Change Your Image
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Reviews
American Commune (2013)
Ideals tried. Some success. Some failure.
My parents were hippies living in New Hampshire when the Farm thrived in Tennessee. Members of the Farm community lived with us for a time at our own little farm up north. No, we were not affiliated with Gaskin's farm, but my folks had great admiration the Farm's ideas.
In one scene, the Gaskin's daughter recalls how she once found a gum wrapper and savored its scent for a week.
Welcome to being a hippie kid. I saw in the film how the Farm children loved the freedom of frolicking in the fields and woods. I saw the intimacy, the love, and the hope.
Yet, Ms. Gaskin's story of the gum wrapper, and the comments about the children removing the guns from their Stars Wars action figures, struck a familiar chord.
We were hippie children, but we were still children. The more the grownups sowed us with dogma against plastic toys, sugary junk foods, and the evils of television, the more we jonesed for these things.
We wanted to do the things other kids got to do. When the other kids were still in their pajamas, watching Saturday Morning Cartoons, and eating Capn' Crunch, I had to go stack wood. Never mind how it's ten degrees Fahrenheit.
In contrast to the Cheech & Chong image in which the pop culture likes to portray hippies, intellectuals such as Stephen Gaskin, and my Dad, had different ideas when it came to children.
Mr. Gaskin declared post-war suburban kids were "paddy-asses" raised on Dr. Spock and phony bourgeois values. He thought children were better off raised like pioneer kids: Bare essentials, vigorous work, vigorous play, and a sound spanking for bad behavior. Dad agreed wholeheartedly when our barn-dwelling Gaskinites shared this bit of wisdom.
American Commune presents home movies on the Farm. You see the homespun clothes, the live folk music, and the dining tables rich with a bounty of vegan muck. It probably appeals to you far more than it does to me. I think to myself, "Yeesh, not all this BS again!"
Marijuana and psychedelics brought Mr. Gaskin a great many insights about human behavior and community. However, you notice he based much of his applied philosophy on Biblical principles. Why? Because they work.
There were thousands of communes based on hedonism and a pastiche of philosophies and mysticism designed to rationalize hedonism. Hollywood spoofs these communes to this day because they failed spectacularly.
Nope, to make a community work, you gotta have discipline and work ethic. Mr. Gaskin understood this. He inculcated these principles into his extended family. At its best, that's what the Farm was.
The other pitfall the Gaskins avoided was messianic cultism. The most horrible examples of messiah complex are Rev. Jim Jones and Charles Manson.
Mr. Gaskin allowed people to come and go as they pleased. If people didn't dig they way they did things on the Farm, they were free to go and seek the life they wanted.
Ina May Gaskin's midwifery techniques continue to help people with natural childbirth today. The Gaskins also pioneered the use of soybeans for nutrition. As the documentary shows, the Farm practiced what they preached. I don't know if anyone can verify the quotation, but my Dad said Stephen said, "Don't take over the government, take over the government's job." Whether Mr. Gaskin said this or not, it is a good summation of the Farm policy. They fed the hungry and treated the sick both at home and abroad.
The truth is, self-sufficiency apart from capitalism makes capitalists feel threatened. Hence, the FBI spying, the shock-and-awe pot raid, and the banks bullying the Farm. I shall refrain from spoilers.
As a veteran of a hippie childhood, I wish the documentary had expanded on more of the interpersonal problems that arise from experimental living conditions.
Mr. Gaskin's beliefs were lofty as sermons to his followers. They were difficult when applied. Such as the jealousy and fighting that emerged from polygamous partnering. Such as members having to petition the collective for a toothbrush, while Mr. Gaskin and company purchased high-tech gadgets and spent all kinds of money of relief missions.
Experimental living, no matter how well-intentioned, is often less than salubrious for children.
I grew to despise hippie culture in my youth because I saw so many grownups bickering about how things are supposed to be. I saw so much confusion among the adults. The point I wanted to see the documentary drive home is that folks is folks. As the community grew, it faced the same pitfalls as the established community of squares! I saw the same thing happen in our own hippie community, and I wished they would stop railing against the establishment because the hippies were making the same mistakes.
Well, perhaps I need to make my own documentary!
I recommend "American Commune," but sometimes the story of the vegan Farm doesn't get to the meat of the matter.
