The Olden Thymes

I was watching this episode of the Mark Steyn Show on Sunday and they made mention of Casablanca. It occurred to me that it had been so long since I watched these old movies, I no longer remember much about them. My generation was probably the last to grow up seeing these old films on television. They would turn up on the UHF channels at night or on weekends. In the 70’s, black and white movies looked almost as good as the color television shows, so the old films seemed to hold up OK, at least to a ten year old.

I decided to fire up the Kodi and watch Casablanca, while I was catching up on some office work. I was a bit surprised at how well it holds up today. Being in black and white probably makes it work by tricking my brain into viewing it through the eyes of my youth, rather than as a jaded old man. The acting is the part that does not work as well today, as the old films were acted like stage plays, which required the audience to use their imaginations. Modern technology lets the audience drop into a coma while watching a film.

Anyway, Casablanca is a classic film for a reason. The story is well done and even 70 years on, the stars are still stars. Maybe it was how they made the movies back then, but Bogart fills the screen in his scenes. Of course, Ingrid Bergman was a stunningly gorgeous women, but even the lesser stars seemed to have a presence. Peter Lorre has a small role early in the film, but you remember it. It’s probably due to how they made movies back then, but the stars don’t have the same screen presence today.

The funny thing about this movie is the plot is very simple and the imagery is a bit heavy handed. In fact, everything about it is simple and rough-hewn, but there’s a moving depth to it. Watching it, I could easily imagine a 1940’s audience, sitting in the dark theater as the movie ends. The women would be teary eyes, maybe squeezing their man’s arm a little harder than normal. The men would be sitting stiff-backed and stony-faced, enjoying their date getting close, while imagining themselves as the honorable Rick Blaine.

Of course, Hollywood in that age made movies that celebrated the higher values of their intended audience. There were some commie writers trying to work their message into films, but by and large the industry liked its customers and sought to appeal to their better natures by celebrating America and American values. The point of movie making in those days was to get people to the theater. That meant making movies that appealed to the majority population, which meant the native stock. No one bothered with virtue signaling.

There was also a degree of respect for the audience. It was assumed that the people in the theater could use their imagination. They did not need a 20-minute sex scene to know that Bogart and Bergman were having a physical relationship. The audience was treated like adults, rather than teenagers. Hollywood often relied on high-brow culture in their films, even though their audience was mostly working class. People read more and they were expected to know about classic stories and characters from Western culture.

Today, the people making movies largely despise the native stock of the country and they really hate the white men. A remake of Casablanca would most likely have the story set at Ellen’s Place, rather than Rick’s Café Américain. The proprietor would have to be a gender fluid lesbian of color, hounded by white males trying to oppress her. The whole thing would be a carnival of degeneracy intended to rub the nose of viewers in a steaming pile of cultural Marxism, as a reminder of who is in charge now.

The world view of the people in charge of movie making is different too. When they made Casablanca, they knew those honkies taking their dates to see Bogie were going to be relied upon to save Western civilization from itself. The people running Hollywood today are convinced they would be better off if the honkies would hurry up and die off. It’s not just that foreign audiences are so important either. There’s a real visceral hatred that screams through the product pumped out by Hollywood today. They hate us a lot.

What I’m always struck by in the old movies is the maturity of the male leads. Bogart was in his 40’s when he made Casablanca and he looked like it. His character was supposed to be middle-aged. He was an adult. Today, the male leads are cartoons, often literally cartoons. The real flesh and blood male leads are steroidal freaks, who look like float decorations at a gay pride parade. More important, they lack maturity. Instead of playing characters that anchor society, they are emotional wrecks who need saving.

I hate this age.

112 thoughts on “The Olden Thymes

  1. Pingback: Casablanca – Orphans of Liberty

  2. I watch the oldies for a reason some of you will understand. I’m getting old and am hard of hearing. Not deaf, but enough so that subtitles are a God-send.

    But not for the old time actors, even B and C list ones. They knew how to speak, how to enunciate, they had training and discipline. I have watched Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon at least once a year for the last 5 years just to be able to hear clear voices.

    Most modern actors are incompetent buffoons at their trade and I say that without regard to their politics. Mumble, mumble, fuckity-mumble, blah, blah, huh, eh, huh, uh, uh, uh, uh, argle bargle, grunt, grunt, grunt.

