The Death Of Hollywood

Show Announcement: Last night was the third episode of the award winning livestream that you can watch on Rumble and YouTube.


The Academy Awards show was this week and outside of the bugmen on YouTube, there was not much interest in the program. They claim it drew 19.69 million viewers, but they also claim that it is a five-year high, even though the number they claimed last year was slightly higher. Like everything else about the entertainment business, television ratings are mostly fake. There was a time when this award show was a big deal, but now it is mostly fodder for critics and comedians.

There are a lot of reasons why people have stopped caring about the awards shows, but one big reason is the product is dreadful. The nominees for best picture were a who’s who of films no one watched. The winner for best picture was a film called Anora, which appears to be a low-budget Slavic version of Pretty Woman. One of the runners up was a film called The Brutalist, which is about hideous architecture. It was also a low-budget, low-interest film that went straight to home video.

According to the bugmen who follow this stuff, the winner was supposed to be a film called Emilia Pérez, but the people who decide these things changed their minds at the last minute because the transvestite star had once held unapproved opinions about blacks and Muslims or whatever. Apparently, there is a hierarchy of degeneracy that the carnies are required to respect. It is Hollywood, so who knows if any of it is true, but it gets to why these awards show are floundering.

The Oscars used to be a popular topic because people were curious about how their opinions of the films stacked up with the insiders. Women liked watching the stars parade on stage and do their act in a social atmosphere. That only works when people watch the films and recognize the so-called stars. A Spanish man dressed as a woman, who is totally unfamiliar to Americans, lumbering on stage to get an award is not going to be a big draw for an American audience.

The fact is, Hollywood no longer serves the American audience. You see it in the box office for this year. The top grossing film is comic book movie that is popular with non-English speakers because it is mostly special effects and stupid dialogue. Half its gross is from overseas and you can be sure that a big chunk of the domestic box office is from people who are on the lookout for Tom Homan. Remove the nonwhite box office and Hollywood does out of business.

Of course, the dependence on foreign sales and non-English-speaking domestic customers is driven by the general decline in quality. Who is the biggest male lead in Hollywood these days? If you do not know, you are not alone, but it is probably a homosexual or a nonwhite. The same is true for female stars. The days of Hollywood stars being glamourous and recognizable are gone. Instead, it is a freakshow of random carnies picked from the diversity lottery.

Starting about ten years ago, Hollywood began to see a steady decline in revenues in North America, for both movies and television. Every year the gross declines, with some years seeing double digit declines. The remedy is to make an increasingly offensive product, which drives down the numbers further. Even easy things like remakes of classics turn into fiascos. The live-action Snow White has been repeatedly delayed because the diversity loons turned it into a punchline.

The funny thing about the collapse of Hollywood is that it is a good proxy for what we have seen in society as a whole. Unlike the government, colleges or the media, Hollywood needs to move product and that means they have to provide a product that the audience wants to buy. It is the ultimate test of the social fads pushed by the radicals over the last ten years. The fact that it was a disaster in the market should have been a clue to what was coming.

Things are about to get worse for the entrainment rackets. AI will soon make writers obsolete as software will generate scripts. Given that we know there are a finite number of plots and character types, and there is data on how these combinations appeal to audiences, it is easy to see what happens. Software will generate scripts that have the highest probability of success that year. That means all the experts on what is trending will be working at Home Depot.

Of course, the content itself will soon be generated by robots. You can now generate believable audio conversations using hints and suggestions. Businesses are already doing this for training and development. Video is coming online next. This not only will replace the actors, but it will lower the barrier to entry of filmmaking. Soon, teenagers will be making feature films that they find interesting. Just as digital audio killed music sales, AI will kill the Hollywood production studio.

To fill this out a bit, imagine you want to watch a film and you want something like the old spy thrillers of the past. You talk to your television about what you have in mind and it creates a feature film using your suggestions. Maybe it first suggests content made by others who had the same idea. Or maybe it recreates a James Bond film using period correct actors, but with changes based on your inputs. This is something that will soon be possible with AI.

What all this points to is that the woke lunacy that has raged for the last decade may have been the last effort at ideological control of the culture. The slow and steady erosion of the control mechanisms coincided with the woke rage. Perhaps the blue haired rage head was a reaction to the steady disaggregation of the culture that has been brought on by the technological revolution. She was not the vanguard, but a desperate rearguard action that has failed.


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Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

