloomy, absurd, and meaningless. For him, life is fallen and pointless, a world inhabited by no-talents and idiots. It is through art that human ability rises above commonness and reaches for the summit of beauty and sublimity. For Vicky dance reveals life, whereas for Lermontov dance redeems life. One might say Vicky's view is more pagan, more in tune with the natural way of things, whereas Lermontov's perspective is christo-homo, i.e. nature/reality is ugly, plain, loathsome, and dull EXCEPT when elevated toward transcendence and redeemed.

Lermontov is apprehensive about affection between lovers because everything becomes soft and fuzzy between them. It weakens the sharpness and takes away the edge. He watches with an eagle's eye as his only love is perfection. In contrast, human love means unconditional acceptance of someone despite his or her flaws. So, when Craster and Vicky fall in love, they become indulgent of one another. Craster can love Vicky the imperfect dancer, and Vicky can love Craster the flawed composer. Love, in all its mushiness and forgiveness, fills in the gaps.
Lermontov, whose vision remains unclouded by lovey-dovey, can see with clarity what is necessary for perfection. Purely from an artistic vantage point, Lermontov is correct that the three had an ideal set-up before the love happened. Craster devoted himself to composing, Vicky devoted herself to dancing, and Lermontov had his eyes on the prize. It was a perfect triangle, but love got in the way. It's sort of like Merlin in EXCALIBUR sensing that love will bring it all to ruins among Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. (And it's Noodle's sentimentality that fogs his vision of what Max and Debra are really after in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.)

Part of life is love, marriage, and family. Lermontov is particularly dismissive of ballerinas who allow these considerations to interfere with their art. First, it leads him to dismiss his prima ballerina Irina Boronskaja

This is only partly true as it's not a general principle with Lermontov. He knows very well that most ballerinas in his troupe will not reach greatness. They will merely be adequate, and it's doubtful that he would have fired any of them for getting married. Indeed, he doesn't expect much from most people in the business. But he has the dream of creating the ultimate dancer, and SHE must be totally devoted to the art. Thus, Lermontov has a double-take on creativity. At the basic level, art has its conventions and role in society. It is entertainment and business. But at the highest level, it is for the few who can break through the barrier of conventionality. As a businessman, he's content with the basic art that brings in the paying customers. But as a visionary, he must have total devotion from the chosen few.

It is tempting to believe that Lermontov was acting out of sexual jealously. His body language with Vicky in one scene is quite intimate... Craster accuses Lermontov of jealousy. He agrees, but says it is not sexual. He may be telling the truth.

It's obvious Lermontov is a toot, especially when he dons those 'gay'-looking sunglasses. In a way, his personage is instructive as to why homos gained such power and leverage in society. Unlike straight people whose careers and pursuits become weighed down by marriage and children, homos (especially back then when it was scandalous to be outed) were always working. Homos put in more hours because they had fewer conventional burdens of family life and sentimental attachments.
Of course, today some homos do get 'married' and have semblance of 'family life' with adopted children, and homosexuality is even associated with 'pride', but in the setting of the movie, homos would mostly have been secretive figures. Also, because homosexuality was regarded as a perversion, sickness, or sin, even most homos grew up with a degree of self-disgust, doubt, and anxiety for having particular peccadillos. Lermontov certainly isn't a 'pride-homo'. His sexuality is thus repressed.
So, it's true that Lermontov is jealous but not in a sexual way. He jealously wants to pull Vicky into his orbit so he could fulfill his dream of turning her into a total work of art. For Lermontov, whose repressed homosexuality has been channeled into total devotion to art-as-religion, it is sacrilege to allow Vicky to remain merely human in the fleshly role of wife and mother. Only through art can she reach the 'spiritual' level of transcendence. Such jealousy also crops up in Chen Kaige's film FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. The Leslie Cheung character, being homo, does feel sexual attraction to his male performer-partner, but the jealousy goes beyond that. He wants both of them to belong totally in the realm of art(the Chinese Opera). It seems like a waste for his partner to get married to some harlot and fritter his talent away as a hubber. Lermontov resembles another character, the old man in Otto Preminger's LAURA, who is so taken with Laura's beauty that he wants to construct her into an ideal and loathes the notion of any lowlife male coming near her. Another character that comes to mind is Kirk Douglas's role in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL where Douglas plays a S.O.B. but also an indispensable one-of-a-kind personality with the magic touch.