  3. OK times are different, nevertheless, one can still find one (actually, at least two, but see later) thing that Hollywood of the Casablanca era has to do with Hollywood today. Namely, taking a ride on the Zeitgeist. Apparently, since the Zeitgeist is different, so are the movies. Importantly, the U.S. film industry does not create cultural paradigms (some European filmmakers did, in the past, not sure about now), it just follows them, with a slight lag, given that the movie makers are, indeed, interpreters, not originators of ideas and visions behind films. And the reason is, sorry to say, likely to be ethnical/biological. One easily sees that the (((leading ethnic – this is the promised second thing in common between then and now))) of Hollywood has exhibited this property throughout the history: rehashing narratives of other cultures, teaching them, controlling the talk, but never actually giving rise to something material and genuine of their own. This is why, while it is perfectly legitimate to prefer 70 year old movies and loath the current ones, one should not attach epic significance to this preference, (((our mutual friends))), being derivative, are just not nearly so important as they would like to claim.

  4. Casablanca came form an era when going to the movies was an occasion. It was like going to the theatre in many ways, and the presentation of the venue and staff was important too. You might not have been expected to dress up for the evening to watch it all, but the people on screen (and behind the scenes) were required to behave with decorum and a sense of elegance. Of course, privately, the actors didn’t but that was part of the allure of it too. You just didn’t need to see it made blatant on the screen.

    Today the stars might still behave as badly but it is less in private and more in public. They have developed big mouths to show their ignorance. More, they have thin parts to work with in the actual movie and a sense of stuttering bleakness soon overtakes it all. Scriptwriting is often poor and many movies are no better (and perhaps less interesting) than video games.

    The objection many people of my age to a lot of the modern stuff is not that there are black people or any other colour people in films, but the average is elevated for no discernible reason and one increasingly expects to see a token black or female actor shoehorned into roles that you might think weren’t especially suited for. ‘Socially-accpetable’ remakes like Ghostbusters do nothing for anyone. Plus there is the whole distortion of history factor. When you see, for example, that Robin Hood apparently needed a black muslim to help him defeat the Sheriff of Nottingham you know that time is running out for the cinema.

    • uh, no. Casablanca came from an era when going to the movies was the equivalent of watching tv. People went *all* the time, sometimes twice in a week. Look at the per capita ticket sales from the era.

    • I have to say I am disgusted by the constant placement of blacks in all manner of situations that is completely out of proportion to many degrees of measure. But what I think is driving the left/Hollywood is their “belief” that if they expose the masses of deplorables to enough of that crap, their sensitivity, sensibilities, need I say, their outright racism will be erased and replaced with a Kumbaya kind of “we all need a hug” and “why can’t we all just get along” type of emotional mentality. It goes beyond virtue signaling and is really a continuation of social engineering on another front. And despite Hillary’s loss, they are still continuing to attack on as many fronts as they can.

      It is the same way with all the environmental attacks, racism, nationalism, anything they (the left) believes or hates. They will beat a dead horse until there is nothing left but some hairs and bone chips in the dirt. They are loons, crazed with nothing better to do because they are losers and hate life. They want everyone to be as miserable or have it worse than they personally do. They are a pathetic lot. We may be Deplorable but they are Pathetic.

  5. “I hate this age.”

    I suspect the current insanity is fleeting and will be viewed with laughter and derision in the near future. As for Hollywood, it is dying right along with it. The Internet is killing all forms of paid entertainment. The canary in the coal mine was pornography but feature films are taking a major hit as well. They do “hate us,” but they needed us more. The reverse no longer is true.

  6. Just to illustrate the decline of our culture, Donald J. Trump would never say to the women he loves, “if you don’t get in that plane, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”

    Yet, to further illustrate the decline of our culture, there are some who would, nevertheless, make excuses for the carnival barking, crony capitalist, eminent domain loving, thrice married, serial prevaricator.

    • No, he would probably say, “Get in the plane or I’ll buy another one of you that is younger and better looking!”

      • Obviously, you’re one of those that has a hard time recognizing sarcasm. But, let’s be honest: How many times has Trump been married? How many times divorced? Did he ever trade in an old wife for an older model? Nope, he likes them young and hot. I have no problem with that.

