LIFE

Let ‘woke’ horror movies die: ‘The Forever Purge’ begs for liberal praise by devolving into anti-Trump fanfiction for CNN viewers

Published

3 years ago

July 3, 2021

The ‘Purge’ franchise began as an interesting examination of morals, but it has quickly turned into the latest example of wokeism destroying art and turning creators into part-time, ill-informed political pundits.

There is no questioning the success of the ‘Purge’ franchise. The 2013 original was part of a wave of micro-budget horror flicks that helped the now-juggernaut studio Blumhouse stand out.

Now, with four movies behind it (plus two seasons of a show already forgotten by most), ‘The Purge’ barely reflects the concept creator James DeMonaco pitched to the world back then: what would it look like if all crime were legal every year for 12 hours in the United States?

The idea led initial films to take B-movie dives into the concepts of societal facades, revenge, and class warfare.

DeMonaco noticeably switched gears, however, when he appeared to grow as obsessed with the rise of Donald Trump as any loyal CNN consumer.

There was 2016’s ‘The Purge: Election Year’, which committed to the half-baked idea that the annual ‘purge’ in the films is a construct of malicious right-wingers who are looking to rid society of who they deem to be too weak – and in DeMonaco’s mind, this equates to mainly minority characters.

As Trump continued to rise, and pundits worked overtime to sell the idea that every single Trump voter was a racist seeking to normalize white supremacy, DeMonaco’s bad writing habits just got worse. He got less and less interested in characters and stories and instead used his creations as pawns to create a campy, grindhouse-lite world for other frustrated liberals.

Thus we have 2018’s ‘The First Purge’ – which informs us that, again, evil right-wingers definitely only made the ‘purge’ to wipe out minority neighborhoods – and this weekend’s ‘The Forever Purge’, which somehow is even more obvious in its attempts to be politically ‘relevant’.

The film’s antagonists, who want a ‘purge’ that never ends until they have wiped out everyone they deem unfit to live in America, are poorly constructed caricatures based on liberal fantasy. They drape themselves in American flags, pose with AR-15s, and say things like, “We are the real patriots of America,” and “America will be America once more.”

The movie’s other characters aren’t much better. Actor Josh Lucas appears as a Texas rancher and pseudo-racist, and his saint-like Mexican workers are cardboard cutout celebrations of immigration who go into bizarrely on-the-nose discussions about the cultural melting pot of America. The film’s protagonists must get to Mexico which, like Canada, has opened its borders for a limited time to American refugees seeking to escape the ‘purge’.

You read that correctly. That is the plot. This is a horror movie about a bunch of ‘patriotic’ white dudes hunting down minorities with the permission of their right-wing overlords – the oh-so-cleverly named New Founding Fathers of America – while a white Texas family seeks refuge in Mexico with the help of their perfect and perfectly misunderstood Mexican workers. This isn’t exactly the type of movie that believes in nuance or allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions about the points being made.

As his films have gotten more overtly political, so has DeMonaco, who continues to write the installments to his franchise. Reading an interview with him is like living in a world where someone suddenly allowed Brian Stelter behind a camera.

In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, DeMonaco bragged about how his filmmaker friends asked him how he could have predicted the January 6 Capitol riot – ‘The Forever Purge’ was made before the riot and delayed due to Covid-19 – as the display of violence from Trump supporters seemingly fits the extreme narrative sold in ‘The Forever Purge’. What DeMonaco appears to take no inspiration from are the numerous other examples of political violence that led up to the Capitol riot, including numerous Antifa demonstrations and Black Lives Matter protests descending into violence. In DeMonaco’s world, though, it has reached the point where the only people generally capable of violence are rabidly racist white people who don’t vote Democrat.

Like ‘Saturday Night Live’ – which has become little more than a political tool to swipe at conservatives – the ‘Purge’ franchise has lessened in quality as it focuses more on politics, but it also earns plenty of praise for ‘daring’ to make its cookie-cutter liberal points.

“This Gun-Happy MAGA Takedown Packs an Unsubtle Punch,” IndieWire’s review of the film is headlined.

“‘The Forever Purge’ shows right-wing populism’s fascist, racist underbelly in all its horror,” NBC News adds.

The Daily Beast, meanwhile, shouted out the movie taking aim at “white nationalists and Trump’s border hysteria.”

It’s like ‘Purge’ presents so many generalized, extreme points about modern-day conservatives that some critics are too giddy at the thought of Hollywood validating their echo chamber belief system to actually recognize they are watching lazy virtue signaling disguised as a story.

Nothing we see in ‘The Forever Purge’ is fresh in any way. The attempts to take on race and patriotism in the film are done with a similar level of thought as a typical Twitter debate.

The cleverest ‘The Forever Purge’ gets is DeMonaco desperately squeezing in any and every reference to viral moments in recent politics, like the phrase “bad hombres” being thrown around, a cringe-inducing reference to Trump’s infamous use of the term in 2016. It’s only impressive that DeMonaco not only wrote the awful reference in the first place, but then decided to commit to its awfulness and keep it in the movie.

If the ‘Purge’ movies have proven one thing with their increasingly preachy and annoying material, it’s that wokeism and virtue signaling really have become defining characteristics for some in our culture; and, more importantly, wokeism can ruin anything, even a promising grindhouse franchise that promises thrills and intrigue only to blindside you across the head with a television set that only plays a rotation of triggered and emotional CNN hosts.