In a way, RED SHOES offers a glimpse into the homo-god-complex. Homos have traditionally been more into art(ifice), design, and fantasy because they were denied(and rejected) the humdrum conventionality of conjugal bliss. On the one hand, they didn't want to get married and do the normal things. On the other hand, society would have punished them(or even executed them) for acting all 'gay' and indulging in sodomy. So, homos created an alternative universe in art, decor, fantasy, so much so that it caught the eye of the privileged aristocrats who came to patronize homo creativity.
In a way, Lermontov is to Vicky what God is to Jesus. Lermontov's god-complex wants Vicky to forsake human life and totally commit to art and beauty... even if it means madness. Life is about growing old and dying. Art is forever and eternal. Likewise, in Martin Scorsese's adaptation of THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, there is a part of Jesus that wants to be normal and live as a real man and experience intimate joys. He wants a wife, family, and children. He wants to grow old and see his grand-children. But God has other plans for him. He must forsake what is human to reach a higher plane. He must become the messiah, which entails pursuing spiritual truth to the end, even if it means crucifixion, humiliation by the mob, and agony of death. Only thus could he reach immortality. And in RAGING BULL, there is much about how a true boxer must repress his sexual pangs before the bout to be strong and focused in the ring. Scorsese the renegade Catholic surely drew parallels between RED SHOES and the Christ tale. Though fascinated by these parallels, he believes there is only one true Messiah, and the rest are false messiahs as their pursuits, however amazing or inspiring, are expressions of vanity, sensuality, power-lust, or egotism than of the deepest wells of the soul.

In another brilliant, brooding scene, Lermontov comes to the realization that he has been a fool. Then Lermontov decides to approach Boronskaja, who is still happily married, and lure her back on stage. Boris has obviously concluded that art and life—in particular, married life—need not conflict. A year later, he manages to lure Vicky back on stage to dance The Red Shoes again.

That's a misreading. Lermontov never feels he was wrong. Luring back Irina was essentially a business matter. After all, he can be practical and diplomatic. With Vicky gone and his dream turned to dust, he needed someone for his company, and Irina just happens to be the one, and he had to make do. He knows the show must go on. He has to pull in the audience, make money, and pay the bills. But if he was truly content with Irina, he would not have gone out of his way to reconnect with Vicky. She is the key to his ultimate dream. He's had many successes, but he never created the perfect dancer, and he feels it in his bones that it must be her. Indeed, he recruits her not merely to perform RED SHOES but to persuade her to leave her life behind and commit totally to dance. He means to drive a wedge between Vicky and her husband Craster.

Then Emeric Pressburger’s script goes seriously off the rails.... Fixated on contriving an ending that is both gruesome and unhappy, Pressburger simply forgets about Lermontov’s character development toward accepting that his ballerinas can have private lives. He also turns Julian Craster into a petty, jealous villain—something not foreshadowed in the least. Then they drive Vicky to suicide.

This is totally wrong. First of all, the story is not a realistic portrait of people in ballet. Rather, it's been specifically constructed so that life imitates art. The story of Red Shoes must be lived out by the particulars in 'real life'. Its ending was fated to be tragic. It's almost as if their reality becomes possessed by the fantasy.

Also, there was no character development in Lermontov toward accepting the 'private life' of Vicky. Rather, Jekyll-and-Hyde-like, he can shift back-and-forth between art and business. When he re-hired Irina, it was the business side of him in action. It's the same with priests. At times, they must be political and pragmatic, even shake shady hands and take money from questionable sources. But before God, they must be pure. Likewise, while the business-side of Lermontov could seem agreeable and compromising, he never abandoned the 'religious' side of his devotion to ballet. His intention wasn't merely to hire the married Vicky to dance Red Shoes again but to ultimately wrest her from Craster and make her devote her life 100% to art.

