One little overlooked factoid, back in the heyday of Hollywood, unfiltered Lucky Strikes used to be considered a food group.
-—VDH—in top form—
bfltr
I think the poster, 55, may be suffering from some auditory deficits. I hear and talk with my daughter’s early-twenties male friends all the time, and there is no question what gender any of those young men belongs to. And no, they don’t smoke.
Good post...thanks
I notice the same thing with a lot of the young “male” singers. They seem to make an efort to sound like sissies.
After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies—indeed, anything “studies”— were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.
How true. All those studies - Women's, African-American, Chicano, etc - are hideouts for academic frauds. I cite Cornel West as the outstanding example.
I don't disagree with much of VDH’s opinion on Hollywood, but there are still gems to be found occasionally. I would put Open Range up against the westerns he mentioned (Shane, the Searchers, High Noon, or the Wild Bunch).
LOL!!!!
As if any professor would care!
The vast majority of professors are as ignorant of history as their students, except their own politically driven, left wing, extremist agendas.
Agreed, although I did not care for Shane
If one wishes to see a fine film, they are now usually foreign, such as Das Boot or Breaker Morant.
Uh, those movies are now more than a quarter century old.
Watching any recent war movie (e.g., Iraq as the Rape of Nanking) is as if someone put uniforms on student protestors and told them to consult their professors for the impromptu script.
War movies are not very popular among anyone born from 1981 on, the demo that Hollywood wants to capture.
Something has happened to the generic American male accent.
IE the CALIFORNIA accent, that has exercised tyranny over (white) American English since the development of motion pictures and mass media. Actually, the bigger problem is the HOMOGENIZATION of regular speech patterns. People in Manhattan now aspire to the bland, generic, upper middle class white American accent that you hear in places like Littleton and Scottsdale.
Which leads to this:
We have given political eccentricity a bad name. There used to be all sorts of classy individualists, liberal and conservative alike
Because "regionalism" (which feeds individual idiosyncrasies) is under attack from the same upper middle class douchebags that are homogenizing our cities, our entertainment, and our speech patterns. Such (secular, educated) people frown on deviation from the norm/politically correct as much as the Holy Hosannah crowd used to frown on heathens.
For all the paranoia (usually coming from bland, Pete Wilson types) about America becoming more "diverse", the fact is that we are becoming more HOMOGENIZED, albeit split between a homogenized, bland PC upper middle/upper class and a pseudo macho/thuggish Prole and lumpen prole class with the same accents, tastes, styles of dress, etc. common among these two subgroups.
Am I alone in defending regional diversity against the homogenizing effects of mass culture, most of it emanating from the western part of the country?
Agreed, although I did not care for Shane
If one wishes to see a fine film, they are now usually foreign, such as Das Boot or Breaker Morant.
Uh, those movies are now more than a quarter century old.
Watching any recent war movie (e.g., Iraq as the Rape of Nanking) is as if someone put uniforms on student protestors and told them to consult their professors for the impromptu script.
War movies are not very popular among anyone born from 1981 on, the demo that Hollywood wants to capture.
Something has happened to the generic American male accent.
IE the CALIFORNIA accent, that has exercised tyranny over (white) American English since the development of motion pictures and mass media. Actually, the bigger problem is the HOMOGENIZATION of regular speech patterns. People in Manhattan now aspire to the bland, generic, upper middle class white American accent that you hear in places like Littleton and Scottsdale.
Which leads to this:
We have given political eccentricity a bad name. There used to be all sorts of classy individualists, liberal and conservative alike
Because "regionalism" (which feeds individual idiosyncrasies) is under attack from the same upper middle class douchebags that are homogenizing our cities, our entertainment, and our speech patterns. Such (secular, educated) people frown on deviation from the norm/politically correct as much as the Holy Hosannah crowd used to frown on heathens.
For all the paranoia (usually coming from bland, Pete Wilson types) about America becoming more "diverse", the fact is that we are becoming more HOMOGENIZED, albeit split between a homogenized, bland PC upper middle/upper class and a pseudo macho/thuggish Prole and lumpen prole class with the same accents, tastes, styles of dress, etc. common among these two subgroups.
Am I alone in defending regional diversity against the homogenizing effects of mass culture, most of it emanating from the western part of the country?
Finally:
Maybe it is that the Right already had its Reformation when Buckley and others purged the extremists—the Birchers, the neo-Confederates, racialists, the fluoride-in-the-water conspiracists, anti-Semites, and assorted nuts.
The neo-confederate "south was right" folks are still here (hi guys!). I disagree with them, but seem them as colorful eccentrics and a force against the cultural homogenization that I mentioned above.
Guess he never met Frankie Valle
Broke Back Mountain.
All I have to say is? When young people end every little phrase? Like they are asking a question? It gets really annoying? Do you know what I mean?
And don’t even get me started on “like” hahaha
Victor hits it clean out of the park.
I can’t watch modern war movies. Most of the actors grow a few days worth of facial hair, but look like they never did a day’s work in their life. Either that or they look gym-buff.
Look at pictures back when - people were wiry-er.
“John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson?”
Another one to add to this list: Lloyd Bochner (probably best remembered from the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”). That guy had a voice that was the epitome of suave.