12:18:24
Justine Bateman on the creator economy, which has replaced Hollywood and cinema:
“Man, we’ve had this crying genre in online posts for like 6 yrs.”
I like that Bateman refers to it as “the crying genre.” Given that cinema is dead, and bears no meaningful resemblance to what it once was (every new film I have watched the past two years has been boring, appalling, empty, and/or perverse), cinema is now the fake life of acting. Our whole culture has become so pathetic, contrived, and batshit crazy.
This is what happens in the digital Mkultra matrix of psychological warfare—everyone is their own personal psyop.
As Bateman puts it: “The last 8 years, especially the last 4 years, have been fucking unbearable. Unbearable. I never want to fucking go through that again in my life…It was the most un-American situation I have ever been in…It was absolutely awful.”
(This is a Family Ties reference. FT was a popular TV series that Bateman starred in in the 1980s. In it, Michael J. Fox played Alex P. Keaton, the precocious conservative brother in a family of liberals.)
I find it insane that such a definitive and important statement about what it has been like culturally, socially, and politically to live in this country the past 8 years has to come from a former Hollywood actress and not from artists, writers, publishers, magazines, and critics. All those people do is scramble to stay relevant, to stay in the game. They are such cynical and pathetic conformists.
Why would anyone take their “art” or ideas seriously after the past 8 years? (and I am speaking of COVID here too). I never will again.
Everyone in the arts should be saying what Bateman is saying, if they have any integrity, artistic merit, or intelligence.
But, no, they don’t say shit. They just promote their books and events. And cling to whatever they can.
THAT is unbearable.
Bateman’s comment is also particularly interesting to me as in Time Tells vol. 1, I write about the importance of crying in cinema, where crying is also done on queue, by actors, and yet, was deeply human when it happened in the movies. Here is more from Bateman on the 2024 election results and the end of cancel culture. I love what she says about how this era dramatically and visibly crystallizes who is an insider and who is an outsider, culturally and socially inducing not only victimhood identities, but greater and greater levels of micro-conformities in order to be included, or what Bateman refers to as “qualifying for these hashtags:”
“If you’re someone who’s prone to feel left out, this is the worst era for you to be in because you know if you’re left out because of social media…Now you know if you’re left out by the entire world.”
This is a brilliant observation.