Also, Craster doesn't come across as a petty jealous villain. His emotions are utterly understandable. He senses correctly as to what Lermontov is really up to. If anything, Lermontov comes across as the calculating villain(yet a sort-of-noble one because his vision is genuine). Craster rightfully fears that he may lose Vicky to Lermontov for good. Also, she is absent on the very day of the premiere of his opera. It is a big day for him, and he naturally wanted his wife to be with him as partner and support.
In a way, both men are possessive of her in different ways. With Vicky as wife, she will play a supportive role to Craster as the artist. Her dancing will merely be a hobby, something on the side. In contrast, with Lermontov she can reach the height of her profession and win acclaim in her own right. But she will have to give herself totally to Lermontov. He will possess her like the red shoes possesses the dancer in the Hans Christian tale. Dance as celebration will have to give to dance as tribulation. The shoes will become her cross to bear.

The fact that Vicky feels guilt in Craster's presence is proof that he isn't a villain, at least not in our eyes. In Lermontov's eyes, yes, but the full extent of Lermontov's deception emerges in Craster's presence. Earlier, he enticed Vicky as if he'd mellowed since their breakup, but he spells it all out when Craster pleads with her to return home with him. Lermontov admits it was his plan to come between them and pull Vicky totally into the dance world. The fact that Craster accepts this and walks away makes him a sad sympathetic figure than a villainous one overcome with petty jealousy. It's doubly sad for him because the movie began with his discovery that the man he admired had plagiarized his work. Once again, something of his is taken from him. In both cases, he is resigned to lose.

The whole setup is absurd. Vicky has come to Monte Carlo on vacation. On the spur of the moment, she agrees to dance The Red Shoes again. We are asked to believe that Craster’s new opera is to premiere in London the same day that Vicky dances The Red Shoes again in Monte Carlo. Why was Vicky in Monte Carlo on her husband’s big night?

Actually, it wasn't on the spur of the moment. In the back of her mind, there was always a wish to return to the stage. Despite severed ties, there was always a thread connecting Lermontov and Vicky. He wanted her back, and she wanted to be back. So, while ostensibly it seemed like a spontaneous decision, dance was always something she wanted to do and regretted walking away from, at least in part. She genuinely chose Craster out of love but also gave up something she loved. Lermontov queries as to whether she kept her body in shape and senses in her affirmative that she'd always wanted to return to ballet in a big way.

Now, did Vicky arrive in Monte Carlo ON THE DAY of her husband's opera debut? Isn't it more likely that she arrived some days earlier and planned to return before the opera date but chose to remain and dance the Red Shoes? And it was her failure to return before the opera that spurred Craster to make his own journey to confront Vicky, whom he rightly senses has been drawn into Lermontov's web?

Indeed, when Lermontov and Vicky met in the train, Vicky says the opera is only in rehearsal, and Lermontov tells her that he is PREPARING a ballet. There's no indication that both the ballet and opera will be performed on that very day. It's my understanding that the performances will take place about a week or two AFTER Lermontov and Vicky meet on the train. The reason why Craster appears so distraught is because he's been (1) worried sick and (2) surmised, correctly, that Lermontov somehow got his meat-hooks into her. He calls Lermontov jealous, but he too is jealous. Even if he knows Lermontov may be a tooty-toot after all and has no sexual interest in her, he knows she is drawn to his artistic gravity. With him, she is a wife, a mere partner and fan. But with Lermontov, she can be the star, and no one gets more love than the star in the performing arts. Lermontov, though a person of artistic sensibility, is essentially a manager, not a creator in his own right. In that, he is a bit parasitic of everyone, though he can be said to be as selfless as selfish. He's selfish in demanding that others bend to his will yet selfless in total devotion to ballet and in wanting the best of his star performers. Craster as composer can be considered a star in his own right, but a composer doesn't take the stage. It is the dancer, and Vicky-as-star is something that only Lermontov can offer. Vicky feels guilt as a wife who isn't there beside her husband in his moment of glory, but Craster feels guilt as a husband who took her chance at stardom away from his wife. As in STAR IS BORN, love-and-art is complicated.

Then Vicky, who is trying on the red shoes for that night’s performance, goes mad and hurls herself off a balcony, then gets hit by a train. The train seems like overkill, but there’s still enough life in her to beg a distraught Julian—who just happened to see her plunge to her death, even though it would have been impossible from his vantage point—to take off the red shoes.
I can’t think of a more arbitrary, ramshackle, and dissatisfying end to an otherwise great movie. It is a testimony to just how good the rest of the film is that viewers put up with it.