271 Comments

3g4me #446684 March 6, 2025 9:17 am 87
I don’t watch t.v. I don’t watch movies. I despise actors. I couldn’t identify anysinger’s voice or computer-generated myuzyk over the past 15 years. I recognize some names because I scan headlines. What does Taylor Swift sound like? I couldn’t tell you. Latest krapper? No clue.Any awards’ show or charity ball or extravaganza is merely a showcase for the freaks – the ugly – the evil. They can (and do) celebrate themselves and their twisted reality but I have better things to do – like cooking for my husband or feeding the deer. My life has never been defined by celebrity worship. Burn it all down.
rasqball #446727 March 6, 2025 10:13 am -5
“Feeding deer” is a bad ideer:(I know – less so for a rustic than a townsman…)Odocoileus? There ain’t enoughofusWilling to blast the lot for their meat and hides:Exterminate the brutes! (As for cooking dinner, tho… ; -)
RVIDXR #446755 March 6, 2025 10:52 am 27
Before I swore off Counter Currents for good, during the period what I now realize in hindsight was Greg firing & replacing all of my favorite writers, someone wrote an article waxing poetic about modern music. It was one a handful of moments of me realizing that I’m clearly not the intended audience for the site anymore. Now to be fair I don’t know who the audience for discussing modern music specifically is because the comments shared my sentiment.Dude was writing about & analyzing taylor swift & others like it was Bach lol. The only reason I know swift is because she has been jammed into every single thing imaginable. You hear about the Superbowl? Taylor swift was there! Wooo yeah! Just what I want to hear when I’m pretending to care about the negro felon league to humor my normie friends.I’ve never seen someone so artificially boosted in my life, I know nothing about this woman beyond the fact shes a singer & has apparently banged & written a song about fifty dudes. I don’t even know how I know that much about her, I never inquired, never listened to a single song by her yet somehow this info is taking up space in my brain. Probably from the scathing comments from that article, if I had to guess.
Ketchup-stained Griller #446846 March 6, 2025 2:36 pm 8
One funny lyric, that she had to change.To state the obvious, I didn’t get my perfect fantasyI realize you love yourself more than you could ever love meSo go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazyThat’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay… And one song I sing to my dogs after their baths: Shake it off.
The Infant Phenomenon #446867 March 6, 2025 3:57 pm 5
Hilarious post! +100. A few months ago I was in a meeting where a man brought up Taylor Swift and, as he was saying whatever it was he had to say, I thought, “Who is he?” Then as the speaker went on, I thought, “Oh, it’s a she.” I’d never heard of whoever-she-is. I’ve lived without TV since 1987, and I don’t read magazines, even in the doctor’s waiting room, so I am totally divorced from popular “culture.” No recollection as to what the man’s point was.
RVIDXR #446922 March 6, 2025 9:24 pm 7
I’ve learned the hard way to not read magazines in waiting rooms. My Irish dentist has a local Irish themed newsletter & of course, it was totally subversive. I live in a rural small town & even the tiny extremely localized journalism is inundated with anti White propaganda. The theme of that particular zine was about how Irish cops were racist back in the day & how anyone can be Irish if they get citizenship in the home country.I told my dentist about it & he doesn’t read it so he had no idea, ended up removing all the copies from the waiting room.It just amazes me that these freaks felt the need to infiltrate a newsletter probably nobody outside of waiting rooms ever reads. I suppose I have to admire the dedication even if I find it utterly abhorrent otherwise.
ray #446954 March 7, 2025 9:49 am 6
But that’s the thing. The Leftist mentality truly integrates politics into every aspect of their lives. They canvass n scheme n confabulate, with intense self-importance. V. different from Righties. Lefties don’t have God. God isn’t a feminist or a socialist or a transvestite. So they fill that part up with their Holy Politics, which is their religion.
RVIDXR #447001 March 7, 2025 12:44 pm 5
Well said, that behavior is very alien to people who only concern themselves with politics out of necessity. Sane people just want to be left alone & live their lives but these degenerates never stop & the nature of democracy means everyone has to be constantly obsessed with politics to fend these freaks off.Its so utterly exhausting, I mean everything about this system is just cancer. We can’t have ANYTHING without them trying to ruin it, there’s not one facet of daily life that they don’t constantly attempt to poison.Its like having a vampire living in your house with you, have to walk around armed with a crucifix & a wooden stake being on guard at all times & can never take a moment to relax.
ray #447059 March 7, 2025 6:23 pm 2
Very true.
NoName #446923 March 6, 2025 9:35 pm 8
The Infant Phenomenon:I’ve lived without TV since 1987, and I don’t read magazines, even in the doctor’s waiting room, so I am totally divorced from popular “culture.”Back in 1987, I think it was still fairly safe to ignore popular culture.But almost four decades later, in 2025 Klownworld Hellscape, you d@mned better be OBSESSED with popular culture, else one day you’re gonna come home from work, and your waifu is gonna have a great big beaming smile on her face, as she welcomes you at the front door, and announces to you that she and your eldest son had returned home from the Pediatrician’s office, where,earlier that afternoon,your son was successfully castrated.SRSLY, BRO, SRSLY.I would argue that inKlownworld Hellscape, ignorance of popular culture is literally gonna get your entire Fambly Tree boarded up in a boxcar headed for a destination called, “Extinction”.[Obligatory this is why prudent & righteous parents insist on HOMESCHOOLING.]And I haven’t even yet mentioned the V@xxpocalypse…Your pediatrician WILL jab your child with the V@xxines of Death.Guaran-damn-teed, your pediatricianWILL jab your child with the V@xxines of Death.
Shrinking Violet #446949 March 7, 2025 9:04 am 3
You still see magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms? Where do you live??? I want to move there! Here in left coast blue hell, there are no magazines anymore, not since the Covid scamdemic; everybody’s scrolling their phone.
Chris #446905 March 6, 2025 5:43 pm 1
I’m curious, around when was the changeover? I read CC, but haven’t been able to in a while, I’m curious how far back I should go. Thanks.
RVIDXR #446919 March 6, 2025 9:14 pm 1
It was a gradual shift of writers fading away but really went into overdrive in 2020 when it became very noticeable between writers disappearing & new ones popping up. Once they hired Jim Goad & went paywall suddenly the list of writers was updated & quite a few were removed which just confirmed what I already suspected happened.
I.M. Brute #446935 March 7, 2025 3:01 am 7
A few years ago, the Nashville Establishment was touting Taylor Swift as the next big thing in Country Music. Thankfully, she moved on to bigger things and didn’t pollute our beloved music too badly. Nowadays, Nashville is desperately searching for the “Great Black Hope” to foist upon us fans. The Nashville Establishment has been fleeing from its hillbilly image for decades, bringing forward characters like Jim Reeves, k.d. Lang, etc. in an effort to broaden their fanbase and not seem so “country.” This is the nonsense that sparked the Texas Outlaw and NeoTrad movements, which basically saved Country Music for a while. Unfortunately, the Nashville Establishment still rules the FM airwaves and is now producing a truly hideous, unlistenable product.So, movies and TV aren’t the only entertainment venues experiencing a death spiral these days!
Krustykurmudgeon #446936 March 7, 2025 3:06 am 0
Charley pride already did that
I.M. Brute #446938 March 7, 2025 3:42 am 4
Yeah, he slipped in when we were still guilt-tripping about the assassination of MLK. Not many others since then. Gotta admit that old Charley was pretty good though.
RVIDXR #447011 March 7, 2025 1:11 pm 1
Ah yes I do remember that & now that I think about it, it was either that or kanye rushing the stage that I first heard about her. I do distinctly remember the media collectively wringing their hands crying about how she was treated by other country singers & their fansSpeaking of, not that long ago I heard Beyonce had a meltdown & cried racism because country music fans didn’t embrace her country album.Credit where its due, that industry seems pretty damn resilient to subversion. Given demographics it makes sense that’d be the case but its very commendable nonetheless given so many other industries I once thought bulletproof totally bent the knee to mainstream leftism.
Tars Tarkas #446769 March 6, 2025 11:11 am 19
Celebrity worship is one vice I’ve never had. Frankly, I’ve never been able to comprehend why anyone would take anything said by a celebrity of any kind seriously unless directly related to their “talents”Recently a bunch of CBD oil scams have been making the rounds. One of them involved falsely claiming Dolly Parton created and endorsed a particular CBD miracle cure. This was confusing in the extreme to me. Why anyone would take their medical advice from a singer is just beyond my ability to comprehend.A vice I do have is nicotine. I was in the vape shop a couple weeks ago and I noticed a new brand of vape juice called Mike Tyson, apparently endorsed by him. Personally, I think Tyson is one of the most overrated heavyweights in history. But even if he was great, why in god’s name would I want to vape his shitty product? It has the opposite effect on me. I just assume it’s terrible because it has a celebrity’s name on it.
3g4me #446785 March 6, 2025 11:40 am 8
