{"id":86652,"date":"2023-12-21T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86652"},"modified":"2023-12-21T09:52:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T15:52:00","slug":"live-imitates-pulp-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86652","title":{"rendered":"Life Imitates Pulp Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In the book <em>Red Storm Rising <\/em> &#8211; Tom Clancy&#8217;s second novel, released around 1985, at the height of the Cold War, and tho only Clancy novel that didn&#8217;t focus on Jack Ryan, his family and his professional and social circle &#8211; the protagonist, obscure intelligence analyst John Toland, connects the dots among several events &#8211; a Chechen terrorist attack on an oil refinery, its attendant economic turmoil &#8211; and becomes concerned about a possible Soviet invasion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The line that connects all the dots?  The Soviet government releases an updated version of the 1938 film <em>Aleksander Nevsky<\/em>, Sergei Eisenstein&#8217;s historical drama about the eponymous Nevsky, getting the quarreling Russian nobility to shelve their differences and set about repelling a Teutonic invasion in the Middle Ages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Am I butchering the plot worse than Nevsky butchering the hapless Germans?  Perhaps.  Here &#8211; watch for yourself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Alexander Nevsky | DRAMA | FULL MOVIE | by Sergei Eisenstein\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Gq4PaJfod4w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Finer plot points notwithstanding, the movie is intensely nationalistic &#8211; which got the film shelved, and then un-shelved after <em>Barbarossa<\/em> and the invasion of the USSR.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The point &#8211; as John Toland put it in <em>Red Storm Rising<\/em> &#8211; was that whenever the Communists wanted to whip up a nationalistic frenzy against the West, they&#8217;d trot out <em>Nevsky<\/em>.  Which was, indeed, the case in the book, as the USSR let slip the dogs and tanks and artillery of war, in what became one of the better, and final, fictional novels of World War 3.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>So, Hollywood is doing a fictional &#8220;civil war&#8221; movie, featuring an A-list&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;well, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Civil_War_(2024_film)#Cast\">B+-list<\/a> cast, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alex_Garland\">a big-name sci-fi director<\/a>, an apparently significant budget&#8230;:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">In this land, anything is possible. Welcome to Alex Garland&#39;s CIVIL WAR. In theaters and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IMAX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@IMAX<\/a> April 26. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5PG8bKGMaW\">pic.twitter.com\/5PG8bKGMaW<\/a><\/p>&mdash; A24 (@A24) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/A24\/status\/1734936219711394284?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 13, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p> &#8230;and a fairly bizarre premise:  that DC, New York and the Midatlantic states, <em>Texas and Califonria<\/em> will be allied against, I suspect, a bunch of of blockheaded rednecks and roobz from Florida and most of &#8220;flyover land&#8221;.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The movie is billed as science-fiction, but the sides drawn appear to be more fiction than science; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">So this movie has no idea how America works huh <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SdumCBdFfH\">pic.twitter.com\/SdumCBdFfH<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Zack Beauchamp (zackbeauchamp@bsky.social) (@zackbeauchamp) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/zackbeauchamp\/status\/1736748407627129223?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 18, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Little has been released about the plot, although speculation is running hot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u00a0The reasoning behind the seemingly bizarre alliance of Texas and California in the film points to the notion that the war isn&#8217;t over Democrat and Republican politics but more about Offerman&#8217;s corrupt three-term Presidency.\u00a0<strong>The United States federal government has apparently disavowed its allegiance to the United States Constitution<\/strong>\u00a0and is now held under the budding dictatorship of Offerman&#8217;s tyrannical President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0The reasoning behind the seemingly bizarre alliance of Texas and California in the film points to the notion that the war isn&#8217;t over Democrat and Republican politics but more about Offerman&#8217;s corrupt three-term Presidency.ent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>So, maybe it&#8217;s not a Blue-Vs.-Red thing, as such.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But coming in the immediate aftermath of a state supreme court ruling that has just served as a <em>Reichstag <\/em>fire for those on both sides insisting that they are fighting intractable anti-democratic forces on both sides &#8211; a decision that has raised the temperature and lowered the signal-to noise ratio and increased the likelihood of a, let&#8217;s just call it &#8220;less than reasoned&#8221; response to <em>any <\/em>election result next year, is this really the media cue we want to be sending out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Depends on which &#8220;we&#8221; you&#8217;re talking about, doesn&#8217;t it, Mitch?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why, yes &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/movies\/news\/why-leave-the-world-behind-viewers-think-the-obamas-are-sending-a-warning-with-movie\/ar-AA1lGGSF\">it does<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the book Red Storm Rising &#8211; Tom Clancy&#8217;s second novel, released around 1985, at the height of the Cold War, and tho only Clancy novel that didn&#8217;t focus on Jack Ryan, his family and his professional and social circle &#8211; the protagonist, obscure intelligence analyst John Toland, connects the dots among several events &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86652"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86689,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86652\/revisions\/86689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}