I'm assuming she didn't fall on the railroad tracks and was run over by the train. Rather, it seems she fell ON the moving train. Now, if she'd landed on the tracks and her legs were cut off by steel wheels, it would have more or less duplicated the grisly details in the original Hans Christian Andersen tale. But too gory for cinema, especially at the time.

Is the train overkill? Maybe, but everything in the movie is overkill, which was either Powell's strength or weakness(depending on one's taste). And yet, given the train's motif in the movie, it sort of makes sense. It was at the train station that Lermontov bid adieu to Irina. It was on the train that Lermontov and Vicky met again. Train represents both separation and union, the transience of life. Indeed, Lermontov is very much a man without a country. Though Russian in origin, he moves from place to place like a high-class gypsy.

Did Craster actually see her plunge from the balcony or did he turn his head because of the commotion of the crowd?

How is the ending arbitrary? Vicky's death and the removal of the red shoes evoke Andersen's tale. It makes total sense within the concept. Also, her death is not the final scene of the movie. The final scene is Lermontov announcing Vicky's death to the audience and the performance of RED SHOES going on without her... or with her in spirit. In that sense, Lermontov finally got what he really wanted. He turned Vicky into a spirit. It's like Jesus died on the Cross and was resurrected as Spirit with eternal life.
Indeed, even had Vicky become the dancer of Lermontov's dreams, she would eventually have aged and slowed down with injuries. Even as the best dancer, her flesh and bones would have grown weak. She would have faded. But as a spirit, she is young forever and forever tireless.

Also, the manner of her death suggests she didn't merely perform the Red Shoes but lived and died it(and transcended it). Like the heroine in the tale, she was torn between the need to dance and the wish to return to reality. The pull from both sides was so overpowering that the only solution was a kind of heightened death. It's like the Christ story. Jesus on the Cross felt all the pain of the human flesh, and He also reached out to Heaven. At that moment, He was neither just a man or just God. He was in that limbo world, the between world, and He had to die to finally cross into the spirit realm. It's tragic but also triumphant. And the same goes for the ending of RED SHOES. In a way, Vicky's real role of the Red Shoes was not on the stage as a dancer. Rather, it was her struggle between personal attachment and artistic vanity; and to play this drama to the very end, she had to end like the heroine in the story. She had to take an inspired leap from art into reality, and what is more real than a moving train? And finally, the shoes could be taken off. And yet, her death has released her spirit that can forever dance the Red Shoes.

But above all, I love The Red Shoes as a portrayal of the world of European high culture: an aristocratic, inegalitarian world devoted to the pursuit of beauty and excellence—a world whose basic principles contradict those of democracy and mass commercial entertainment.

But don't you like STAR WARS and TV shows and lots of commercial entertainment?
Also, Lermontov is aristocratic-like only in part. His nomadism suggests a gypsy-like existence. He's a hustler and businessman as well as artiste and connoisseur. All said and done, his is a business enterprise.

By the way, aristocrats were mostly dummies, hardly different from today's elites. Few created art of their own and relied on others to tell them what was hot and what was not. Most imitated the ludicrous fashions coming out of French courts, with powdered wigs, face paint, and snuff. And oh those pansy-ass dresses. Just imagine. Noblemen started out as warriors. Tough hardy men. But they amassed fortunes and got used to privilege, and their children were raised spoiled with luxury. They became obsessed with status and conformed to whatever was put before them as the latest thing. No wonder so much of aristocratic culture became 'gay' and whoopity-poo. Homos came up with all these candy-ass dresses, wigs, and make-up and whispered into idiot aristocratic ears that it was so fancy-poo to dress like fairies and strut around like girly men and speak in high-toned accents(which made British English so 'gay' sounding). This is why it's refreshing to see semi-barbarian elites of the Russian court in IVAN THE TERRIBLE. Them fellers have yet to put on pansy airs... like the Westernized Polish court in the opening of IVAN THE TERRIBLE Part 2.

