Chateau Lloyd

Over the last few weeks I've intermittently been watching Nobel House, a 1988 miniseries based on the best-selling James Clavell novel.

The book was originally set in the 1960s, but was seamlessly brought into the late 1980s, and as such the 1997 handover of the Crown Colony to the Peoples' Republic of China loomed large.

This is a classic tale of corporate raiding ala Wall Street or Dynasty, but with a unique Asian twist.  Hong Kong is a fascinating place, and it dominated Clavell's thoughts for good reason.

In many ways, it is very much of its time, a Miami Vice set in the far east.  There are multiple levels of intrigue and of course remarkable shifts of fortune.  Pierce Brosnan, fresh from his Remington Steele work, is outstanding as Ian Dunross, heir and CEO to Noble House, a British firm founded along with the colony during the Opium Wars.  Noble House has moved on from opium and has weathered the Pacific War and Chinese Civil War, but struggles amidst the wild west 1980s environment of corporate raiders.  As the "Tai Pan" of Noble House, Dunross holds a special place in Hong Kong society, which is modern, cosmopolitan, but still beholden to Chinese traditions.

One of these involves a favor granted by a previous Tai Pan, signified by a broken coin.  Amidst corporate intrigue, the possession of this favor becomes a tale unto itself, and the notion of a modern multi-national business being locked into such agreements seems impossible today.  There is of course an American angle, which is naturally of the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" mentality, but one of the joys of the show is watching the naiive Americans get completely lost in the maze of Hong Kong corporate politics.

Opposing Brosnan is none other than John Rhys-Davies, a rival CEO pledged to destroy Noble House, and I took great joy in this show of Welsh-Irish animosity.  Go Celts!  It is my firm intention to snag this on DVD because it was fun to watch and I'm sure I missed a few things.

What is one to think of the British Establishment's fanatical attempt to stamp out pro-life prayers?

Even silent prayer is being treated as a criminal act.  Setting aside the fact that the constables should sure have more pressing matters, does this obsession with stopping prayer not attest to its potency?

British society is far more secular and far less Christian than ours.  The Church of England is a hollow shell, reduced to holding raves and silent discos in its otherwise empty cathedrals.  Catholicism is slowly returning, but Catholics remain a small minority.

Note also that there is almost no part of the Establishment that objects to abortion.  The "Conservative" Tories are just as supportive of it as Labour.

All of which is to say that there is no rational explanation for caring whether random people pause on the sidewalk near an abortion mill and think things.  Atheists must surely regard these antics as pathetic, pointless, and silly, and therefore no noticed should be taken of them.

But notice is being taken, a lot of notice, to the point that this is regarded as a serious matter regarding a strong police response.

More than anything else, this convinces me of the power of prayer, and its importance in spiritual warfare.  Otherwise, why would anyone care?  Clearly someone can sense what is going on, and they want this praying business stopped right now.

Our British cousins like to pretend that they are the wellspring of liberal democratic government, but they also have a sordid history of killing people for their religious beliefs.  The British Empire emancipated slaves before Catholics, and even today, Catholics are subject to constant slander and abuse.  Just about every British period piece shows Catholics as corrupt, self-flagellating weirdos.  (Seriously, they insert scenes of self-flagellation for no reason.  It's weird.)

Clearly the slow growth of the Catholic faith and the restoration of ancient shrines like Our Lady of Walsingham is raising some hackles and as with other persecutions, I think this will also ultimately prove self-defeating.

Creating new martyrs has never worked.  If burning people at the stake failed to stamp out British Catholicism, harassing pensioners is hardly going to move the needle.  But what it will do is cause people to wonder why these victims are so willing to suffer for their cause.  Why do they chose a prison cell over the comfort of their home? 

Once the questions start, people become more open to the answers that they previously overlooked.

The sordid details emerging from the arrest of music impresario Sean Combs (variously known as "Puff Daddy" and "P. Diddy") highlights the fact that the hedonism exemplified by Hollywood is much worse than the public knows.

