Daily Archives: July 27, 2022

Renowned Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson says young people, especially boys, are facing a "demoralization" in the world and he's urging the Christian church to become more involved in reaching the next generation.

In a recent YouTube video titled "Messages to Christian Churches," Peterson explained that when he took a "psychological approach" while talking about the Bible, the majority of his listeners turned out to be young men.

"That is not a phenomenon that can be easily accounted for, but let me try," Dr. Peterson said. "Now in the West, because of the weight of historical guilt that is upon us, a variant of the sense of original sin in a very real sense, and because of a very real attempt by those possessed by what might be described as unhelpful ideas to weaponize that guilt, our young people face a demoralization that is perhaps unparalleled."

"This is particularly true of young men, although anything that devastates young men will eventually do the same to young women," he added while referring to anti-natalism and nihilism.

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Peterson continued, "When they are children, boys are hectored for their toy preferences, which often include toy weapons, such as guns, and their more boisterous playing style, as boys require active rough and tumble play even more than girls, for whom it is also a necessity. When in grade school, boys are admonished, shamed and controlled in a very similar manner by those who think that play is unnecessary, particularly if it's competitive, and who value a docile, harmless obedience above all."

He said the indoctrination of such an "extremely damaging ideology" is accomplished with three accusations.

"Number one: human culture, particularly in the West, is best construed as an oppressive patriarchy motivated by the desire, willingness and the ability to use power to attain what are purely selfish and self-serving ends," he explained.

"Accusation number two: human activity, particularly that undertaken in the West, is fundamentally a planet despoiling enterprise. The human race is a threat to the ecological utopia that existed before us and could hypothetically exist after in our absence."

"Accusation number three: the prime contributor both to the tyranny that makes up the oppressive patriarchy and structures all of our social interactions past and present and the unforgivable despoiling of our beloved mother Earth is damnable male ambition, competitive and dominating, power-mad, selfish, exploitative, raping and pillaging," he said.The psychologist explained that people in the West are facing "an all-out assault at the deepest levels."He said young men who are "deeply conscientious, capable of guilt and regret," consider that "in pain, every deep impulse that moves them out into the world for the adventure of their life, even that impulse drawing them to women, is nothing but the manifestation of the spirit that is essentially satanic in nature."

This belief is not only wrong "theologically, morally, psychologically, practically and scientifically," but it is also "anti-true," he noted.

Peterson also pointed out that the Christian church is "there to remind people, especially young men, that they have a woman to find, a garden to walk in, a family to nurture, an ark to build, a land to conquer, a ladder to Heaven to build, and the utter terrible catastrophe of life, to face stalwartly in truth, devoted to love and without fear."

He continued, "Invite the young men back, say, literally, to those young men, 'You are welcome here. If no one else wants what you have to offer, we do. We want to call you to the highest purpose of your life. We want your time and energy and effort and your will and your goodwill. We want to work with you to make things better, to produce life more abundant for you, and for your wife and children and for your community, and your country, and the world.'"

Dr. Peterson then pointed out the problems within the Christian church.

"We are more abundant, sometimes, far too often, corrupt, and sometimes deeply so," he said. "We're outdated, as are all institutions with their roots in the dead but still often wise past."

He shifted attention towards Protestant churches, saying, "You're the worst at the moment." Catholic and Orthodox should also invite young men, Peterson said.

"Put up a billboard saying 'young men are welcome here.' Tell those who have never been in a church exactly what to do, how to dress, when to show up, who to contact and, most importantly, what they can do. Ask more, not less of those you are inviting. Ask more of them than anyone ever has. Remind them who they are in the deepest sense, and help them become that."

Peterson concluded the message by saying, "You're churches for God's sake. Quit fighting for social justice. Quit saving the bloody planet. Attend to some souls. That's what you're supposed to do. That's your holy duty. Do it now, before it's too late. The hour is nigh."

Thousands of viewers commented on the video and some even said they were motivated to go back to church.

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Psychologist Jordan Peterson Says Society Is Harming Boys, and the Church Must Save Them: 'That's Your Holy Duty' - CBN.com

There are movies like Top Gun: Maverick so good that you only think about the insidious cultural forces that birthed them if you are an asshole like me. Then there are movies like The Gray Man, which are so boring that you cant help but see every weird drone shot and flat line of dialogue as a bellwether for where were at in the unfolding history of content creation, in all the worst ways. Pastes Jacob Oller hated The Gray Man a good deal more than I did. The movie manages a level of competence and craft that is the bare minimum for 2022 and certainly the bare minimum from the absurd amount of talent on offer: Besides headliners Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick shows up alongside freaking Billy Bob Thornton and Alfre Woodard. Its directed by the guys whove brought you most of the biggest Marvel movies. And yet a few decent moments from Gosling and Evans are about all we get for the two hours of our time.

Theres some inventiveness and color to the action scenes, but its hard to figure out what the hell is going on when the camera is cutting in the middle of every single beat in the fight. The actors arent great at selling their gnarly wounds. The gunfights want to be stylishand one that caps the movies second act is clearly trying to evoke the nihilism of a Grand Theft Auto rampage. It never quite gets there, just as nothing else in the filmits sentimental flashback, its gruesome torture scene, its aerial skydive combatquite gets to wherever it is its supposedly going, emotionally or dramatically.

Why did this thing get made? is a stupid question to ask of a studio film, because the answer is to make money. How the studio perceives it is making money is really the questionand in the case of The Gray Man, or Red Notice, or any of the other recent star-studded-but-undercooked offerings in Netflixs original film catalog, thats the most interesting thing about it by far.

