What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable
People {in the global north} aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.
We should also wonder how our appreciation of the sophistication and totality of the propaganda apparatus and its ongoing repression squares with the peculiar kind of “critical” media that does make it to wide circulation, usually to universal praise from both the mainstream and the counter-cultural “left.” Women getting constantly raped and murdered in film is deemed a protest against the patriarchy. Black people getting mauled by dogs, the most horrific traumas in their history ritualistically re-enacted in high-definition — this is an assault on white supremacy. Disaster movies insist that the end of the world is inevitable, that we are all complicit in ecological devastation for not doing our part recycling cans — this is environmental critique. Triumphant, handsome, charismatic, “alpha” men climb to the top of their respective empires of crime in highest-budget four-season shows and are awarded the highest accolades in their profession — this passes for an indictment of capitalism.
[12] Eileen Jones insightfully observes, about David Fincher’s Gone Girl:
Even as I watched it and shuddered with revulsion, I had to admit it — Fincher’s got our number. He’s figured out how to regularly wow contemporary audiences, to present us with the appalling truth of how despicable we are in a way that never really strikes home,
This license to feel despondent and yet always superior comes in many forms.
Do I have to be that guy again to post this?
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/