Tars – well said. Yes, I too, have never suffered from celebrity worship.
The Infant Phenomenon #446869 March 6, 2025 4:04 pm 0
Too bad you can’t make “celebrities” suffer from you worship. It would do them a power of good.
Johnny Ducati #446790 March 6, 2025 12:07 pm 10
Celebrity-branded liquor is another thing to avoid.
Steve #446810 March 6, 2025 12:50 pm 6
Absolutely. Billy Beer was complete mule piss.
Ostei Kozelskii #446859 March 6, 2025 3:30 pm 6
And yet it was ambrosia compared to Bidenbrau…
Auld Mark #446818 March 6, 2025 1:28 pm 3
Tars, if you’re interested, two vape Companies I recommend make their vapes from real tobacco. They are four seasons and Blacknote.
Tars Tarkas #446854 March 6, 2025 2:59 pm 0
Can you get them in the US? You cannot buy anything vape related over the internet in the US.
Auld Mark #446872 March 6, 2025 4:15 pm 1
I’m in fl., get all my stuff off the Internet. 4 seasons is offered by many vape stores, but I get Blacknote directly off their website.even California has relaxed their shipping regs.
Tars Tarkas #446913 March 6, 2025 6:30 pm 0
How do you get vape supplies off the internet? They won’t deliver. USPS, FED EX and UPS all refuse to deliver. What website are you ordering from?
Jeffrey Zoar #446920 March 6, 2025 9:19 pm 2
My vape supplies get delivered by Fedex, and sometimes USPS. Here in AINO. Must be something about your state is my guess
The Infant Phenomenon #446868 March 6, 2025 4:02 pm 4
Dear God. Back when Hillary was trying to seize what americans are stupidly pleased to call “health care” (two words, please note), the buffoons in Congress held hearings on the subject. And since Sybil Shepherd had recently played the role of a nurse in some movie or other, they invited her to testify on the subject of “health care.” And she did. Small wonder that ‘our” country is circling the drain.
Steve W #446878 March 6, 2025 4:36 pm 6
Where I live, grown men wearing Josh Allen jerseys are probably the worst offenders in the realm of celebrity worship. Of course, at least Josh is a white country boy. God only knows how many flabby middle-aged white guys in Philly are decking themselves out these days as Jason Hurt or Saquan Barkley.
Ostei Kozelskii #446895 March 6, 2025 5:11 pm 0
We’re peering ’round the sasquatch darkly…
Anne Arkie #446784 March 6, 2025 11:39 am 10
For years I have been slowly assembling a collection of BOOKS and DVD’s as there is very little I actually watch on TV and I stopped listening to music 20 years ago. I accidentally heard Taylor Swift once and she had a screechy off tune weak second soprano voice, never did understand her appeal until I realized she was the product of the “next Brittney Spears” and “the next Justin Bieber” school which only selects and grooms/promotes for the under 13 crowd, then discards them when they hit 30. British films currently hold the most appeal simply because there’s no way for them to introduce guns, explosions, bright colors, or stupid dialogue. Most recent purchases include The Full Monty (great music), and the original version of 12 Angry Men.
Pozymandias #446910 March 6, 2025 5:59 pm 4
I tend to like the guns, explosions, and bright colors. As long as something is exploding or someone is getting shot, they are at least not preaching some stupid woke moral lesson at us. As far as British stuff, well I used to like Dr. Who until they turned the Doctor into a one-legged retarded trannie gay black midget.
ray #446965 March 7, 2025 10:22 am 1
Guns, explosions and bright colors seem very reasonable to me.
Lucius Sulla #446817 March 6, 2025 1:26 pm 11
I checked out of popular culture for the most part (tv, movies, music) during 2020, and decided to start reading novels. I was previously mostly a non-fiction reader, but this world of classic fiction has been wonderful. Decided I really like historical period-piece fiction. I’ve read…War and PeaceThe Sun Also Rises (meh)Tom Sawyer (read with my son for school)Huckleberry Finn (also with son for school)Great GatsbyCall of the WildGone With the WindA Tale of Two CitiesIvanhoeLonesome DoveI did start Moby Dick but quit after ~200 pages. It was weird and I couldn’t get into it.My favorite thus far was Gone With the Wind, with Lonesome Dove right up there.Any good recommendations for my next book?
LineInTheSand #446843 March 6, 2025 2:27 pm 2
Brutal short stories of race realism and conflict from Robert E. Howard 90 years ago: “Black Canaan” 1936https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOn6kwcSmgI&pp=ygUeInJvYmVydCBlIGhvd2FyZCIgYmxhY2sgY2FuYWFu “Grisly Horror” 1935https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBrMO08Fkc&pp=ygUfInJvYmVydCBlIGhvd2FyZCIgZ3Jpc2x5IGhvcnJvcg%3D%3D
Ketchup-stained Griller #446847 March 6, 2025 2:36 pm 2
Anna Karenina
ZFan #446862 March 6, 2025 3:34 pm 3
Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. My favorites that I have reread as an older guy
The Infant Phenomenon #446874 March 6, 2025 4:21 pm 3
“Les Miserables” is a fantastic story with an intricate plot, but Hugo takes up huge numbers of pages to depart from the story and give lengthy descriptions of the construction of the sewers of Paris or of growing wheat in France, so if Sulla can find an abridged “Les Miserables,” I’d recommend that.
ZFan #446908 March 6, 2025 5:57 pm 1
I’m weird. When I went to Paris I insisted on taking a tour of the sewers.
Boris #446893 March 6, 2025 5:07 pm 7
Demons (aka Devils, aka The Possessed) is not only my fav FD work but probably my fav novel of all time. Just reread it last year. So many parallels to the contemporary West – the sheer moral rot that has invaded the West the past 20-30y was happening in Russia in the 1860-70s. And this year I’m almost finished with my rereading of Bros K. The money quote of both Mitya and Ivan: “Without God everything is permitted”. Doesn’t just sum up the West of the last few decades?
ZFan #446909 March 6, 2025 5:58 pm 1
Demons is on my to read list. Thanks!
ray #446966 March 7, 2025 10:26 am 0
It does.
jms_inNorCal #446866 March 6, 2025 3:53 pm 0
Les MiserablesLeatherstocking TalesThe Forsyte Chronicles
3g4me #446883 March 6, 2025 4:49 pm 1
Yes! And find and watch the Forsyte Saga that the BBC did in 1967 (I watched it with my father back then).
A Bad Man #446870 March 6, 2025 4:08 pm 3
I am here to help you. Here is one of my lists — have read them all once, some 2x, a few 3+ times: Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray Robinson_Crusoe Nineteen-Eighty-four Something_Wicked_This_Way_Comes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest No_Country_for_Old_Men The_Unknown_Soldier_ Oliver_Twist The_Sea-Wolf The_Swiss_Family_Robinson Jerry_of_the_Islands Look_Who’s_Back The_Time_Machine Before_Adam Dracula
3g4me #446885 March 6, 2025 4:51 pm 1
Many great suggestions – Dorian Gray may not be appropriate for his sons, but is a classic. I’ve not heard of “Jerry of the Islands.”
The Infant Phenomenon #446871 March 6, 2025 4:13 pm 5
You can’t go wrong with Dickens. Nobody could contrive plots as intricate as his (except Alexandre Dumas). His works were originally serialized in newspapers on both sides of the pond. And when a ship arrived at an American port on one occasion, there were throngs of people on the dock clamoring for the news on “What happened to Little Nell?” a character in “The Old Curiosity Shop.” And since you already have “A Tale of Two Cities” under your belt, I recommend that you try more Dickens. “David Copperfield” would be good for your next one.If you want to try Dumas, you can’t go wrong with “The Count of Monte Cristo” or with “The Corsican Brothers.”
3g4me #446880 March 6, 2025 4:47 pm 2
I’veread all of those except Ivanhoe. Tons of recommendations; depends if you want classics or newer. One thing you must read with your sons (depending on age) –Rosemary Sutcliffe wrote brilliant young adult historical fiction – start with The Eagle of the Ninth (trilogy) but anything she wrote is worth reading. British author Hester Burton also wrote some good books – “In Spite of All Terror” features a female protagonist but is a tale of the evacuation of the British forces from Dunkirk. Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles are also brilliant (16th century Scottish nobleman around the world) – was recommended to me by my Chaucer/Beowulf professor – helps to know French (I don’t) and some Latin for many of the quotes.
Ostei Kozelskii #446898 March 6, 2025 5:23 pm 3
Sketches from a Hunter’s Almanac / Ivan TurgenevMaster and Margarita / Mikhail BulgakovGlory / Vladimir NabokovFoucault’s Pendulum / Umberto EcoThe Summer of Katya / TrevanianMoonraker / Ian FlemingTai Pan / James ClavellThe Fiery Angel / Valery BriusovThe Red Fox / Anthony Hyde
Chris #446911 March 6, 2025 5:59 pm 1
Beau Geste?
Stephen Dowling Botts Decd #447068 March 7, 2025 9:30 pm 0