B movie didnt used to mean a bad or shoddily made film, nor even one cranked out for a quick buck. It was fairly academic: Theaters used to sell a lot of double features, and the B movie was the feature meant to occupy the other half of the ticket opposite the more obvious draw. Back when talkies had hit theaters but television hadnt yet infiltrated every single American household, it made financial sense for studios to shell out for lower-budget movies. After all, every movie couldnt be The Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind, and the cheaper you made a movie, the sooner it made its budget back. All those actors and crew indentured to the old studio systems truly draconian contracts needed work to keep them busy, anyhow. It made sense to crank out B movies, and it gave the world some of its most incredible stars and directors. Some are even still very much alive and kicking.

It also gave the world a lot of forgettable junk, cynical sequels or truly bad cinema, and theres a reason the original model collapsed. That isnt because a dearth of artistic merit has ever had consequences, mind you: It was really because TV became ubiquitous in the 1950s, and suddenly moving images were no longer a thing you needed to pay a ticket to go to a theater to see. Suddenly, people werent as willing to throw their pocket money at B movies in theaters, so much of the studio infrastructure and talent that was brought to bear on them simply repurposed their craft for television productionswitness the migration of the Western from movie theaters to television shows (until the point the genre, once an uncontroversial B movie staple, became so overexposed that international directors were inspired to hijack the genre to create syncretic antiheros and bizarre subgenres.

The rise of the studio system during Hollywoods Golden Age created the conditions for those B movies, and it took a paradigm shift as earthshaking as the advent of TV (and, really, the downfall of the old studio system in the face of a growing labor movement and antitrust regulations) to change the nature of B movies. Looking at The Gray Man, which absolutely arises from some of the same motivations as those old features, I find myself wondering at the perverse incentives of the Streaming Wars that have gotten us here and pondering just what will inevitably bring an end to it.

Like the old studio system, streaming services are drowning in cash and interested in making sure their distribution models are as vertical as possible: The same Walt Disney who created the Buena Vista Film Distribution Company in part because RKO Pictures had pissed him off would have salivated at the idea of TV that only shows Disney productions that you need to pay monthly to watch. Netflix, a company that itself shook the pillars of the entertainment world with its streaming service, now finds itself flailing as its competitors have become the studios whose movies it used to exhibit. Every major production company has now leased its own massive server farms so that it can hoard its intellectual property and sell it back to us at $10 a month. It benefits Netflix (and Warner Brothers, and Disney, and Paramount, and on and on) to keep cranking out some content, any content, in the hopes itll make you and I watch a little longer and reconsider dropping our subscription so we can afford another half a gallon of gas or eighth of an insulin hypo this month.

Different paradigms in cinema history dont perfectly map onto each other, of course: Superhero movies kind of fill the role of big studio Westerns or musicals of yesteryear, but they also differ from them significantly. And these high-profile, star-studded movies that land lazily on Netflix in a bid to keep you from dropping the service certainly arent exactly the same as B movies during that other Golden Age. Those older movies were a place where younger players and behind the scenes talent or journeyman directors could get their start: These appear to be a place for well-established stars and crew to rest their laurels. Those older movies, cheaply made as they often were, could have flashes of gonzo inspiration or even define new subgenres. Stuff like The Gray Man is not serving up any new ideas.

The Gray Man ends with a credits sequence in which scenes of the movie are recreated with CGI sculptures of the individual characters that have the appearance of gray metalthey look like cheap pewter. It surely wasnt an intentional reminder that there wasnt a lot going on in this movie, which came out of its mold looking the right shape but utterly drab.

Kenneth Lowe is a regular contributor to Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter and read more at his blog.

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The Gray Man Is the Nadir of Netflix's B-Movie Model - Paste Magazine

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Welcome to The Queue your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, were watching a video essay that looks at how the Daniels latest film, Everything Everywhere All At Once tackles the feeling of being Very Online all the time.

Rather fittingly, Everything Everywhere All At Oncemeans a lot of things to a lot of different people. Ive seen video essays from Asian creators that discuss how the film speaks to everything from the immigrant experience to the role of nihilism in Buddhism. The films co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner, known collectively as Daniels have confirmed that the film resonating with the experience of having ADHD is no accident (Kwan was diagnosed during the making of the film).

And, if you are Very Online, you might have noticed something familiar about the chaos and exhausting maximalism of Evelyns multiverses. If you havent seenEverything Everywhere All At Onceyet, please do. Its easily one of the best films of 2022, and seeing it on the biggest screen possible is highly recommended. (Theres a good chance its still playing in theaters this babys got box office legs for days).

In any case, without giving too much away (not that such a thing is possible), the film follows Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), an overworked woman whose marriage, business, and relationship with her daughter are fraying at the seams. Then she learns that she is actually the only one who can save the Multiverse.

The internet is a place of endless curiosity and community. But its also overwhelming to be bombarded with a constant stream of information, political causes, and entertainment. The internet is silly, stupid, anarchic, tragic, and meaningful. And not all of it can matter equally to you. Our little monkey brains werent built for that. And part of whatDaniels film is saying, as the video essay below underlines, is that determining what does and doesnt matterto youin an attention economy is a life-saving step for surviving in the world post-Internet.

This video essay on why the DanielsEverything Everywhere All At Once is all about the overwhelming chaos of the internet isby Virginia-based filmmaker and video editorThomas Flight. He runs a YouTube channel under the same name. You can follow Thomas Flight and check out his back catalog of video essays on YouTubehere. You can follow him on Twitterhere.

Related Topics: Daniels, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Queue

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Everything Everywhere All At Once And How to Survive Being Very Online - Film School Rejects