This should not be surprising since we have a steady stream of escapees with lurid stories to tell.  Show business has always been sordid and the refuge of perverts, but in large part because of residual World War II patriotism and shrewd marketing, the film industry maintained the illusion that while their morality was certainly looser than that of the mainstream, it was still within the outer bounds of decency.

The infamous casting couch, for example, was in large part consensual.  Yes, young women (and men!) could be pressured to trade sex for money and fame, perhaps even compelled to, but entertainment is always a Faustian bargain.  

To put it another way, if your a sexually chaste, modest person, show business isn't for you.  It belongs to the amoral and ambitious.

For a while, folks thought that there was a floor to the depravity, but as with every human society freed from moral restraint, there are no naturally stopping points.  Adultery yields to orgies which include sodomy and then rape, incest and pederasty all become possible because there is no underlying morality to deny them.

It's not surprising or implausible that Combs could launch massive orgies involving every possible vice and that much of Hollywood attended them.  Like the ancient pagan cults, membership was a mark of distinction and initiation into the sacred mysterious necessarily involved moral outrages to bind oneself to the group.  This the same thing, and it is no accident that the most closely held secret in the world is the Epstein client list.  They protect their own.

Like everything else, the sports world is in something of a strange place.  The elites in society have decided that a person's sex is now unknowable, hence the spectacle of men dominating Olympic women's boxing.

The Olympic authorities confess that they are at a loss to find a reliable "scientific" way to tell men and women apart.  This is nonsense, but that's the official lie.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote how honesty is in short supply, and this is a great example of it.

Another example also emerged this week as the NCAA finally released the report of its earlier investigation into the University of Michigan's football program.  For those not following the story closely, there are two scandals at the university, the first involving impermissible recruiting during the Covid period, the second involving on-field cheating via prohibited in-person scouting.

The report for the former offenses is finally available and it is quite telling.  To many commentators, recruiting rules are an annoyance and violations regularly occur.  The NCAA digging into this is therefore a "nothingburger," unworthy of much attention.

However, the antics of now-former Michigan Head Coach Jim Harbaugh elevated it to one of national importance, in part because Harbaugh claimed the whole affair was the result of him buying a hungry kid a cheeseburger.

As the report makes clear, this was a bald-faced lie.  In the first place, Harbaugh bought two recruits (and their fathers) meals one two different occasions.  The only cheesburger consumed was the one Harbaugh himself ordered for breakfast.  Far more significant was the fact that this was during a national "dead period" for recruiting which was imposed to try to limit Covid exposure imposed in 2020.  Harbaugh violated this, brought recruits on campus, worked out with them, and in the end was rewarded with one of them joining his team.

Two other schools (Arizona State University and the Air Force Academy) also violated these rules, but what set Harbaugh apart was how he not only lied to investigators, his program as a whole did as much as possible to obstruct the investigation.  Indeed, Harbaugh (a self-identified Catholic) out did St. Peter by lying four times rather than three.

Moreover, they were stupid, easily disprovable lies.

The significance of this is the reaction to the University of Michigan and its fanbase: they are 100% behind Harbaugh, so much so that he has been invited to be an honorary team captain for their season opener in three weeks.

This is a truly remarkable development.  Not long ago, someone this publicly dishonest would be shunned by society.  

Instead, he is venerated and the reason is that in his final three years as Michigan's head coach, he defeated their hated rival Ohio State, and won three conference titles and a national championship.

These achievements are tainted by allegations of cheating, and the initial report into that is due shortly, but apparently cheating no longer matters.  Winning is what matters.

In fact, media reports indicate that while the university is willing to admit wrongdoing and accept various penalties, vacating the games is not among them.  They desperately want to cling to a tainted record which absolutely no one else will respect.

I am curious as to how the academic side of the university feels about this, especially their schools of medicine and law, which are widely respected.  Surely the faculty and alumni would not want to be associated with a school that believes cheating is okay so long as it works, but these are strange times.