All Quiet On The Western Front – Erich Maria RemarqueThree Comrades-Erich Maria RemarqueThe Black Obelisk -Erich Maria Remarque (The last two are set in Germany during the Weimar Republic; Remarque will make you feel things while giving a first hand snapshot of Germany in 1914-1929 or so)Hangsaman- Shirley Jackson (Never read anything else quite like it. Little happens, but the inner monologues, surreal scenes of liminal opacity, and witty dialogue make it a standout. Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ is also phonemanl, and ‘The Sundial’ is a bizarre take on insanity and apocalyptic vison. Jackson was the David Lynch of novelists, taking the mundane and turning it into deep unease for reasons it is impossible to explain to other people)Someone mentioned David Copperfield; I love all Dickens’ novels (except the Mystery of Edwin Drood, which stank) to a greater or lesser degree. Copperfield was Dickens’ personal favorite of his own works and it’s awesome, but I would also recommend Our Mutual Friend. Dickens’ comic genius shines in characters like Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, the wicked Silas Wegg (who mispronounces Emperor Commodus’ name as Commodious), and the gloomy taxidermist Mr. Venus, that lanky swain of Pleasant Riderhood! Great stuff! And in keeping with the Victorian vibe I will also recommendThe Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins (Dickens and Collins were friends)Then there are the short stories of Saki (H. H. Munro). Someone Rather Famous quipped, “The best compliment you can pay a friend is to hand him Saki without comment,” and I suppose I shall leave it at that. Search out The Unrest Cure and Sredni Vashtar if nothing else.Oh, and The She-Wolf! The Easter Egg is great.. Reginald’s Christmas Revel… yeah, just buy the collected works and be done with it!P.G. Wodehouse is extremely funny, but best taken in small doses as his humor starts to taste a little formulaic taken all at once.O. Henry was far, far more than The Gift of the Magi. Start with his book Of Cabbages and Kings.Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories are great fun.For sci fi, I recommend A Canticle For Liebowitz, by Walter M. Miller, which is quite apropos to our current situation.The Forever War, by Joe HaldemanAll My Sins Remembered, same authorMockingbird, by Walter TevisThe Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner (Wherein the author predicted computer viruses way back in 1975 or so)Hyperion, by Dan SimmonsRed Harvest, by Dashiell Hammet for that hardboiled detective action. All Hammet’s books are good, but harvest was my personal fave.The ‘All Creatures’ series by James Herriot are wholesome fun, a love letter to a vanished day and age told with wit and warmth.Hopefully something here pays off for you. If you’ve read Huckleberry Finn lately you ought to catch the refernce in my screen name. Happy reading, sir!
Captain Willard #446702 March 6, 2025 9:36 am 57
If music is any indicator, movies are not likely to get better as technology advances and gets more democratized/accessible. It appears this is a cultural issue, not a technological one. Putting cheap music technology in the hands of the masses didn’t produce more Donald Fagen, Tom Petty, Roger Waters, Pete Townshend, Michael Jackson, Prince et al. And jazz is basically dead as a genre. Putting cheap video technology out there won’t create classic movies either. An environment of mass mediocrity, vulgarity and conformity won’t produce art.
rasqball #446734 March 6, 2025 10:23 am 5
All too true!
karl von hungus #446752 March 6, 2025 10:49 am 9
uh, no, jazz is not dead. white people like me are keeping it alive.
roo_ster #447098 March 8, 2025 2:34 pm 0
And I’ll never forgive you for that.
Hemid #446772 March 6, 2025 11:14 am 22
Jazz died by becoming an academic subject and the default genre of music school. The hip new thing there is still “genre-mixing,” which peaked—reached total aesthetic exhaustion—forty years ago. All that’s left is irony.We have the best-trained players of all time, supposedly, and they produce absolute garbage, interchangeable widgets of corporate ideology (and novelty covers on YouTube).Thinking it used to be better back when itsoundedbetter, like when Coltrane and Dolphy did it (and the average listener hated it, but millions didn’t), is white supremacy.The highest art black people ever produced is a casualty of diversity.Rock is just unpopular. Old rock isn’t, but the new stuff doesn’t work. Men who would be rock stars—the interesting kind, like your list—do exist and make good records, but almost nobody cares or hears them. Being materially popular, selling ten million albums while still being a weird social reject, was integral to the genre’s meaning. Rock that isn’t animpositionis just folk music, losers entertaining themselves.Basically, popular music—what was andwould bepopular music—is institutionally repressed. Hollywood analogy: David Lynch, who never made an unprofitable film, couldn’t get his projects funded and died with a half-empty resumé. Meanwhile, capeshit and Oscarslop thatshred moneyare produced in bulk.Give the people what they don’t want until they forget that anything better was ever possible. Coming soon.
Captain Willard #446796 March 6, 2025 12:12 pm 10
Great analysis. Amazingly, rap crowded out jazz among the blacks. This is a great example of the democratization of “art” causing degeneration. Millions of jokers can rap but Miles and Coltrane were multi-generational talents. There’s a strong argument for going back to the patron system – Medici and Brandenburg Concerto style (although not stiffing the artist this time).
Ostei Kozelskii #446863 March 6, 2025 3:37 pm 11
By putting a great deal of surplus income in the hands of the masses, capitalism democratizes all products, including music and other forms of art. The results are the marginalization or elimination of greatness and a precipitious plunge into the lower depths of common denominators. This is one reason why rap, which should logically be the soundtrack to the worst nightclub in hell, is instead AINO’s national soundtrack. Come to think of it, the boundary between AINO and hell appears rather permeable.
Edward #446944 March 7, 2025 8:10 am 2
I agree
rasqball #446827 March 6, 2025 1:58 pm -2
The highest art black people ever produced is a casualty of diversity. At a bar in the near past…Me, to a SoySucker who was for some reason uncomfortable with the ‘Trane I had jukeboxed…said loud enuff that all could hear: “You know, friend-o, you should bear in mind that there was a timein the way-beforewhen black people made a considerable contribution to American culture.”
The Infant Phenomenon #446876 March 6, 2025 4:24 pm -2
Do you mean David Lean? David Lynch was a British actor, I *think.*
Brandon Laskow #446916 March 6, 2025 8:21 pm 5
Uh no. David Lynch was the creator of Blue Velvet,Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, etc. As far as jazz goes, it never was all that popular among blacks to begin with. Pre-hip-hop, R&B/soul and funk were the popular genres and never went away. Jazz always had a white-dominant audience, much to the consternation of certain blacks. It’s still a creative genre but as a complex type of music that involves a high level of musical knowledge and skill never has, with the exception of the Swing Era, and never will be widely popular.
Bloated Boomer #446934 March 6, 2025 11:12 pm 0
I dunno if I agree with all this but they were interesting takes. So, thanks for that.
Marko #446681 March 6, 2025 9:11 am 44
Soon, teenagers will be making feature films that they find interesting. It’s called TikTok. When people think of movies, over 30s anyway, they think of a story that unfolds over 2 hours. New media is killing the attention span, so it’s likely that what us Gen Xers thought was a chore – reading Shakespeare or Tolstoy – will be like how Zoomers or Alphas approach watchingThe Godfather. Perhaps even having to sit throughTitanicorMillion Dollar Babywill matter the same way as a 50-year old bragging about having readInfinite Jest.
The Wild Geese Howard #446683 March 6, 2025 9:16 am 43
Marko- Anecdotally, what you posit is already happening. I know a Zoomer that is a big Tom Clancy fan that has listened to all the audio books. I suggested he watchThe Hunt for Red October(1990). He tried, but said he had to turn it off after 20 minutes because the pacing was too slow and he didn’t like the lighting. Ok, Zoomer.
Geoff #446712 March 6, 2025 9:49 am 15
To be fair to your acquaintance, Hunt for Red October is definitely one of the more boring Tom Clancy movies. People who weren’t alive for the Cold War won’t feel some of the beats either.
Tarl Cabot #446765 March 6, 2025 10:59 am 12
Zoomers don’t do narrative. This is both a blessing and a curse. They are less susceptible to bullshit, but it’s hard to make sense of the world without it. Even in the cynical antihero era we still had Snake Plissken, The Omega Man and Jonathan E.
Dr. Dre #446851 March 6, 2025 2:48 pm 4
Circa ten-twelve yrs ago I volunteered to read to a Sixth Grade class in a local elementary school with some terrific teachers. The county was building new Middle Schools for Grades 5-8 but most parents at the elementary school were happy that their kids were there at an important time in their academic lives; that Sixth Grade was the top of the heap where the kids learned responsibility and other important values as student leaders, rather than being lost in the middle schools with primary-aged children mixed with adolescents.Well,The Hunger Gamesby Susan Collins had just come out. I would go in a couple of times a week and read a few chapters to the class. The school was a Title I school, i. e. free or reduced price lunch, i. e. lower-income families; also 1/3 black, 1/3 Hispanic, 1/3 white. Reading one day, I heard someone talking. I stopped, the talking stopped, then started up again when I started to read. I realized that it was one of the Hispanic boys translating as I read, to a new classmate who did not yet know English. Pretty incredible;-) I finished the book for the class just as the movie came out, which I went to see. Many of the students went to see it, too, and later almost unanimously agreed that they liked the book better than the movie. After that, I always felt that there was hope for the younger generation, no matter the background!
3g4me #446889 March 6, 2025 4:57 pm 9
Mexico is not known for its literature nor its libraries. I stopped going to our local library in Texas due to noise, excessive computer use, woke librarians, and my tax dollars being spent on Spanish kids’ videos and Chinese language newspapers.
Tars Tarkas #446774 March 6, 2025 11:17 am 5
“a big Tom Clancy fan that has listened to all the audio books.” Not the same experience as reading the book. The only way I can listen to an audio book is to read along with it while listening to it. Really, this is a decent experience and helps a bit with focus in the boring parts.
Ann Thompson #446811 March 6, 2025 12:52 pm 4