        Really, Hillary supporters get bent out of shape at any kind of comment about her that is true but doesn’t fit the libtard narrative. I hate it that Trump supporters are the same way.

        • Seriously…..At Least Trump got divorced.

          How many times did Bill Clinton play slap and tickle with younger women and he was married? Also, how many self-respecting women would have tolerated that?

          Lastly, Bill Clinton would not even give the female a chance to change her mind about the plane ride.

          Your desperation and frustration about Hillary’s loss is showing….I love how Trump is living in your head rent-free!!!

      • Please explain, in detail and with particularity, why it is “pathetic” to articulate the proposition that Donald Trump, as an example of our culture’s decline, would not do as Rick Blaine did.

        • Please explain, in detail and with particularity, why Hillary and Bill Clinton are not serving life sentences in a Federal Super Max prison for their multifarious and nefarious criminal and traitorous actions?

          • Please explain, in detail and with particularity, why you elide and introduce a non-sequitur?

          • I would have thought you were the first to introduce a non-sequitur.

            But why would Trump not do as Rick did? By your estimation of Trump’s character, surely he would do exactly that as he has already, by the time of the movie, had an affair with Ilsa.

          • How did I introduce a non-sequitur?

            The subject of Z’s blog post is Casablanca.

            Perhaps the most memorable line in the history of motion pictures is what Rick Blaine said to Ilsa.

            Thus, how is that I introduced a non-sequitur, given that the decline of our culture is a topic so often examined by Z, not only in this post, but in so many others?

            There were some of us smart enough not to buy the disguised defecation being sold by Trump.

            Some of us knew that he had a history of conning people, of reneging on deals, of failing to pay the little guys, of serial infidelity, of multiple marriages, of being vulgar and not exactly being the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

            Some of us knew that he loved eminent domain and had frequently supported the Kelo decision. He was all to happy to use government to get his way.

            Some of us knew that he would not touch the great socialist programs loved by so many of the dirt white people like social security, Medicare and Medicaid.

            Some of us knew that Donald J. Trump would not engineer an outright end to Obamacare. How many times, like so many other big government republicans did he say, “repeal and replace”? Note, he did not promise to just repeal Obamacare.

            How about the socialist / progressive legislation that he endorsed and which did not even come up for a vote?

            How about Hillary? Only a moron would have believed that Trump actually wanted to lock her up.

          • I’m entirely open to and/or already agree with many of these criticisms of Trump. Almost my only view in favor of him is that he is not Hillary or any other SJW Democrat they might have put up, and if only because he was unusual there was at least the tiny chance he would do a couple of things I like or at least fewer of the things I don’t like, and hold back the progressive revolution compared to what it might have been, for at least 4 years. That’s the only hope I had, and the jury’s still out.

            An impossible Ted Cruz presidency does live on in my imagination, but that’s it. And I don’t know what to have really expected from him either.

            But all that aside, I think my main reason for considering this non-sequitur is that I have had to endure almost daily Trump whining from coworkers for a year and a half now and I’m not convinced that every subject or line of argument is best illustrated by bringing him up, or that he is a relevant indicator of every possible thing wrong with politics, let alone culture at large.

            If the decline of culture or manners as depicted on screen is the subject, the ship had sailed too long ago to consider him anything but a mid-range product.

            My last comment above was merely to point out that, taking Trump’s character in marital relations into account, he actually would have been very likely to put her on the plane on pragmatic grounds. Like Rick, he would have had something better to do, and without Rick’s romantic hangups the decision to send her off would have been easier. He had, after all, already slept with her. Or so I have always understood to have been the case.

            OTOH, unlike Rick he would be more likely to go back to running the cafe than to go off to fight in the war. So there’s that.

            Of course, Victor Laszlo is widely assumed to have been based in part on Count Coudenhove-Kalergi. I don’t know I am so happy that the hero goes off to fight in that particular version of what the war was about.

          • Thank you for your response.

            I understand your perspective relative to a daily torrent of whines from co-workers regarding Trump. I hear Trump whining from co-workers, acquaintances, some family and relatives, and some friends, and almost all of it is democrat / SJW oriented.