Is any movie a better distillation than 1990s youth culture than Wesley Snipes' Blade?  It's got a bit of everything - the brash anti-hero, vampirism as a decadent (secular) lifestyle, and of course that sexy soft-core lesbian porn that was just starting to creep into the popular consciousness.

Indeed, in retrospect that was a clever marketing ploy by Hollywood, because while two men having sex is disgusting, two women having sex is merely absurd - and far more aesthetically pleasing.

In any event, I hadn't watched it in many years, which may strike people as surprising given my (fairly) recent authorship of The Vampires of Michigan.   To a certain extent, Blade was the Ur-text of that book insofar as it treated vampirism as a morally neutral biological phenomenon.  Obviously, the blood drinking was bad, but religious symbols and sacred objects were specifically mentioned as useless.

Garlic and silver were instead the primary threats to the vamps.

The storyline is unremarkable, and what sells the picture are the actors and the remarkably slick aesthetic.  Wesley Snipes is just so damn cool.  He oozes cool, personifies it - women want him, men want to BE him.  Modern movies simply cannot produce that level of charisma.

Put simply, it knew what it wanted to be and became that thing.  

That being said, there is a spiritual void at the heart of the picture which I had not noticed before - in part because it has been so long since I saw it.  When you are in your 20s, partying and lots of sex seems all that one could want in life.  Later on, other priorities emerge.

That was a large part of what inspired my take on vampires.  I very much enjoyed (and incorporated) fight scenes with cool weapons and people capable of dishing out (and taking) absurd amounts of damage, but the real heart of the matter to me was how one kept going after 100 years of orgies.  There had to be something more.

Anyhow, the film has held up remarkably well.

For the last few weeks Billy Joel's "Honesty" has been running through my mind.  The scope and quantity of lies in public discourse is simply overwhelming.

As the title of the post says - everyone is so untrue.

It is no accident that Man's from grace began with a lie.  Lying comes natural to evil people and often reaches the extent that they lie about everything, no matter how trivial or self-defeating.

We're to the point where once-respected organizations are now rejecting their own reportage in order to toe the Party line.  It's completely self-defeating, but so is evil.

As the song says:

I can always find someone who says they sympathize if I wear my heart out on my sleeve, but I don't want some pretty face to tell me pretty lies.  All I want is someone to believe.

Apparently, pretty lies are in great demand these days.

There is a strain of thought - popularized by Hollywood and contemporary culture - that lies indicate intelligence, and clever lies are the sign of a superior kind of person.  This has obvious appeal to prideful people lost in their vanity, and is of a piece with the elevation of cowardice to a virtue as well.

None of this is new, Chesterton and Belloc wrote about it more than a century ago, and Waugh's writings also address the issue.  A key plot point in his Sword of Honour trilogy is how an otherwise admirable British officer convinces himself that the smart thing to do is abandon his men on Crete and save himself, only to realize that while lip-service is paid to such cleverness, in practice society finds it despicable.  

The scandal is so great that punishment is out of the question, and he is hustled off to the Pacific theater, where he finds redemption through conventional acts of bravery and courage.

Of course modern society also rejects the notion of redemption or forgiveness.  There are only the Yard Sign Calvinists and everyone else.    As I noted a couple of weeks ago, one of the most consequential shifts in American culture was when progressive Christians decided that their mission was to condemn rather than convert.

If one isn't trying to draw people to eternal truth, duping them with lies seems a reasonable thing to do, especially if you merely want to keep them in line.

It's a self-limiting tactic, but siding with evil has always been a sucker's bet.  That's because the biggest lie of all is that one can somehow escape divine judgement.

Last night I watched the original theatrical release DVD of Star Wars with my grandkids.  The elder was my age when I first saw it (4) and the younger predictably fell asleep (which was part of the point).

After decades of fandom and the current culture war over the franchise, it was refreshing to see the film through the eyes of a child.

She was very impressed, saying "Wow!" during the opening sequence and reacting throughout the film.  By the trash compactor sequence (which terrified me back then), she was sitting in my lap for reassurance.  She loved the battles and cheered at the end.

