by Donald Jeffries, “I Protest”:
Life imitating art or art imitating life?
I watch a lot of movies. I used to watch a lot of television. And I seem to notice things that most others don’t. My tendency to critically question everything ensures that many people close to me, especially my female loved ones, leave the room when I’m watching something. The males, however, appreciate my running commentary.
At one point, I wanted to write a script for a prospective sitcom or film comedy, which incorporated all the common tropes seen onscreen. But where would I send it? Hollywood doesn’t take unsolicited screenplays or manuscripts. Half the restaurant servers in Tinseltown are peddling them. And they can’t get someone to read their work, except perhaps if they wait on the right big shot who finds them physically attractive enough to invite them to the casting couch. I’ve never been in a position to wait on anyone who’d be willing to consider my work in return for sexual favors. I probably wouldn’t be their type, anyways. And now I’m way too old for any of them.
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Maybe those unseen screenplays from waiters and waitresses yearning to break into show business contain some valuable and entertaining stuff. Some of them might be original thinkers, who shake their heads at the same tropes and propaganda I do. If they’re pushing something fresh and original, then they are out of luck, even if they say yes to all the bald headed film moguls in the city. Every script must spin a modern “Woke” leftist message. Black characters must be wildly overrepresented, and must all be strong and positive. Females must all be physically tough, and ready to verbally abuse or physically overpower any White male character. Their great strength and confidence often wilts in the presence of nonwhite males for some reason.
Leading ladies can still be quite pretty, but have to all wear that resting bitch face. They need to look pissed off all the time, especially in the presence of White males. When nonwhite males enter the picture, their resting bitch expressions visibly soften. White male characters can never be alpha. They are weak, submissive, and usually the butt of jokes from White females and nonwhites of all genders. Mixed race couples are always encouraged. Characters will usually reside either in a New York apartment, or an upscale home in the suburbs. You won’t see any primary characters living in a lower middle class townhouse, for instance. If the film is about “the hood,” then of course the Black characters will be mired in poverty. But glamorous poverty.
The plots must be either redundant of something that has been done countless times before (jewel “heists,” hackneyed bullies in high school, all romantic comedies- or “romcoms,” as they call them now), or a compelling concept, which is then never developed. These types of films invariably are also never resolved. They just end, and you wind up saying, “that’s it?” Well, at least I do. When they hint at something conspiratorial, it always winds up being the work of some secret private company, run by a startlingly non-diverse group of evil White men. Never the government. And the evildoers are never “diverse,” like the multicultural heroes always are.
I notice tropes that don’t even make sense in any propagandistic fashion. Watch how often characters, going back decades, leave their car doors open when jumping out. Guess Hollywood vehicles have special batteries or something. Whenever anything weird is afoot, or if some character is about to contract a deadly illness, they have a little blood leaking from one nostril. The old falling down when running from danger thing isn’t as popular as it used to be. But characters still wait far too long to react to danger. They tend to stare irrationally, and then start to slowly back away, instead of instantly moving as fast as they can. I guess that’s for dramatic effect.
Some of the old tropes no longer are useful. For instance, the old writing to a pen pal, and exaggerating your own accomplishments, then finding out the pen pal was doing the same thing. This was done in countless old television shows. The classic main character serving on a jury, and being the lone holdout against conviction, is no longer wanted. Our corrupt state doesn’t desire to advance the notion that there should ever be holdouts against conviction. It’s the modern jury’s job to convict, and they do a really good job of that. Also, they have dropped the old washing machine being loaded with way too much soap and overflowing routine. It’s too America 1.0.
Because there are no more alpha males onscreen, well at least not White ones, the main tropes from the action films that made the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger stars are being slowly weeded out. I haven’t seen any of Vin Diesel’s work, or that of former WWE star “The Rock,” so they may still have these tropes in their derivative movies. You can’t make action films, after all, without action. But neither Diesel or “The Rock” are White. So that explains that. So I guess they still have the inane, impossibly long car chases. The vehicles exploding into massive fireballs upon impact. The main characters still being a lot harder to shoot than the secondary characters. It’s a Batman thing, you wouldn’t understand.
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