It’s
abysmal, Mel Bradford once wrote, in words that still resonate today:
The theater of modern
America loves to shock but has overdone the trick so often that our nerves are
jaded and immune to further outrage. The analogy to the professional stage of
our time is that theater which St. Augustine, cultured man that he was, rejoiced
to see in ruins. In New York, it is informed by a mesh of radical taboos so
inclusive that only Marxist, Freudian, homosexual, or Feminist subjects have a
reasonable chance of being treated: plays derivative of Eugene O’Neill,
Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. Moreover, the New York stage is so
strangled by union demands and fixed costs that very few elaborate productions
can be attempted, most of them musicals. And even their ideology has become a
factor in the equation—as when the staunchly conservative Daddy Warbucks of the
comic strip is subjected, by Broadway’s Annie, to the corrective
influence of F.D.R. The economics of the New York stage are such that only
private lives can be easily represented on it, two to four characters at the
most, a few stereotypes, but no historical ambiance or spectacle—a more narrow
focus than was encouraged in 1925 by the intellectual climate of Dayton,
Tennessee.
The commitment of the
New York stage to the values of that city—attitudes roundly rejected by most of
the country—gives us a cultural capital that is happy with absurdist or protest
drama and therefore alien to the civilization it is supposed to reflect in its
art. The patrons of that aberrant theater allowed the deracinated clerisy of
aestheticism to dictate to them in questions of taste: to insist that the
pseudo-religion of alienation (a problem in all modern literature), of reaction
against family, nation and church, have a canonical authority over men and
women of sensibility or soul.
One needn’t look any further for
ensamples of this than the latest film célèbre, Boy Erased, about the persecution of a homosexual teenager at the
hands of hateful, intolerant Christians:
The son of a Baptist
preacher is forced to participate in a church-supported gay conversion program
after being forcibly outed to his parents.
It is important that the true Christian
view of homosexuality (and other modern sexual lifestyle choices) be given,
however, and not distortions of it. One
may do that here:
For
an HTML version of the same thing broken up into four parts, follow this path:
Mr Bradford wrote near the end of his
essay,
A calculated program of
revivals from within the tradition could also further the process, and the
conscious sponsorship (with wide publicity directed to our men and women of
letters) of a drama which does not take the limiting realities of the human
condition as only a source of anger or resentment at the insult to
self-experience in the acts of honorable men or the commands of God. New York
must be allowed to dry up and blow away, theatrically speaking. An alternative
coterie must be assembled, creating space for a rebirth like the miracle of
what occurred in Ireland with the Abbey Theater. Good modern plays from Europe
should be given close attention . . . .
A good place to look for inspiration of
this revival in theatre is Russia, which produced a beautiful animated drama recently
named Seraphima’s Extraordinary
Adventures, set during WWII under Stalin’s rule. It is available to watch here at no cost
(turn on the subtitles by mashing the ‘CC’ button):
Another one to consider is the film Viy, which is based on Nikolai Gogol’s short
story of the same name (it is called The
Forbidden Empire/Kingdom in foreign lands).
The short trailer is here:
And the whole thing appears to be here:
For more Russian movies that have
grossed well in that country and that look better than the standard Hollywood
fare, a list is provided here:
(It must be added, however, that despite
these good signs, there are still negative signs as well: i.e., Russians continue to flock to many
Hollywood movies. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/cis/yearly/)
All of which only goes to show the
continuing need for the South to sunder herself from the broader American
culture of death and perversion.
***
Speaking of death and perversion,
Justice Kavanaugh has given conservatives their first reason for
disappointment: voting against allowing
a Supreme Court hearing for Kansas’s and Louisiana’s laws banning Medicaid
funding from going to Planned Parenthood mills within their respective borders:
But who is more to blame here? Justice Kavanaugh? Or is it rather the various State legislators,
etc. who pass these laws only for the sake of having something to brag about on
their campaign literature for the gullible voters to be in awe over, knowing
full well that the federal courts will overturn those laws and that the status
quo of child murder, family breakdown, sterilization of women, etc. will
continue on? What we need are State
governors, judges, and legislators (and dare we add, kings) who will implement
their good Christian laws even when a federal judge attempts to strike them
down.
But that is not going to happen so long
as Lincoln’s view of the Omnipotent and Indivisible Union, seated in and
dictating from Washington City, remains dominant in the minds of Christians and
conservatives. Nor will it happen so
long as the Enlightenment/Founding Era principle of the disestablishment of Christianity,
which begets religious pluralism, which begets relativism, which has begotten
the Supreme Court’s current abortion jurisprudence, remains enshrined in the
highest tables of laws in the several States.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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