And - like my generation - she wanted toys from the film.

I think there are several issues wound up in Star Wars and these have concealed the essential greatness of the original films.

Obviously, the dominant issue now is the fundamental reworking of the entire franchise, an action that seems motivated by sheer vindictiveness towards the original fans.

The original films succeeded because they pointedly were set in an imaginary setting and the sides were clearly identified as good and evil.  It's right there in the screen crawl.  There's no need to overthink it or break it down using critical theory.

The characters work because they suit the actors, who had some leeway in how they interpreted their roles.  

There is also the weird obsession of George Lucas with tweaking his films.  It's one thing to digitally remaster something and clean up bits of dust and lint.  It is another to actually recut the thing, splicing in scenes, altering dialog, even switching out actors and voices.  It is said that George Lucas' then-wife (Marcia) and the editing team saved the film with last-minute changes and that because of their acrimonious divorce, George wanted to reverse as much of that as he could.

The "special edition" is a worse film, breaking up the flow, introducing unnecessary special effects and severely compromising the narrative.  Moreover, it has given the new owner, Disney, license to do the same.  The reason the canon remains unsettled is that its creator couldn't settle on one.

In reality, the original theatrical release is the true version - it set the world on fire and created a series of film so popular than fans would camp out in front of theaters in order to be the first in line to see them.

Everything since has been mediocre, graded on a curve because they no longer have to stand on their own merits, but are instead compared to others in the genre.  Basically, Star Wars has created its own ghetto, walling it off from mainstream audiences.

This is the problem with franchises - the bigger they get, the higher the entry costs becomes for new fans.

Put simply, a new prospective fan now has dozens of hours of catching up to do.  From 1977 to 1983, it was 'all too easy' to stay current.

All of which is to say that war over Star Wars has sadly overtaken the quality of the film and its superb sequels.  Adding to this tragedy is the bizarre decision by Disney to trash earlier films in order to excuse their abysmal offerings.

I suggest taking a break from the very online arguments and simply watching the originals as if for the first time, looking over the details, savoring the sound track, immersing oneself in the story.

It helps if you have a kid with you.

Yesterday I got the news that Donald Sutherland had died and while I've never thought of him as a favorite actor, I own a lot of films with him in them.

The most striking thing about him was his remarkable range and the way he could manipulate his features to fit his role.  He covered the whole spectrum from goofball to intense serial killer.

He was quite the hot property during the 1970s, from M*A*S*H to The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Eye of the Needle, to name just a few.

That's a bunch of iconic roles, and my daughter treasures him as Oddball, the eccentric tank commander from Kelly's Heroes.

I'm at an age where the actors who were in their prime during my youth are starting to pass away.  What makes it doubly sad is that there is no one coming up to replace them.  It's impossible to make a star-studded film like Kelly's Heroes today because there isn't a cast capable of supporting it.  Disney's flagship new show, The Acolyte, has hardly anyone of note, with its top-line actress being killed off in the first episode.  The next most famous person is a Korean actor who was in a foreign-language streaming series that most people never saw.

I can't think of anyone under 40 who is in any way comparable to Sutherland, which is a shame.

Nowhere is the demonic influence on secular society more clear than in the attempt to abolish or pervert all traditional relationships.  The radical trans movement seeks to annihilate motherhood as well as fatherhood as we have known them, and replaced them with arbitrary, pseudo-technical terms that obscure more than they describe.

Yet despite all this, the hard-wiring in our brains remains, and we still default to the norms of human history.

This came to mind while watching The Acolyte reviews.  During the third episode, there was a dispute between the "two mommies" and while they are supposed to be this superior, radically feminist relationship, it was basically a same-sex simulcrum of husband and wife.  The taller, more powerful woman loomed over the shorter one, using her presence to coerce compliance.  When the smaller woman asserted that she ought to take presence because "she carried them" (the children), the other retorted "I created them."  

