When Zeus (Will Smith) Smacked Hermes (Chris Rock) Olympus (Hollywood) Fell
The Truth Might Set You Free but Was it This Freedom that You Wanted?
In today's video I take a look the decline and fall authority/authenticity of the stars we navigate by.
It's news to no one that cinema has become a significant source of moral formation for the West and now also the world for a long time. Movies today follow the moral muse of Romanticism.
In Carl Trueman's "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" he tracks Romanticism's development through Wordsworth and Shelley. If poetry elicits "natural morality" grounded in Rousseau
How much more powerful poetry is cinema complete with its hyper reality of beings of light, the most beautiful people, fantastic images, music, all supported by million dollar budgets for production and promotion.
Hollywood has had its way with our formation or moral sensibilities and in terms of tools and budgets has seemed to hopelessly outgun the old Western leader in sense-making, the church.
But alas, as is heralded by @TheCriticalDri2 the mask of the gods has slipped and it is social media that has brought her down.
It appears, however, that part of her own downfall is that she is drunk on her own wine of moral clarity. This comes through in @mtaibbi @GlennLoury and @JohnHMcWhorter
The recession of modernity means that the tension between two kinds of "wrong" is exposed. Wrong in terms of the physicalist correspondence sense of truth, what we call "objective fact reporting". That is now in competition with "wrong" primarily understood as a moral narrative where "facts" can be inconvenient or it's not moral to mention or surface them in a context. That gets dismissed as "tone deaf".
This is exemplified in the conversation around "moral clarity" put forward by Wesley Loury https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html
Romantic, natural, self-evident morality is cannot be passed off as such in a pluralistic context. Morality is supposed to be ideal, upper register, eternal, and the chaos of the gods revelations of the gods of the silver screen is bringing it down.
Any Roman with symbolic sensitivities
Would find it more than coincidental that Will Smith, who played Zeus, should usher in this revelation in the context of marital tension.
Now that the mask has slipped from the "authentic" authorities of this world in the recession of Modernity where will our culture look for guidance?
.@jordanbpeterson said it well to @MrAndyNgo "Do I really think I'm so ethical that I can give myself a free hand to do anything?"
Be careful with those who believe this.
The rebellious boomers decided not to pass on the cultural morality that they were raised with and so their children and grandchildren are left wanting. In some ways I agree that media has filled the void to a certain extent but I think you overestimate because of your affinity for pop culture your age and your geographic location how much people care or don't care about what happens in Hollywood.
While I don't particularly care for Will or Jada ... I have a lot of compassion for anyone under the weight of a truly destructive relationship and the unending need to maintain a facade of acceptance. It just came to a breaking point at the Oscars with some truly cruel comments about what must be heartbreakingly personal. Perhaps it's the cost of doing business. Perhaps one must sacrifice to the gods of Hollywood and be laid bare on a regular basis. I don't know and like I suspect a majority of Americans I don't care. If anyone is truly looking to Hollywood for their morality then they are pathetic vacuous zombies and they have my sympathy.
for some reason I can't 'like' this article?