you can’t beat reading War and Peace and then seeing the Russian 1960s, think, twelve part series. Repeat that for other classics Russian or not and both media gain in effect and understanding …
Auld Mark #446829 March 6, 2025 2:02 pm 3
WGH,Funny, I would think listening to the spoken word required more concentration than watching a movie. I just re watched that movie and found it well paced and a great rendition of the book.
Vizzini #446848 March 6, 2025 2:40 pm 9
I would think listening to the spoken word required more concentration than watching a movie.I’m sure it does, and that’s an even greater problem, because how most people listen to audio books isn’t to just sit there in a quiet room and give it all their attention. They listen to them in the car, or while their exercising or cooking or doing any number of other tasks. So the absorption level is really low.If I wanted to get the full effect of an audio book, then I’d have to give it my full attention, and at that point I might as well read.
Auld Mark #446875 March 6, 2025 4:23 pm 6
Yeah, I’ve listened to books on long drives, and realized I’d want to stick with lighter entertainment; serious work deserves full attention.
The Infant Phenomenon #446879 March 6, 2025 4:40 pm 10
I was bedridden for a year after a near-fatal accident, and somebody brought e some audio books b/c I was flat on my back for many months. I found it intolerable. You can’t re-read anything–not anything–and you can’t flip back a few pages to re-read something when you want to verify something written earlier or to refresh your memory of somebody’s name, which is important when there are a lot of characters, whether the work be fiction or nonfiction.
The Wild Geese Howard #446917 March 6, 2025 8:38 pm 3
AM- I tend to share your opinions. On long drives I prefer to listen to popular podcasts rather than music or audiobooks. I regularly citeRed Octoberas a film that honors its source novel. I citeDie Hardand the first threeBournefilms as pictures that are better than their sourcebooks.
Trek #446692 March 6, 2025 9:23 am 26
It’s funny because on the one hand you have these 10 second Tiktok videos but on the other hand you have 3 hour podcasts that are popular. Apparently there’s still a market for longer stuff if it’s good.
ray #446714 March 6, 2025 9:55 am 9
Those long podcasts typically have a narrow and specific audience, niche markets, not the mass-market of the Hollywood filmmakers.
Marko #446721 March 6, 2025 10:02 am 4
I know! That’s the irony. I think podcasts or videos should be an hour max, yet I’m OK with films and books being long. Zoomers are OK with videos being meandering and interminable.
ray #446759 March 6, 2025 10:55 am 5
Some of my favorite podcasters produce shows 3 or 4 hours long. Great for diehards but I’m like you, an hour is about my max.
Tars Tarkas #446777 March 6, 2025 11:22 am 3
It’s not that they should be limited to an hour, it’s that all the bad parts need to be stripped out. I don’t like videos or podcasts that have been stretched out or made artificially short. They should be as long or short as they need to be. Shorts should be banned.
Ostei Kozelskii #446865 March 6, 2025 3:42 pm 4
“Shorts should be banned.” Especially on those with cellulite or varicose veins…
karl von hungus #446763 March 6, 2025 10:58 am 1
people only listen to the first 10 minutes of that 3 hours
Steve #446789 March 6, 2025 11:53 am 4
“Apparently there’s still a market for longer stuff if it’s good.” I see this in recommendations a lot, and not just Zooms. There is a large and I’m afraid growing cohort that are drawn to narratives that confirm their biases. I’m not an exception there, either. Every time I read Sailor or especially Unz, I realize, “There’s an hour of my life I’m not getting back.” What is sorely missing, IMO, is thedevelopmentof ideas. We get instead the same, often trite ideas, from a greater number of “influencers”.
Marko #446798 March 6, 2025 12:23 pm 11
That’s why I like our esteemed blogger. I’ve been reading him for years, and he’s always making me think about something a different way. That is golden. You don’t get that from a lot of commentators. Usually you know exactly how the writer will frame a Happening, and most people want their biases confirmed, and the popular writer knows this, so writes accordingly. The better writers are at least amusing when they do it.I don’t think Zman is writing to confirm anyone’s bias. He wants us to think laterally about things, which is the white man’s gift to world discourse and invention.
Auld Mark #446833 March 6, 2025 2:11 pm 4
Marko, excellent observation. I don’t necessary learn something new, but I often get a take from a different direction and perception.
The Infant Phenomenon #446882 March 6, 2025 4:49 pm 3
Z Man thinks outside the box. And his writing style is actually *readable,* which is a great talent and which sets him apart from the writers who produce turgid prose. He writes with both clarity and economy–his essays don’t go rambling on forever. He says what he has to say and then stops. And his output is prodigious, rivaling Dickens or Trollope. I don’t think he eats or sleeps.
Evil Sandmich #446768 March 6, 2025 11:09 am 3
I dunno, as a 50-year old my attention span is shot as well. The last time I was in a theater I thought the film I was watching was really good, and while I stayed to watch the whole thing I was done watching it after 15 minutes.
The Infant Phenomenon #446884 March 6, 2025 4:50 pm 1
That was likely b/c of the movie; not your attention span.
Compsci #446899 March 6, 2025 5:25 pm 1
I suspect there are studies around exactly on your (our) problem of short attention span. I’m the same way and attribute it to the Internet and use of such. It takes me an awful lot of time to begin to read books to the depth I once did normally. This of course is a killer in most scientific fields.
The Infant Phenomenon #446877 March 6, 2025 4:31 pm 8
If you mean the “Titanic” picture with that Di Caprio brat, I don’t think anybody DID sit through it. Unless they had fallen asleep. Stupidest excuse for a story I ever saw. The only interesting moment in the whole disaster was when Kathy Bates, in a life boat, looked back at the doomed vessel and deadpanned, “Well, there’s somethin’ you don’t see every day.” The rest was trite garbage. We saw, for example, that although the water outside the ship was deadly, the water inside–the same sea water–was as harmless as bath water. And that’s only a single example.
Pozymandias #447094 March 8, 2025 11:32 am 0
Well, you see it was just like restaurants during the Great Coof. You need to keep your mask on to stop the Coof particles while you wait but once you’re eating you take the mask off and the particles observe a sort of viral truce while you eat. The moment you’re done eating, you’re infectious again! I <<heart>> Science!
ProZNoV #446700 March 6, 2025 9:32 am 39
Part of the problem is that their seasoned hands are OLD and crazy (See De Niro screaming “F Trump!” from the dias.) On the young side, we’re told we’d better believe that Zendaya is Helen of Troy reincarnated. (the Face that sunk 1000 franchises). OTOH, the Weinstein metoo and P Diddy scandals pretty much showed the world that, male or female, if you want to succeed in that world you have to do unspeakable things. When I see a nominee or a “winner”, it’s best to feel pity for someone who sold their soul.
3g4me #446737 March 6, 2025 10:26 am 24
Yes, they sold their souls – but for what? Fame? The adulation of the crowd? Strangers they despise and fear? They have millions of dollars to waste, but no functioning families, serial relationships, addict and trannie kids. I cannot imagine putting my private life on display – and if I had the kind of money they do, I wouldn’t spend it on botox and nipple pasties. They have no genuine sense of self which is why they spend their lives playing pretend. Any pity I had has long since beenreplaced by contempt.
fakeemail #446837 March 6, 2025 2:16 pm 6
It’s not hard to understand why they sell their soul. A normal 9-5 life IS BORING; there’s no two ways about it. People want to be rich, they want to look beautiful in pictures and film as a form of immortality and prestige that shows that they are better than normal people. People want to part of the “cool kids” and have sex with the beautiful people. When you’re sitting bored as shit on your so-so paying job and have to answer to people that don’t mean anything to you, then you’ll clearly understand why people crave such things.
The Infant Phenomenon #446888 March 6, 2025 4:55 pm 2
What you say is true, but it is not the reason for the things 3g4me is talking about.
3g4me #446892 March 6, 2025 5:02 pm 0
I’ll take the quotidian over the pretend any day. And I do not in any way crave immortality. And I choose self respect over faux prestige.
ProZNoV #446906 March 6, 2025 5:48 pm 1
At the end of the day, you have to look at the man in the glass.
Auld Mark #446838 March 6, 2025 2:18 pm 11
As Zman recently pointed out, throughout most of history, actors have been accorded about the same status as prostitutes.
The Infant Phenomenon #446890 March 6, 2025 4:58 pm 4
In the primitive Church, actors were prohibited from receiving instruction or baptism while they remained actors. It’s all spelled out in a work titled “The Apostolic Constitutions.”
The Infant Phenomenon #446886 March 6, 2025 4:53 pm 1
All true and expressed with your characteristic verve. Thing about movies nowadays is just that the performers just don’t have any talent. And the script writers are even worse.
Vizzini #446744 March 6, 2025 10:34 am 33
One of the runners up was a film calledThe Brutalist, which is about hideous architecture. The not-very-subtext is “Americans are mean to Jews.” They literally have the (male) American millionaire rape the (male) Jewish architect for no reason other than hate. It’s so tiresome.
Mycale #446691 March 6, 2025 9:20 am 32