Get a load of the tooty-ass Polack on the throne in this scene:

As if the culture of the Western aristocratic elites weren't tooty enough, we now have globo-homo fruits running all the culture and making 'gay' crap compulsory. This is why I can't get into ballet. Sure, it's a great work of art and a beautiful dance form... but it's also so 'gaaaaaay'. I prefer folk culture to aristo culture. Manly Russians dancing on tables is better than a bunch of pansies tip-toeing around or prancing about. It was a huge mistake for the Soviet Union to prop up the Bolshoi Ballet and make Russian guys prance around like a bunch of fruits. Chechen Lezghinka is a better dance. Though I don't like guys dancing in general(with the exception of Gene Kelly in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN and YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT), people of Caucasus have manlier ways of dancing. Ballet should only be for girls. Any guy in ballet tights should be paddled in the butt.

Europeans emerged from 'faggy'-looking aristocratic culture with the rise of the bourgeois and the masses. It was bourgeois culture that led to the English three-piece suit that was at once stylish, economic, and modest(lacking in the aristocratic dictionary). And I'll take the cowboy look over the aristo-fruit-look any day. Those guys in dusters in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST look real good. But the Three Musketeers look like a bunch of pansies.

Will the Historical Dialectics of the US Invasion/Occupation and Taliban Resistance lead to the Synthesis of Better Afghanistan? — The Inadvertent, even Absurd, Fortunes of Historical Tragedies

FALL OF AFGHANISTAN IS NOW | WHY AMERICA FAILED

https://asiatimes.com/2021/08/forever-war-benefiting-afghans-follow-the-money/

The Afghan War was tragic for Afghans in many ways. But less so than many wars. For one thing, there wasn't much to destroy in Afghanistan. It wasn't like Germany or Japan smashed in World War II. Also, whatever had been standing had already been reduced to rubble in the long wars in the 1980s(when Soviets were there) and in the ensuing 'civil wars' among the tribes and factions. Also, Taliban were hardly great builders. They kept the country at the medieval level. Taliban folks were content to be backward, which they conflated with faith and piety. Even though the US invasion was initially brutal with devastating air strikes, it wasn't long-lasting because there really wasn't much to bomb and the Taliban soon scattered to the four winds. With so many mountains and caves, most Taliban just fled and hid. Soon after the invasion, most of the war consisted of drone strikes and limited skirmishes. Though the drone attacks killed some innocents, the entire casualty was in the thousands. Many more Vietnamese died in a single US bombing strike under Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon. So, this was hardly a genocidal kind of war, which could be said of certain chapters of the Vietnam War. Also, due to demographic dispersion and geographic barriers, the US occupation didn't unleash the bloodbath that the Iraq invasion did. In Iraq, US presence in the flat sand led to religious factions tearing each other part. There were no mountains to separate the Sunnis from the Shias. Also, whereas Afghanistan before and after US invasion had continuity in Pashtun representation, the Iraq invasion led to a sudden power shift from Sunni to Shia domination. This led to Sunni rebellion and Shia reprisals, a horrifying cycle of violence. Also, as certain Neo-Con or Zio-Con elements feared warm ties between Shia-ruled Iraq and Iran, they inflamed Sunni violence to make Arabs kill Arabs. Afghanistan, for the most part, avoided such internecine bloodbath under US occupation, at least on the scale of what took place in Iraq. If there had been no 9/11 and no US invasion, the Taliban might have remained as they were. Rigid, backward, insular, and isolated. There would have been hardly any opportunity for growth and development. This is where imperialism can do some good. Not because imperialists are good-hearted and well-meaning but because they shake things up. Would Japan or China have made progress into modernity if they weren't forced at gunpoint? Without Western Imperialist aggression, the ruling dynasties there would have suppressed any reform or change that could conceivably threaten their total grip on power. Indeed, they regarded stasis as synonymous with harmony with nature, history, spirituality, and the cosmic order of things. Only an outside force could act as catalyst for revolutionary and fundamental change, for good and ill. Though all societies evolve over time, the fact is East Asia didn't have sufficient internal spark/fuel to bring about fundamental change from within. This was also true of the Ottoman Empire that, upon falling behind the West in science and technology, simply couldn't muster sufficient energy for change. It took the traumatic defeat in World War I that forced a true transition to modernity.