            Of course, being a libertarian, I also hear libertarian based Trump criticisms from other libertarians. Naturally, there is a difference between a hard-core, thin, Rothbardian type of libertarian like me or Tom Woods or Prof. DiLorenzo and a thick libertarian like many of the Reason writers.

            Yes, Random O, I largely agree with your point that with regard to the decline of our culture, Trump is no more than a mid-range product.

          • Why the venom, Karl Hungus? Are you unable to communicate without resort to the puerile and the vulgar?

            The subject of Z’s blog post is Casablanca.

            Perhaps the most memorable line in the history of motion pictures is what Rick Blaine said to Ilsa Lund.

            Why do you have a problem with my assertion that Donald J. Trump would not be the type of guy who would put his ego aside and actually encourage the love of his life to get on the plane?

          • You need to change your handle as you represent nothing about “Liberty.”

            As for Trump, he is more of a man than you, and far richer. He would no doubt, give his wife the keys to his plane and tell her to go someplace safe and wait for him while he saves the world.
            Just look at how he let his son and wife stay in NYC to finish the school year. The man is more than your talking points allow for. Now go away Troll.

          • Why would you assert that I represent nothing about liberty?

            Donald J. Trump is an enthusiastic supporter of eminent domain. I am not.

            Thus, by definition, he thinks it is okay to use the state in order to force people out of their property. I do not.

            Donald J. Trump is an enthusiastic supporter of socialist progressive constructs such as social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I am not.

            Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are antithetical to liberty.

            Please, do not be so puerile.

  7. “[E]ven the lesser stars seemed to have a presence… It’s probably due to how they made movies back then, but the stars don’t have the same screen presence today.”

    Correct. Before anti-trust law forced the studios to renounce their system of restrictive long-term contracts, there was a limit to how much money the top-billed A-listers could be paid. This left more in the budget to fill the supporting roles with highly-talented character actors. (There’s frequently-repeated claim that the unofficial record for having appeared in the most Oscar-nominated movies is held by Western-movie actor Ward Bond, though I don’t think anyone has ever verified it). Now most of the cast budget goes toward securing a bankable, well-known star for the lead role, leaving much less for the other parts.

    • Interesting point. But we also need to bear in mind that studios made plenty of bad movies back in the day too: Had to keep those theaters full_! A ‘bad’ date at the drive-in meant you actually had to watch some of them. So, maybe my recollection is jaundiced by non-film-critic young male physiological considerations, but I do recall that some of them are are rightly forgotten.

      So, the good question is, “Are there any current movies that measure up to the best of the past_?”. My impression is, “No.” But I stopped going to the movies a long time ago, so I can’t really say for sure.

  8. You did it again. What a great essay! As young teenagers we lived the movies. We didn’t always understand the back stories of films like Casablanca, but the actors were idols. As for the suggestion of sex – rather than today’s TMI – there was never a sexier scene than Clark Gable (Rhett) carrying Vivienne Leigh (Scarlett) up that grand staircase. Black and white enhanced the drama of Casablanca, as well as dark productions like Alfred Hitchcock’s. I won’t reprise your entire piece. It was terrific!

    The male actors now are little shrimps with no presence. Callow. Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, and other newer ones who are even worse. They always seem like pajama boys who need a strong woman to take care of them. When miscast in roles that call for power, they seem to be little boys trying to wear daddy’s shoes.

    Thanks for the good read…

  9. Posts like this one bring enormous clarity to the actual state of decline in our national culture. Our affluence largely conceals the insidious effects of this soul destroying disease that is transforming us from self-reliant thinkers/doers into sniveling weaklings utterly dependent upon others for sustenance. In my youth, being on welfare was an embarrassment. Then it became an entitlement and people wore it as a badge of honor. Now, it is a religion and people will fight to the death to remain a proud parasite.

    How far we have fallen.