Like so many other things in our society, Hollywood seems to have imploded around 2008. It nearly completely lost the ability to make a great film. You can see it in the Oscar winners and nominees. Most of the winners of the past 15 years are pure dreck. A movie about a woman who falls in love with a fish won for heaven’s sake. Obviously we didn’t know it at the time, but the 2008 recession and the subsequent five years – Obama election, OWS, Great Awokening, GamerGate, etc. – marked the end of American culture. It’s been shuffling along ever since like a zombie ever since.
mmack #446709 March 6, 2025 9:46 am 12
I was thinking about endless remakes, reboots, and “back stories”. Please, show, don’t tell. Show me Darth Vader is evil. Don’t do a three movie story arc that establishes WHY he is evil. And really, a giant planet killing battle star? For the THIRD FREAKING TIME after one was blown up in two previous movies? What, did you literally believe “Third time’s the charm?” 🤦‍♂️
ray #446719 March 6, 2025 10:00 am 9
I recall thinking are you kidding, the battle star AGAIN? Couldn’t take five minutes to conjure something else?
rasqball #446731 March 6, 2025 10:19 am 5
Sorry friends – while it impressed the 11 year-old me (as it was designed to do!), I recognized by the time of the intitiaI sequals that Star Wars was “falsch und Zwei,” through and through.(I truly DO NOT understand the appeal…)
The Infant Phenomenon #446891 March 6, 2025 5:01 pm 1
Today’s script writers lack imagination, the sine qua non of even *being* a writer.
Filthie #446740 March 6, 2025 10:32 am 14
That is probably the right time frame, M. And it just isn’t movies. I used to be a voracious reader and around the early 2000’s I noticed that when I bought books… the chances of getting a good read dropped like a stone. The best seller lists were a waste of time. Then the mainstream type writers started going woke and I probably stopped buying books altogether in around ’08. Probably stopped with the movies a short time later.Hopefully wokeness begins to die soon too. There are encouraging signs… I see that bint that faggotified Disney productions has finally decided to sail off into the retirement sunset… so there’s that, I suppose…
Arshad Ali #446749 March 6, 2025 10:44 am 11
If it’s mass market books you’re talking about, they weren’t anything great fifty years ago either — writers like Harold Robbins, Arthur Hailey, Robert Ludlum, and Alistair MacLean. There are still good writers turning out good books, even superb books, both fiction and nonfiction. But you have to search for them.
Johns Spam #446753 March 6, 2025 10:50 am 11
I was a big fan of John Sanford’s crime audio books (long commutes). They were free of wokeness, just story — well woven and often very funny. Then, at the time (maybe mid 2000’s), I got out his latest for listening. The abruptness of his going full speed woke in chapter one, when none existed before, was like a two-by-four to my face. I mused to myself his publishers must have told him “get with the program, change or die”. That was the end of that love affair.
Howard Beale #446853 March 6, 2025 2:59 pm 4
I started hitting second hand bookstores for Heinlein, Alan Dean Foster, and other greats of the past I had not read yet about 10 years ago. Found out a little bit about a dude named ‘The Mule’ somewhere in there, too… 😉
The Infant Phenomenon #446894 March 6, 2025 5:11 pm 2
The best used-book and out-of-print seller is alibris.com. A kind of “umbrella organization” for mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar book shops in the Anglophone world, although you can get foreign-language books from them, too. And if they don’t have on hand what you are looking for, they have a search engine that you can use to instruct them to find what you want, and it’s amazingly effective. It enables the buyer to “buy local.” Bezos is quite rich enough.
Evil Sandmich #446775 March 6, 2025 11:20 am 3
A guy on Fedi noted all the winners since 2004 (when Return of the King won Best Picture) and how mediocre the lot was. I think the only one I’d even seen was No Country for Old Men which wasn’t awful-awful but I still wasn’t a big fan of (oh, I’d seen Hurt Locker too, ditto). (Actually just scanned the nominees too but that only added 11 to the count, and mind you that’s over 20 years and they had expanded the nominee pool for about a third of that time).
Steve #446831 March 6, 2025 2:05 pm 4
The Hurt Locker was utter garbage. Only got an Oscar because the director had a vagina.
Barney Rubble #446791 March 6, 2025 12:07 pm 13
The point’s been made six million times, but go onto the streaming services and try to find something that’s not either Negro-centric, LGBTQ/whatever, or about the Hall-of-Cost. Maybe you can locate some “Mannix” reruns, if you’re lucky.
ray #446706 March 6, 2025 9:41 am 29
‘Perhaps the blue haired rage head was a reaction to the steady disaggregation of the culture that has been brought on by the technological revolution’The blue haired rage head was a reaction to a century of the increasing legal and cultural power of women, and a century of increasingly emasculated American men.Feminism and gynarchy were firmly established in America before the Silly Con Valley ‘technological revolution’ got going.‘What all this points to is that the woke lunacy that has raged for the last decade may have been the last effort at ideological control of the culture’Woke (nee Political Correctness) and Feminism have ruled the U.S. since the Eighties or, at latest, early Nineties. That’s 30-40 years, conservatively. Heck the fembots were active and replacing the Ebil Ebil White Man in my community college departments in the early SEVENTIES, when I separated from the military. That’s 50 years. Dunno where your ‘decade’ comes from. This all didn’t start in 2015.Last ideological gasp? The enemy controls ALL of your institutions — with possible exception of the Executive — but based on failing Academy Awards and techno, you think it’s all over now, and the hordes in our captured institutions are just gonna . . . fade away? Because Donald?You just started to fight, and you’re declaring victory.
BoomerMCMXLVII #446800 March 6, 2025 12:26 pm 3
Yes, excellent post.
redbeard #446682 March 6, 2025 9:13 am 26
If I could make an AI movie it would be an adaptation of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness but set in Vietnam.
Jack Boniface #446688 March 6, 2025 9:19 am 3
That was Apocalypse Now.
karl von hungus #446693 March 6, 2025 9:24 am 29
it was a joke 🙂
LFMayor #446711 March 6, 2025 9:47 am 19
No, it was a biographical drama of the life and times of John Kerry!
karl von hungus #446762 March 6, 2025 10:57 am 10
kerry was actually in AN. he was the guy water skiing bare assed!
mmack #446696 March 6, 2025 9:29 am 11
”The horror, the horror.”
Arshad Ali #446713 March 6, 2025 9:52 am 13
Now there’s an embryonic idea — set “Heart of Darkness” in the USA, along some river, maybe going along some multi-culti cities — the horror, the horror!
Steve #446832 March 6, 2025 2:06 pm 4
It’s been done. It’s called Sleepless in Seattle
My Comment #446743 March 6, 2025 10:34 am 24
A fellow named Unwin wrote a book called Sex and Culture where he examined 86 cultures over time. According to him, sexual liberation killed the culture of any society in three generations. Sound familiar?“the data revealed that the single most important correlation with the flourishing of a culture was whether pre-nuptial chastity was required or not. It had a very significant effect either way.Highest flourishing of culture: The most powerful combination was pre-nuptial chastity coupled with “absolute monogamy”. Rationalist cultures that retained this combination for at least three generations exceeded all other cultures in every area, including literature, art, science, furniture, architecture, engineering, and agriculture. Only three out of the eighty-six cultures studied ever attained this level.Effect of abandoning prenuptial chastity: When strict prenuptial chastity was no longer the norm, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking also disappeared within three generations.Total sexual freedom: If total sexual freedom was embraced by a culture, that culture collapsed within three generations to the lowest state of flourishing — which Unwin describes as “inert” and at a “dead level of conception” and is characterized by people who have little interest in much else other than their own wants and needs. At this level, the culture is usually conquered or taken over by another culture with greater social energy.”https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kirkdurston.com/blog/unwin%3fformat=amp
The Infant Phenomenon #446900 March 6, 2025 5:25 pm 2
Francis Parker Yockey had a lot to say about this phenomenon in his bookImperium, which I highly recommend:https://www.alibris.com/Imperium-The-Philosophy-of-History-and-Politics-Francis-Parker-Yockey/book/3150127?matches=20
ray #446977 March 7, 2025 11:15 am 0
Good comment.
Lavrov #446690 March 6, 2025 9:20 am 22
it often fells like of much of National Review content is written by AI. They are so boring and obvious.
RDittmar #446718 March 6, 2025 10:00 am 11
You are 100% correct. To be precise NR content is now written by children. The only reason I even click on a link to them nowadays is to see who the article’s author is and it is almost always some “intern” of this or that. It’s probably very likely that these same interns are using some kind of ChatGPT application to write content just like they’re using it to do their homework.
RealityRules #446738 March 6, 2025 10:31 am 14
Just train a model on 5 or 6 economics books, (Rothbard, Mises, Friedman, Hazlitt), a few decades of articles by the Mises crowd, throw in a few decades of Hitler hysteria and then a directive to always just parrot progressive dogma from 10 years prior and you probably have the National Review LLM. You just need some time function to accelerate the lag between the adoption of progressive dogma. Call it The Fresh Prince Acceleration Function.Heck you could probably just feed it the Rand Corp’s web site and it would suffice.That is actually an interesting social experiment. Train a model on blob books, websites, papers … … Then have that LLM generate Heritage Foundation or AmGreatness or National Review articles and see if there is any delta. I bet you discover the real source of the ideological capture which we already know but it would be a fun experiment.