Now, it'd be foolish to hope that the Taliban will ever be like the Kemalists of Turkey, or even like Gaddafi of Libya, Nasser of Egypt, or Hussein of Iraq, all of whom embarked on modern and mostly secular development, albeit in alignment with Muslim values. And we can't expect the new Taliban regime to resemble Islamic Iran that, for all its religiosity, fully adopted modern science and technology(and even most modern facets of living, minus the overt decadence). Though the worst case scenario is that the New Taliban, high on the hubristic fumes of 'victory' over the US, will revert to the old ways, it's more likely that it will be more pragmatic, worldly, shrewd, realistic, and a bit wiser. It is the dialectics of history. Old Taliban had the power but got nowhere. US invasion forced change and built much infrastructure but its influence, at once overbearing and underwhelming, didn't catch. But, some commentators are hoping that the dialectics of Taliban resistance and US reconstruction could lead to the synthesis of a New Taliban that is more savvy in politics and business. Of course, such changes are possible without foreign invasion. Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on profound changes in the Soviet Union. Maoist China made the transition to Deng-ist China, and communist Vietnam adopted market economics. But the Taliban were so anti-modern that it's unlikely they would have done much to develop the country on their own without foreign intervention on a massive scale. Though the US failed to turn Afghanistan into a compliant outpost, it did construct lots of roads, buildings, airports, and infrastructure. Yes, much of the money disappeared into the hands of corrupt politicians and 'contractors' whose only talent was for swindling Uncle Sam(and the US Military-Industrial-Complex itself is a massive racket defrauding the US tax payer). Still, in the ensuing twenty years, Afghanistan did end up with cities with many more buildings and amenities. And a new professional class did learn certain skills in governance and management(and these people are likely to keep at those jobs even under the Taliban — surely, the US can't bring all of them as refugees, and the New Taliban might actually value their skills). Prior to the US invasion, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was on friendly terms with only one major country: Pakistan. It had alienated Russia, China, Iran, and other surrounding -Stan nations. It was seen as a festering sore in the middle of Central Asia. Afghanistan didn't want anything to do with most other nations and vice versa; the feelings were mutual. And as long as it was ruled by the backward Taliban, it was hardly a threat to other countries that were far more developed and powerful. It could be ignored. Things changed with the US invasion. All of a sudden, it went from a backwoods(or back-mountain) country of ignorant nobodies to the base of US globo-imperial operations. Russia, China, and Iran feared that the US planned to use Afghanistan as part of an encircling campaign. Pakistan regarded US presence as Uncle Sam breathing down its neck. This made Afghanistan relevant and important to the neighboring countries, one deserving to be courted with special favors. BIDEN CLAIMS AFGHAN EVACUATION IS GOING SMOOTHLY, AS FOG OF WAR DESCENDS ON KABUL AIRPORT
They now had an interest in getting the US out and forging good relations with the New Taliban(if it were to come to power upon US departure). Also, the New Taliban was more likely to cut deals with Russia, China, Iran, and other nations precisely because it had gotten burned in the US invasion. Even though the New Taliban might feel a rush of hubris in the moment, the major lesson of the long occupation has been the value of humility. Though Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires, the fact is empires survived their misguided Afghan ventures. Alexandrian Empire collapsed due to other reasons. British Empire had setbacks in Afghanistan, but it was really brought down by World War I and II. Soviet Empire's collapse had little to do with Afghanistan and more with long bread lines. US empire survived setbacks in Vietnam and Iraq. So, the notion of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires is a myth. But the fact is the invasions have turned the country into the graveyard for many Afghans. Though Afghan human losses weren't devastating under US occupation, the Taliban was pushed into subsistence in the periphery, and surely their patience was running thin(judging by the eagerness with which they acted to take control of the country upon sensing US withdrawal).

Prior to the US invasion, many in the Taliban were foolish enough to think Allah would save them. Now, they know better. They don't want to do anything to justify another US invasion(or massive aerial attack). And this means isolation isn't an option. They need constructive and mutually beneficial relations with Russia, China, and Iran as insurance against return of US imperialism. It's like the Khmer Rouge wised upon ONLY AFTER the Vietnamese invasion that forced the ultra-xenophobic and ultra-radical group to eat humble pie and adopt the pragmatic path of working with other nations to oust the Vietnamese from Cambodia. In this sense, one could argue that the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, though ill-advised and wasteful, may have inadvertently done much good for the country, that is IF the New Taliban learned the proper lessons from the dialectics of history and arrived at a more workable synthesis of diplomacy, commerce, and compromise. THE TALIBAN MEME WAR: TROLLING BIDEN & THE WEST