That's a pretty masculine way of putting things, no?  It's also very strange to have motherhood - which lies at the very heart of the female experience - be denigrated in favor of an ersatz paternity.   Because the big chick held the Force turkey-baster, this made her the superior to the woman who spent nine months carrying twins, went through the painful process of birth, and trials of post-partum depression, and of course nursing them at her breast - which is no mean feat with twins.

The Youtuber Disparu (whose excellent videos I have been following), noted that this seems to be a reference to surrogate pregnancy, and how gays think nothing of the birth mothers because they've done their thing and got paid for it.

Indeed, one of the interesting developments has been a growing awareness that "surrogate mothers" are actually a form of human trafficking.  Women are paid to be impregnated, expected to carry the baby to term (perhaps gender-selected via IVF), and the child is taken from her at birth and bestowed on the purchasers.  I've seen triumphant videos posted on social media, which go viral among religious folks in particular.

It's fascinating how we have this massive health care industrial complex built around teaching best practices in pregnancy and child-rearing and yet none of that applies to preferred groups like homosexuals.

Consider how many red flags are involved in this process.  

First, we have the inherent immorality of the contract.  A woman is being paid to give birth and hand over a human being.  How this is not "involuntary servitude" I do not know.  The entire transaction is fraught with moral problems. Why is this woman doing this?  Is she compelled by circumstance?  Is she a lawful resident?  One can easily imagine trafficked women being forced into this role.

Now consider her mental state.  Instead of treasuring the movements of her growing child, she is instead painfully aware that she will not enjoy the tender moments after birth, holding, feeding, nurturing the child of her flesh.

Post-partum depression is practically guaranteed.  How can it not happen?  She has no solace of holding the child, just money.

Meanwhile the child will not form a proper maternal bond.  A key part of development (and comfort for both mother and child) is the closeness after birth.  The beating of the mother's heart is uniquely relaxing.  That is now gone.

Volumes of research show that breast-feeding is best for both mother and child, yet here it is categorically off the table.

I could go on.

In a consistent, rational world, the people who style themselves "women's advocates" would be up in arms over this, but of course they're celebrating the commodification of babies, just as the celebrate killing them in the womb.

As I said, it's demonic.

The truth is that fathers and mothers are complimentary, each bringing different gifts and fulfilling different needs.  A huge part of the societal strife and breakdown we are seeing comes from the unwillingness of elites to sustain these vital institutions.

On the plus side, the market failure of The Acolyte is encouraging.  Perhaps the tide is starting to turn.

I'm amusing myself by watching reviews of The Acolyte, a show I would never actually watch but which appears to serve as a marvelous punching bag.

Disney's latest Star Wars offering is really an exercise in self-parody, an exemplification of the South Park joke about "putting a chick in it and make it gay and lame."

Only three episodes have yet aired, but it very much seems to be a paint-by-numbers affair, where various ideological/demonic boxes are checked and plot, character development and consistency within the setting are recklessly disregarded.

I've seen people say that this will "kill" Star Wars, but the abysmally low viewership tells me that it is already dead.

The larger question is why Disney is permitting this to happen.  The company spent four billion dollars on the rights to Star Wars and has yet to make it back.  Apparently, The Acolyte cost $180 million to produce, a staggering $22.5 million per episode.  What this bought them is a viewing rate among their subscribers of 3%.

The pessimists among us ('black pilled" in the popular vernacular) assume that the woke oligarchs have limitless amounts of cash to throw at unwatchable propaganda films, but nothing made by human hands is too big to fail.

That's perhaps the most important element about the show - no one cares.  When the sequel movies and spin-offs were out, there was immense debate and discussion about them, but reviews seem to be relatively sparse and someone dilatory.  There's no sense of urgency because no one's watching.

I think it's likely that the viewership of the people watching the review will significantly exceed that of the show itself.  Certainly the reviews are less of a time investment, but also likely far more entertaining.

It's strange to think back to a time when I was so worked up over Star Wars that I wrote the Man of Destiny series to fix it.  Now, it just seems like a waste of time and energy.

Truly, Star Wars is dead to me.