  10. One of the reasons that I have my doubts about the Flynn Effect is that lots of popular entertainment from 60 – 70 years ago was obviously pitched at a much higher intellectual level than today. Even some of the old “Looney Toons” cartoons from the 1940’s and 1950’s required at least a passing familiarity with the basics of Western Culture in order to get the jokes, and this lasted into at least the mid-1960’s. I was recently watching some junk TV from the 1960’s on one of those oldies TV stations the other day, and while no one would ever claim that “Gilligan’s Island” was a high point of our culture, the episode that I saw assumed that the viewers knew who Shakespeare was and more or less what he wrote, and something about the opera “Carmen”, while the “I Dream of Jeannie” episode that followed made references to the history of the Napoleonic Wars. And these shows were just prolefeed. It makes you wonder…

    • I think the Flynn Effect is falling behind the “Marching Moron” Effect, as smart people either don’t reproduce or reproduce less often (a rubber is tricky to get on). The intro to “Idiocracy” nailed it. And then there’s immigration-

  11. Casablanca and the first Magnificent Seven are the two best movies ever made, IMHO opinion. As so many have said, manly men doing manly things.

    However, the best line ever in a movie was ” Asps. Very dangerous. You go first. ” 🙂 😉

  12. On the weekend I watched most of The Outlaw Josey Wales for the first time in many years. Kind of a meandering story, to say the least. But I enjoyed it after so long.

    All SJWs should be made to watch it:

    Other side of the Kansas/Missouri wars within the civil war
    Union duplicity and pro-Union militia atrocity
    dim view of the Puritan tradition [represented apparently by the Jawhawker settler family]
    sympathetic but frank take on Indians

    Plus Chief Dan George as a displaced Cherokee in the Indian Territory, old enough to remember the Trail of Tears. He has a wonderful bit in which he explains all this backstory including a meeting with the Secretary of the Interior who unctuously suggests the Cherokee “endeavour to persevere”. He relates how the Cherokee mulled this phrase over for a generation or so. “And then when we had thought about it enough, we declared war on the Union”.

    Just the fact that many of the displaced Indian nations decided to go to war with the Union, on the side of the Confederacy, is probably a mind-blower for some folks.

    Wales’ improvised eulogy after he shoots the dying boy who was the only other survivor of his unit is a remarkable bit of stoical worldview in itself.

    • Wales doesn’t shoot the boy – the boy dies and Wales sends him through the Union lines so they’ll bury them and as a distraction.

      There is certainly a father-son thing going on there. Kind of poignant as Wales’ son was murdered. I missed that stuff amidst all the gunfire and havoc the first few times I watched – particularly the time in college where we drank every time he shot somebody.

      I love it when Wales falls asleep during the Cherokee story about the trail of tears.

  13. The last movie I saw in a movie theater was Castaway starring Tom Hanks and a volleyball. Left halfway through the movie. Haven’t been back since. Don’t miss it at all.

    • Blazing Saddles for me, 1974, Maxwell AFB theater, 35¢, or maybe 50¢ (prices went up along about then). No, I wasn’t a shavetail, I was expecting to retire a year later, which I did.

      • @ BillH – Here in Switzerland, a movie ticket is around 17-CHF (Swiss Francs) per person. In Germany, they average 9-12 Euros. And seats are assigned by number when you buy the tickets.

        One more reason I have a big screen, a surround sound system and Kodi.

        • I’ve never paid that much for anything I couldn’t take down and dust off once in a while, or build or fix something with. Everyone I know knows I’m a cheapskate, and now the internet knows it too.

        • So does the theater assign seats from front to back, right to left, or what? Geez, typical German. No one gets to “pick” their seat location? Really?

    • @guest
      Spoiler alert! Castaway ends with Hanks marrying the volleyball Wilson as Wilson it turns out is a 44 year old gender-queer self indentifying as a single white female. Despite 12 years “her” senior it’s still no trouble for Tom to father a can of triplet tennis balls. You didn’t miss much.

  14. And for the record, I hate this age as well.

    It’s starting to affect my attitude to daily life, and perhaps even my mental health and physical health.

    I’m sure I’ll get by, but still.

  15. “The point of movie making in those days was to get people to the theater. That meant making movies that appealed to the majority population, which meant the native stock. No one bothered with virtue signaling.”

    I think I’ve been tainted.

    Brief digression- in a recent thread elsewhere discussing the decision to put a black Canadian woman Viola Desmond on the 10$ bill [she advocated for desegregation of a movie house in 1950s Nova Scotia] someone suggested that when white people put all those white people on the money, that was also “identity politics”.