Mycale #446823 March 6, 2025 1:52 pm 6
That is the power of ideology. Who needs intelligence and wisdom when you are just repackaging an ideology over and over. A college kid can do that. It’s how Ben Shapiro became a national columnist in his early 20s.
fakeemail #446726 March 6, 2025 10:13 am 21
Last great Oscars was Jack Palance doing push-ups! Hollywood movies today are purely ideological as written and directed by retards; they are completely without craft. So you either watch a holocaust/racist/homo/transo movie OR an idiotic superhero movie with some steroided-up actor in front of a green screen punching out alien Hitler.. Make no mistake, the superhero is ABSOLUTELY the modern form of IDOLATRY. As for today’s “great” director Chris Nolan. . .all his movies are mediocre, muddled, well-marketed crap.
Alzaebo #446814 March 6, 2025 1:06 pm 8
Here’s an Oscar nod to Ricky Gervais trashing the baizuo to their faces!
Boris #446745 March 6, 2025 10:35 am 19
Not a contemporary movie fan either. I prefer the old stuff on TCM (plus there’s no insidious commercials!). However, there was one recent movie that was really a throwback to the action-packed alpha male movies of the 60s and 70s, probably because it was a period piece from the 60s – 2019’s “Ford v Ferrari”. Great movie w/ no retconed minorities. In fact the only black in the movie was the janitor in the garage and he made only one 2-3 sec appearance. Amazing that it was made just six years ago. Would never pass muster now without at least a couple of girl bosses and black alpha males. Highly recommend.
Alzaebo #446815 March 6, 2025 1:17 pm 3
Since this is Gangster World, really, if you like gangster stuff then there is a ton of high quality offerings. Peaky Blinders.Mr. Inbetween.The Gentlemen.(movie)Snatch.Sicario,ySicario- Dia del Soldado.No Country For Old Men.Road to Perdition.Eastern Promises.Gangs of London.(Especially the farmhouse shootout scene, jeebus cripes) Nah. Good shows ain’t dead. They are just less genteel, because we live in an ungenteel age, and need role models on becoming a lot harder as we used to be.
mmack #446703 March 6, 2025 9:36 am 19
I’ll repost what I posted at another site about the Oscars:Ah,The Oscars.We were on the phone talking with my wife’s good friends who live in England when the show started. We watched the opening act (AWicked/Wizard of Ozmashup), Conan’s intro, and then when we hung up to end the call she turned to me and said “Okay, we can turn it off now, it’s too weird for me” after Conan’s intro. We switched to a music channel.She agrees with me that Hollywood hates people like us, polite White people who live in the Midwest and aren’t raging Leftists. This from a woman who would watch the Oscars telecast to the bitter end for years.I haven’t gone to a movie in a movie theater in nearly six years. I don’t care for superhero movies and there’s nothing else I see on TV, the internet, or in the few dwindling print ads I read that says to me “YES!I HAVEto see this movie!”We both agree they should have brought back Ricky Gervais to host. But that’s not gonna happen.
RealityRules #446742 March 6, 2025 10:33 am 6
This is progress. As sad as it is, this is necessary to get our people to wake up and move through to the other side.
Vegetius #446710 March 6, 2025 9:47 am 17
It has never been easier or cheaper to write and edit scripts, cast actors, scout locations, mix sound, or shoot and edit video. And yet everything is shit. I think the vaporization of attention spans is more important than the fertility crisis, and likely has something to do with it.
rasqball #446735 March 6, 2025 10:24 am 3
I agree, mon ami(e).
S K #446932 March 6, 2025 10:08 pm 1
A chick reading the Zman? Maybe. But press (x) to doubt.
Hemid #446782 March 6, 2025 11:36 am 3
Movies have never been cheaper to make, yet movie budgets have never been higher. Independent production has never been easier, yet no independent films break through like they used to. People read all day; literacy is down. Almost all human knowledge and experience is right here on the tubes (for now); nobody looks at almost any of it. Many such cases—one for almost anything you can think of. Twothingsare happening at the same time. The bigger, stronger, darker one is unacknowledged.
Alzaebo #446795 March 6, 2025 12:11 pm 0
Yesterday NoName gave us “egregore.” Of those two things, here’s what I suspect: The zeitgeist is being retuned. If White people, retuneable by their exposure to the aurora borealis, were the combination necessary to open the pinhole in the eggshell, that is, begin the populating of the “Heaven”, the immaterial panspermial Sporing layer… Then are the JQ attempting, or necessary for, an alternate copy of this process?That is, pushing a physical cybernetic form capable of surviving space travel? That seems to be what the transhumanist vision is for.A Borg vision for leaving the nest behind.
The Infant Phenomenon #446901 March 6, 2025 5:27 pm 2
What?
rasqball #446841 March 6, 2025 2:22 pm 5
Today, the (unspoken, unacknowledged) raison d’être in show biz is plain old money laundering. There’s always been an element of that type of “financialization,” but that’s were the “energy” has been for the past twenty years or so. (I’ve got friends in the business, and I know of what I speak.)
Pozymandias #446914 March 6, 2025 6:49 pm 0
It’s probably something like the MIC and their quadrillion dollar weapons systems. The more you spend the less you get. Eventually, as cost goes to infinity the usefulness of the product goes to zero.
Vizzini #446850 March 6, 2025 2:46 pm 3
You expect me to read that wall of text? It must have, like, a few dozen words!
Ted X #446697 March 6, 2025 9:32 am 17
I’m down to watching Japanese samurai and monster movies from the 1960s and South Korean gangster films because at least there is no diversity and somewhat coherent plots. All the old movies I used to love have become unwatchable for some reason.
Filthie #446746 March 6, 2025 10:38 am 7
Yeah me too… but it’s amazing because the pozz isn’t just in America. It’s tearing up Japan and Korea and some of the other Pacific Rim countries too…
Jeffrey Zoar #446695 March 6, 2025 9:28 am 17
I don’t find it coincidental that Hollywood product mostly became garbage around the same time that popular music did. 2000-ish, give or take a few years. It happened sooner in most of the visual arts. I have this notion that cultural decline precedes artistic decline, and is manifested in the arts some time after it has already happened culturally. Decades even. Art is a lagging cultural indicator, both on the way up and on the way down. Thus, the creative zenith in the arts may have occurred some time after the cultural peak. Because the artists themselves were formed by the culture of the past. I’m sure somebody smarter than me must have written a book about it.
The Wild Geese Howard #446707 March 6, 2025 9:41 am 39
The current popular music scene is utterly bizarre. In 2025, millions of people are listening to songs from the mid-60s to mid-80s on a daily basis. In 1985,no onewas listening to anything from the mid-20s to the mid-40s on a daily basis.
ray #446723 March 6, 2025 10:05 am 11
‘First time listening to’ podcasts are popular now because the ‘music’ of the past 30 years — (c)rap and whiny corporate-produced wimmin — sucks so bad. Young people are recognizing that the music of the Fifties – Seventies was vastly superior. ‘I can’t believe this song!’ or ‘I wish I had lived back then’ is a typical podcast comment.
Arthur Metcalf #446725 March 6, 2025 10:12 am -1
Oh come on Oldsters. Let’s stop with the coping. Please, go spend some time observing and listening to the world outside of your home.Go up and down the FM dial today while driving. Or look on Spotify at the top 40 songs. Find your 1960s and 1970s music on there. It’s not. Go to a Food Court at a remaining mall in an upscale area. Listen to what’s being played by the high school age kids.They are not listening to your music and they are definitely not watching your films.Edit: Why must you do this? Your generation, specifically? Why is it always about you, and how your culture was superior to the one of today? It was garbage. Popular culture has been garbage for over 125 years. The egotism on you people is otherworldly.No wonder you didn’t notice.
KGB #446736 March 6, 2025 10:24 am 13
My FM dial is packed with music from the past. Now maybe that’s a sign of how outdated terrestrial radio is, but even online and in music apps, pop music of the past has a strong presence. And even if our culture was garbage, that doesn’t negate the fact that today’s dreck has upped the ante.
Ostei Kozelskii #446928 March 6, 2025 9:52 pm 3
Yeah, I’ve got an ultra-hip 14-year-old niece who lives for Fleetwood Mac and other musicians from that era. And many of her friends are the same. The partial rejection of contemporary garbage in favor of superior stuff from the past is a real thing, not a friggin’ cope.
ray #446767 March 6, 2025 11:05 am 6
The music — and more latterly, films — of your generation suck. Pretty much everybody but you, mr. teen zeitgeist, seems to know it. Wah de wah wah.
Gespenst #446794 March 6, 2025 12:11 pm 12
What you don’t understand about old people is: We’ve seen a lot of entertainment and judge what we see in the present against the very best of what we’ve seen in the past. A CGI sequence where a 95 pound girl beats up on a 250 pound man just looks silly when compared to the action in, say,The French Connection.
Steve #446797 March 6, 2025 12:19 pm 1