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LIFE

conic Smiths bassist dies aged 59

Published

12 months ago

May 21, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

The bassist with legendary English rock band The Smiths, Andy Rourke, has died at the age of 59, the group’s former guitarist Johnny Marr has announced.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Andy Rourke after a lengthy illness with pancreatic cancer,” Marr wrote on Twitter on Friday.

“Andy will be remembered as a kind and beautiful soul by those who knew him and as a supremely gifted musician by music fans,” he added.

Mike Joyce, who was drummer for The Smiths, described Rourke as “not only the most talented bass player I’ve ever had the privilege to play with but the sweetest, funniest lad I’ve ever met.” The musical legacy of his former bandmate is “perpetual,” Joyce said in a tweet.

ABBA guitarist dies

Rourke was with The Smiths from 1982 to 1987, performing on all four of the band’s studio albums: ‘The Smiths’ (1984), ‘Meat Is Murder’ (1985), ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (1986), and ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ (1987).

He also had an impressive career after the group split up, playing with Smiths’ frontman Morrissey on his solo projects and with the likes of Sinead O’Connor, The Pretenders, Dolores O’Riordan, Badly Drawn Boy, Killing Joke, and guitarist Aziz Ibrahim.

In 2005, Rourke put together a supergroup called Freebass with fellow bassists Peter Hook, who previously played with New Order and Joy Division, and Gary “Mani” Mounfield of the Stone Roses and Primal Scream. Among other things, he also worked as a DJ on the popular British rock radio station XFM, now known as Radio X.

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LIFE

Village People demand Trump stop using their music

Published

1 year ago

May 17, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

A viral video emerged last week of Donald Trump dancing to a Village People song at his Florida estate

Village People, the disco act best known for 1970s hits like ‘YMCA’ and ‘Macho Man,’ has issued Donald Trump with a cease and desist order to stop using the band’s music at political events without express permission, according to a legal filing. The former US president has frequently played Village People songs at campaign rallies throughout his political career.

Last week, a video emerged online showing Trump dancing to a Village People tribute act during a poolside dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida – leading to the band’s management issuing Trump with a legal request to abstain from using Village People intellectual property at any future events.

“The performance [in the viral video] has, and continues to cause public confusion as to why Village People would engage in such a performance. We did not,” wrote the band’s manager Karen Willis, the wife of singer Victor Willis.

Willis added that Trump’s use of Village People music was previously “tolerated” by the band but that it has decided to issue legal proceedings to prevent further use of its popular songs, for fear that it could be construed as an “endorsement” of Trump’s political ambitions. She also explained that the video had created confusion among fans who mistakenly thought that the real Village People had performed at Trump’s Florida estate.

Trump unveils new Biden nickname

Trump’s legal team has issued a withering response to the band’s cease and desist request. Attorney Joe Tacopinca told TMZ on Monday that, “I will only deal with the attorney of the Village People, if they have one, not the wife of one of the members. But they should be thankful that President Trump allowed them to get their name back in the press. I haven’t heard their name in decades. Glad to hear they are still around.”

Village People music, particularly the song ‘Macho Man’, has been a regular soundtrack to Donald Trump’s political rallies in recent years.

Singer Victor Willis indicated in a post on social media two years ago that while Village People music is intended to be “all-inclusive,” its use by Trump has been problematic. “We’d prefer our music be kept out of politics,” he wrote in February 2020. Willis later requested that Trump stop using his band’s music in June 2020, following reports that then-President Trump intended to use the US military to stamp out Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the United States.

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LIFE

Hollywood star pulls out of hosting awards show amid strike

Published

1 year ago

May 5, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Drew Barrymore is stepping down as host of this year’s MTV Movie & Music Awards, due to be held on Sunday, in solidarity with the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). The actress has agreed to host the ceremony next year instead, Variety reported.

Although the MTV awards are set to go ahead without a host, Variety said that arrangements for the show are in constant flux as producers are unsure which of the presenters, nominees, and guests will be willing to appear.

Organizers have already scrapped the red carpet as well as interviews that were supposed to take place before the ceremony.

In a statement quoted by Variety, Barrymore said she had “listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike.”

The actress added that “everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of their [writers’] creation,” and revealed that she is “choosing to wait” until a solution is reached on fairly compensating writers for their craft.

Although Barrymore will not be present at the live event in Santa Monica, California on Sunday, she is likely to appear in several pre-recorded short films created for the telecast.

Unions representing writers working in Hollywood and beyond officially began a strike on Tuesday. The move comes amid a dispute with major studios such as Paramount and Universal over working conditions and the shift brought about by the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.

Hollywood writers go on strike

The WGA has complained that its members are being “devalued” and have received reduced pay despite significantly more movies and TV shows being in production than ever before thanks to streaming.

Aside from increased pay, the WGA has issued a list of demands to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Hollywood’s major studios. Among them is a request for guarantees that scripts would not be generated using Artificial Intelligence, and that writers would not be asked to edit or rewrite screenplays generated by such technology.

The current strike is the first work stoppage in the US entertainment industry in 15 years. The previous writers’ strike in 2007 lasted for 100 days and ultimately cost Hollywood an estimated $2.1 billion.

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