    This put me in mind of a few things. One, a Zman effort to catalog leftist cultural and linguistic tropes/rhetorical tricks would not go amiss. This turning around of things is one.

    At the time, I argued that the overwhelming majority of people resulting in members of their group doing the most noteworthy or foundational stuff and getting recognition is not “identity politics” so much as “math” or “observation”. Especially since the pushback now always involves inflating the significance of more modest contributions. [We’re moving prime ministers who led in wartime to make room for this one].

    And yet here we are with me having a similar reaction. Or at least expecting one- someone, somewhere, who reads this will be thinking “making movies that appealed to the ‘native stock’ was also ‘virtue signalling’.”

    I’ve heard or read that one deployed as well. I don’t actually agree of course, but wow these memes have power.

  16. The sheer number of movies the stars made and the range of parts is also extraordinary. Bogart in particular played criminals and despicable men (Treasure of the Sierra Madre) as well as heros.

  17. Writing counts. In the old studio system you had both a stable of actors, but also a talented stable of fully employed writers. Add in the unavailability of unlimited special effects and you had to actually tell a story to make the movie work. Now its how many cars can you blow up and how many minutes of screwing can you insert (no pun meant). Story is of tertiary concern.

    • @ SamlAdams – I think you nailed it. Writers and actors from that period had class and sensibility and were, for the most part, adults who had grown up. Not today’s collection of self-absorbed narcissists trying to push their self-promoted agendas with scripts written on a 6-grade level.

  18. I could see Vin Diesel playing Rick, probably better.
    Just thinking as I typed that that there are those that would believe my sarcasm.

    Watch The Third Man, it really deserves the high ratings many give it. Great Noir.

  19. My son started out studying for a career teaching film studies. At one point we were discussing “The Big Sleep”. I said that I’d always wondered what happened during the blackout in the scene between Bogie and Dorothy Malone after Malone takes off her glasses and lets down her hair. My son replied, “My generation makes whole movies about what happened during that blackout.” I don’t think movies are better for it. Probably melt some snowflakes with the taking off her glasses bit.

    • I fast forward through sex scenes. They are pointless additions to the show. I’m no prude, but we have unlimited porn on-line and I’m an adult. I know what sex is and how you go about it. My guess is women like the long drawn out sex scenes, but I don’t know. The idea of fast forwarding through the sex scene was given to me by a women. I used to just hit the head or grab something from the fridge during those scenes.

      • We have been watching the TV program “The Americans”. The sex scenes (and there are a lot of them, quite graphic) are the boring part of the program episodes.

        We record everything and Fast Forward is our best friend other than Mute (for the occasional live broadcast).

      • If you are watching for the sex scene might as well watch pornography. The fade to black is perfect. A movie like The Quiet Man didn’t need skin for you to know they were interested and a normal couple.

  20. To black Warrior: “You must remember this, a kiss is still is kiss, a smile is still a smile. The fundamental things apply..as time goes by” I know you were being a tad bit sarc. as that is one of those “most memorable moments in film” Dooley Wilson. I borrowed my user name from that film.

    • Excuse me, I made a mistake, ouch, “a sigh, is just a sigh” not smile. It’s been a while.

  21. “Round up the usual suspects.” The greatest line from the greatest screenplay ever written. One of its writers, Julius J. Epstein, attributed its success to “more corn than the states of Kansas and Iowa combined.” It was and is a love song to America.

  22. The important thing is to hate Hollywood and what it does and stands for more than it hates us. This means “making the personal political” on our side, as it has been on theirs for the past fifty years.

  23. Me too. I no longer consume any of their crap. It’s liberating to give up on the mainstream. I do like watching Narcos and Longmire though, I would recomendations them.

  24. Movies are on the way out for many reasons, self inflicted problems leading the list. Non-network tv is where the talent is. Even there, much is horrendously infected with Marxist dogma, but they do not own and cannot control the medium. I am surprised.
    Casablanca still rocks. I do wish that hokey model airplane taking off with Bergman was left to my imagination, but everything else got by. Best B movie ever.
    Bergman was not beautiful. She was desirable.

    • It turns out that movies are a poor medium for long form story telling. The TV serial is far better now that they have the money and freedom to make a quality product. Movies were always the novella of video, but now they seem to fall into that gap between short story and novella.