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Women good, men bad
Thelma and Louise premiered over thirty years ago. I was in college. I just saw it again on Roku, and it started me thinking.
Everybody was raving about Thelma & Louise at the time. I enjoyed T&L as a fun action movie. I didn't think it merited Academy Award nominations, but I didn't think it was a bad movie either.
Spleen and fist-shaking heralded T&L's reception. Liberals raved about how great it was to see women turn the tables on violent men. Liberals also gnashed their teeth about the ending.
My girlfriend said, "If they were Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, that car would have jumped the canyon and they would have escaped!" Perhaps she was right.
The sentiment among libs and feminists was, "Why can't women act down and dirty like men?"
Indeed, Tinsel Town has its double standards. T&L DO demonstrate many male Hollywood tropes. They meet violence with violence. They carry guns. The steal. They connive. They fornicate. They plot revenge. They evade the cops. They drink booze behind the wheel.
T&L brings equality. But it's not virtuous equality. In real life, the behaviors the movie celebrates DO NOT work for men either. Not in real life. Men get arrested, injured, or killed for this stuff. It's not glamorous. It's gross and destructive.
The best way to stay out of trouble is not to go where trouble is found. But in 1991, so too '22, if you suggest it is not a sound idea for women to flirt with men in dive bars, all you hear is, "VICTIM-BLAMING! YOU'RE VICTIM-BLAMING!"
T&L did not spark "dialogue" in 1991. Just a bunch of didactic bellyaching about how unfair the world is to women.
The world IS unfair to women. No doubt. This didn't make the carping productive or meaningful. It was obnoxious.
I'm not condemning the movie itself. I still enjoy it. I'm not condemning similar movies with men as the heroes.
The T&L idealogues missed the fact that Hollywood movies are fantasy. Movies often show us bad conduct in an appealing light. This is the case with Thelma and Louise as characters.
It's fun to wrap yourself in their adventure for ninety minutes. Not so good to view them as role models, let alone icons of social justice.
Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
Elitist propaganda
I enjoyed the content of this film. I particularly loved Close as Mamaw.
The message of the film nauseated me. However, Vance nauseated me long before the movie came out.
"Work real hard and stay away from drugs and you will overcome the hardships into which you were born."
That's the message.
So? What's wrong with that?
Nothing. It's a good message. Drugs are bad for us. Hard work generates great rewards.
Let's pose another question. "Why are so many Americans born into hardship?"
"YOU LAZY, EFFETE, LIMP-WRISTED COMMIE! HOW DARE YOU!"
Our cultural gatekeepers from the upper class love those bootstrapping Horatio Alger yarns. Whether they're Hollywood liberals or think tank blowhards, the rich don't want the poor to think in terms of class structure and policy. We the proles must only be taught to think in terms of "personal responsibility."
The drug-addled mother and the iron-willed grandmother are stereotypes the elites used to assign to African-American families of the inner cities. When politicians and their corporate overlords gave the post-industrial finger to our black comrades, they chalked it up to "personal responsibility." It was all cut social services, build more prisons, and traffic crack cocaine into their neighborhoods. That was during my eighties adolescence.
Today, Joe Biden and BlackRock bigshots are giving the the same dirty finger of "personal responsibility" to white folks in de-industrialized rural America. J.D. Vance is one of the Judas goats for the ruling class. Get the masses to blame themselves for systemic oppression and lead them to the abattoir.
Mind you, it's not all one or the other. Richie Rich from Darien also gets hooked on drugs and drops out of high school. The difference is Richie Rich gets to go to a gilded rehab palace in the Poconos. Richie Rich gets a no-show job at Daddy's hedge fund. He can afford to **** up. Billy Bob from Duddie's Branch gets only ONE bite at the apple.
Richie Rich and Billy Bob are both human and to err is human. It is in the consequences of ****ing up where we find the deep-seated injustice. Messrs. Vance and Howard will never go there.
I did enjoy the story itself. Ron Howard makes the movie fun and tasty. As others have pointed out, Hillbilly Elegy is about as realistic a portrayal of Appalachia as Mayberry RFD. And that's what makes it a good beer and popcorn movie. And I can't recommend Glenn Close's jazzy show as a Mamaw enough!