      Bergman was a good example of how much better women were treated in the olden thymes. She was not just a pretty face. Beauty in women was about desirability. That’s more complex than what we have today and more realistic.

      • I believe what you are referring to is a persons character. Something this age has overlooked and ignored in favor of looks and personality – both of which are severely lacking across all demographics and professions.

        • The degrading portrayal of men is mentioned a lot in these discussions, but the treatment of women has declined as well. In Casablanca, women were portrayed as women. Today, they are hyper-violent lesbians in Lycra or mannish feminists playing what used to be the male role.

          • Yes! And womens voices have changed dramatically, very unpleasant to the ear. Men’s voices have also got much higher, boys voices don’t break anymore. I believe this due to powerfl environmental contaminant of estrogen in the water due the number of women taking the pill and expelling this their urine.

            This is not allowed to be discussed.

  25. Old movies I have watched recently:

    Clint Eastwood in “The Eiger Sanction.”
    Lee Marvin in “Point Blank”.
    Elliot Gould in “The Long Goodbye.”
    Michael Caine in “Get Carter.”

    Manly men doing manly things.

    • “The Eiger Sanction” in HD?

      I had not seen that movie since I was a kid. Last year I caught it on a High Definition channel. The cinematography was gorgeous. And of course, even back then, Clint’s character was a reaction to the crazy politics of the day.

      Also notice Dragon seems eerily similar to George Soros – including his backstory?

  26. Even the illiterate people we’re expected to drop the odd literary allusions in those days. Now it is all references to the Simpsons. I too am starting to hate this age.

  27. They hate us with every fiber of their being. We don’t celebrate people whose only regret is not killing more Americans. We don’t have presidents whose mothers were prostitutes and nude models. We want to see all Americans succeed and prosper. They hate that because like all addicts and dysfunctional misfits they hate seeing people who don’t share their degeneracy.

    • Yah, why is it that even the most desperate degenerates (looking at you Hollywood) try to demand that others share in their debasement_? It’s as though there is still some small voice telling them that what they are doing is wrong and they are burning to suppress it.

    • “We don’t have presidents whose mothers were prostitutes and nude models.” What the hell do you think the last 8 years were about or did I miss a sarc tag?

      • He sure as hell didn’t represent me or anyone on my side. He would have never been electable by anyone outside of liberal enclaves if their degenerate mothers were common knowledge.

        So no, we do not have presidents with degenerate mothers.

  28. You went back to the old commenting system. I can’t say I care for the formatting, and I especially don’t like having an extra link for reading a long comment. This can be a problem when dealing with a weak internet connection.

  29. I agree, and hate many of the clownish/childish movies today, but they are played to the level in the audience.
    I cannot find a Bogart movie that I don’t like.
    However I’m hard to like any Jimmy Stewart movie, even the huge classics, The man who shot Liberty Valrnce, but at least he was an adult.

  30. The most interesting part of this post was when you noted that the elite in Hollywood at one point needed the masses to be at least competent enough to fight wars. Sometimes the people who ruin and poison culture seem to walk back their policies, if they feel the rot is setting in at the level at which they themselves might start to be effected. It’s a subtle shift, but
    I’m seeing black mug shots (not just on local news, as is normal, but on national news) where the race of the perp used to be hidden. Even a gate-keeping toady like Bill Maher is talking about Muslims in Europe and trannies in bathrooms.

    I guess when they really stop insulting us/shoveling crap down our collective gullets, that’s when we should be really afraid, because it means they’re getting us fit to fight again (assuming boots-on-the-ground might be needed to supplant drones).

    • I think there are divisions in the ranks on this question. All through Clinton/Bush/Obama there was a push to get women into combat roles. The only reason you’d do that is if you don’t care about winning a war. But the activists never actually got to the Marines. And now Marine generals are in charge of DOD and DHS.

      Like all things Trump administration, I couldn’t even guess if this is tide turning or temporary aberration.

    • It’s not that. The characters should reflect reality. The blacks back then largely played servants, beggars, buffoons, dancers, railroad employees. Nowadays they should be welfare cheats, baby daddies, rapists, the laziest guy at the office who can’t be fired, the one in class the professor gives grades to that aren’t earned, the one getting recruitment letters from colleges and employers to fill a racial quota, guys killing Paki convenience store operators, oh, and rap gangsta pimp boys.

      • Jamie Fox’s portrayal of Ray Charles in “Ray” was outstanding, as was Cuba Gooding Jr. in “Men of Honor”. The idea blacks can’t act as well as whites is nonsense. The problem is some people want to lower the bar so everyone can be up for an Oscar. I tried to watch the latest “Tripple X” and “Central Intelligence” this weekend. My expectations were already low, but not low enough. I could only stand to watch about 15-minutes of both before I turned of Kodi and went back to a good book.

    • You are right you bigoted sonofabitch.
      I don’t want to see blacks in movies when scum like you try and cram your racial supremacy, psychotic lies, bullshit and illusion of moral superiority up my ass because I’m white and because your agenda is nothing but a human extinction movement. If you don’t like that go pound sand.

      You and your toxic lies are poison.

    • So, who was singing “As Time Goes By”? Jackie Chan?

      I’m fine with blacks in movies but I don’t think I”d like to see you in one.

    • “You just don’t want to see blacks in movies.”

      It’s not as if the movie business isn’t always starving for quality product. What with forty million blackish Americans and a billion authentic Africans we hungrily await your product. You can add in as many white people as you like.

    • The question is, “Why would anyone WANT to see blacks in movies?” What I notice about blacks in movies is how they are used to imply that blacks are not just the equal to Whites but that Whites couldn’t survive without them. How many historical movies have there been that have blacks in Medieval Europe? Is that realistic? How many movies have story lines written to make formerly White characters black? How often are blacks presented as being the leader, the computer genius, the brilliant scientist or mathematician, when these are areas with low black participation. Very low in the case of computer geniuses, brilliant scientists or mathematicians.

      And how many movies have elite military forces that have multiple blacks on them when these are groups that have even lower black participation than 12%. In the Navy SEALs, just 2 percent are black, only about 30 in the entire SEALs population. How many movies have you seen that always have 1 or more blacks on the SEAL team? Even one would be disproportionate. Any more would be statistically improbable. Only 5.6 percent of enlisted Green Berets are black, and in the Air Force, among para-rescuers, the number drops even further down to 0.6 percent. It is hard to even find the numbers of black Rangers or Marine Recon because numbers are for “people of color”, which includes hispanics. For blacks or liberal Whites, movies must contain lies so that blacks can gain “self-esteem”. How ridiculous. This just validates that blacks can’t make it on their own and have to have artificial narratives imposed so that they can “participate equally”. NO GROUP participates in anything equally! Blacks constitute about 18% of active duty military but the majority of their numbers are not in front line units. They are in front-line “support”, a euphemism for “I ain’t getting’ ma blak ass shot off fo’ YT!”

      We don’t need blacks in movies just because blacks need to be in movies so other blacks can feel better about themselves. No more black “fiction”, like Hidden Figures, an historical revisionist movie that implied blacks are the ones that were really responsible for landing on the moon. Its funny how the book this movie was based on was not published until 2016. How did this “incredible” story not come out until over 50 years after the Mercury program was ended? Haven’t we been inundated with fictions of black “accomplishment” that somehow YT conspired to keep from everyone? How is it that no one that worked there actually recalls any of this? Didn’t a mainframe do the calculations? Wouldn’t this have been uncovered earlier if is was true? But no, somehow, black women were responsible for making and correcting all trajectory equations. Blacks and women both being barely represented in the world of mathematics. But, apparently Whites had to go to those “superior” black brains to provide the heavy lifting. Even if it had been one black it would have been unbelievable, but 3? C’mon.

      Oh, and we also don’t need black gods in Scandinavian mythology. Asgard didn’t have any black gods.

      • Northwest Ohio was once a swamp. The Indians were here 500 or more years and neither did they do anything about it nor was it a priority. The white man comes here and within 20 years it becomes some of the most fertile farmland in the nation. This nation falls apart without whites.

    • Why would I want to see blacks in a movie? First of all, they aren’t my people. More importantly, they don’t resonate with me. Neither their clothes, nor their music, nor their style of dress, nor the way they talk, nor their politics, nor their worldview is anything I can relate to or have any interest in?

      So why, again, should I want to see blacks in a movie?

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