“Listen to what’s being played by the high school age kids.” There is some, sure, but the overwhelming majority are some simple I-IV-V-IV progressions or something equally bland. Music that resolves itself in 3 chords is trite. Mixolydian? Andalusian? “Git yer damn ferriners out of here!”
Mycale #446813 March 6, 2025 12:55 pm 4
Eh, I’ve actually started to notice just how much old music (and yes 1990s music is old at this point) is being pumped through public spaces these days. Not just that, but studies have been done on popular music now and then and have found that the music is less complex, the lyrics are simpler, the chord progression is more basic, it’s more focused on hooks, etc.
Ostei Kozelskii #446929 March 6, 2025 9:54 pm 5
And then there is rap, which is anti-music–the primordial expression of a people so primitive that they’re barely even human.
Paintersforms #446816 March 6, 2025 1:26 pm 4
I was born in the 80s. I remember a little 50s nostalgia in the music. 90s, 60s. By the time I graduated high school, 70s. 20-somethings at the watering hole ask me to play 90s music. Looking back 30 or so years seems to be a thing.
Ostei Kozelskii #446931 March 6, 2025 9:55 pm 3
Perhaps. But nobody is dam’ sure going to look back to 2025. It’s a metaphysical impossibility.
Dr. Dre #446857 March 6, 2025 3:18 pm 6
You’re no fun. We, H.S. Class of ’63, had a marvelous time — but that came to a whiplash halt Nov 22 that year, then marching off to war in Vietnam for ten ugly years. The music really kept us going. I wouldn’t change a minute of my about-to-be 80 years.
ray #446978 March 7, 2025 11:19 am 0
Me either.
HeWhoNotices #446990 March 7, 2025 12:10 pm 1
Hard to believe a 70-80 year old man would use the handle “Dr. Dre.”
The Infant Phenomenon #446903 March 6, 2025 5:35 pm 3
“Find your 1960s and 1970s music on there. It’s not.” Oh, yes it is. Maybe not in your mediation market, but there *are* other media markets. “Go to a Food Court at a remaining mall in an upscale area.” Are you insane? WHO in his right mind would go to a mall these days?
Brandon Laskow #446918 March 6, 2025 8:55 pm 2
There’s also the huge popularity of tribute bands.On 10/14/83 I saw the Grateful Dead perform in Hartford CT. Pedestrian first set, tremendous second set. If someone had told me then that last night, 41+ years later, I would see in a small venue in Berkeley CA a very talented faux Jerry and his ever changing band of cohorts, all too young to have seen the actual band, play the setlist of the show and quite well, and learn from a few friends that they also attended the actual show, I would have thought them to be completely insane. But that’s exactly what happened.There’s plenty other GD tribute bands and I’ve seen very good Pink Floyd, Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac tributes (the latter endorsed by Mick Fleetwood himself) and they all draw a wide age range, not just Boomers.
Ostei Kozelskii #446927 March 6, 2025 9:50 pm 3
Pull the cork out, Jack. If you can’t discern the difference between the pop culture of 2025 versus 1965 then you’re too obtuse to be posting here.
Tom K #446754 March 6, 2025 10:52 am 19
Ray I hate to break it to you, and I’m of your generation so I sympathize, but those “reaction” videos you’re speaking about are frauds. It’s just another grift for blacks who have no marketable skills. I love a lot of the music they’re reviewing, but they don’t. These people are actors pretending to be floored by the music. It isn’t their music, they’re just pretending to like it even though it really is great music and maybe some of it really does impress them.The important thing is they aren’t introducing a new audience to the music. When you go to the comments, the only people responding are older white people who already know the music.
ray #446770 March 6, 2025 11:11 am -4
Willing to stipulate that some of the reviews may be cynical frauds. But I see the reaction on faces, and I seriously doubt your contention is broadly valid. ‘It’s just another grift for blacks who have no marketable skills’ Many of the reviewers I watch are younger, white folks. One markets themselves as college kids. Dunno why you think they’re all black. Do we have to insert politics into everything? Part of the point of these podcasts is to transcend that and just share the music.
LineInTheSand #446771 March 6, 2025 11:14 am 19
These videos are one more discouraging sign of how deeply white people want blacks to like them. Nothing can make an older white person happier than hearing a black person praise Reagan-style conservatism or 1970s rock. Nothing!
Barney Rubble #446787 March 6, 2025 11:52 am 13
So incredibly tiresome. “I’m finally allowed to likeFreebirdbecause Q’Antavious gave it a thumbs up!”
Bloated Boomer #446939 March 7, 2025 3:43 am 2
Q’anontavious? Haha is this the son of a based and red pilled black maga boomer?
Bloated Boomer #446937 March 7, 2025 3:39 am 2
Yep, what is it with the oldies? I’m certain Kevin Michael Grace was talking about these “black guy makes minstrel faces at Stairway to Heaven” videos.I’ve never heard someone under 70 even mention them. I dont want to rag on Ray though, I like his comments.
Dr. Dre #446855 March 6, 2025 3:07 pm 4
I’m a rock ‘n’ roller from the best years, 1956 Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, followed by the Rolling Stones, but not the Beatles . . . you get the point, but I’ve recently become quite fond of stuff from the 70s that I was too busy with having babies and jobs to notice. Now I like Lynrd Skynrd, Greg Allman (I know he passed 10 yrs ago), Bob Segar, Dire Straits, UB40, and other old videos I watch on YouTube. I do this instead of obsessing over what movies to go see.
Ostei Kozelskii #446926 March 6, 2025 9:48 pm 0
Yep. What’s the big mystery?
Krustykurmudgeon #446904 March 6, 2025 5:37 pm 0
it was difficult to find Benny Goodman on cassette/CD, that’s why
mmack #446708 March 6, 2025 9:41 am 21
There’s a fellow Z links to (Kairos)https://www.kairospublications.com/blogwho posits that 1997 was “Ground Zero” for the cultural decline that you speak of. His theory is that the consolidation of things like radio stations, record companies, etc. reduced the number of creative outlets to a few and less and less new and unique acts were appearing. Plus “big data” was starting to become available to allow creative businesses to tailor music or movies to a specific audience. How so? Make it bland, inoffensive, easy to listen to or follow.
RealityRules #446728 March 6, 2025 10:16 am 16
Yes. You also have the introduction of massive amounts of compression as a primary production technique in music. What this meant was that the dynamic range of the song is taken away by compressing the high and low dynamics closer together. This has the effect of making the song much louder. That louder forces everyone to make their song louder, (and also lacking dynamic spacing and depth), in order to compete. The loudest wins on a first listen. Why? Listening to the song with greater dynamic after those with less requires more effort. Also after being blasted with volume, the ear fatigues and makes effort even less likely.This came about in 2000. The pioneering, “genius?” Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin who is sort of a deified, “The Dude”, considered some grand genius. That shit he does with these, “artists”, is total fucking garbage. He isn’t a genius. He is a mass man making mass music using cheap tricks to get more listens. Was music better before or after him?It was far worse. In the entertainment industry, there are countless Rick Rubins. I think there are certain laws/truths we can apply here too. 1. The more the industry celebrates a person, the more likely they are not worth celebrating. The celebration is a manipulation – an advertisement, not a genuine honoring of achievement.In terms of pop music, the true genius of Les Paul was probably the high point. He was a serious virtuoso writing joyous music that was very interesting and he was a technological marvel inventing all of the equipment that created the industry. So it took from the 40s when he was the high point to Rubin in 2000 as the beginning of the end.In keeping with other comments, mentioning 2008 as the collapse it is interesting. In 2008 it was the last year you could go and see Les Paul perform live in NY on his weekly gig. I think he passed in 2009 as NY and America were shells of their former selves.For those wanting a movie recommendation, his documentary, “The Speed ofSound”, is a wonderful documentary about Les Paul. He is a towering genius, a classic self made American frontiersman and a testament to the goodness of White Americans born before the terrible WWII.
ray #446773 March 6, 2025 11:14 am 5
‘In terms of pop music, the true genius of Les Paul was probably the high point’ He was the real deal, no doubt.
Steve #446801 March 6, 2025 12:28 pm 1
It’s definitely true that a lot of the music starting around there fell to the Loudness Wars, but the simple fact is that almost all people think louder sounds better. It doesn’t even have to be a lot — turn the same chorus up 2dB and at least 90% will prefer the latter. And I don’t think that’s a conditioned response — I think its probably innate. In other words, music shifted from what the artists and labels wanted to what the people wanted.
The Wild Geese Howard #446807 March 6, 2025 12:40 pm 8
RR- Great post. There are other popular technologies that have degraded music as well. Auto-Tune for the purpose of correcting a singer’s pitch is probably the most egregious example. This technology was heavily abused in the late 00s and early 10s. I doubt there are many people listening to the popular singles of that era.
fakeemail #446732 March 6, 2025 10:19 am 20
I’d buy that theory, for sure. Another factor for artistic decline is simple demography: less white people w/less hope.
Jeffrey Zoar #446741 March 6, 2025 10:32 am 8
White population continued to grow up until at least 2010 or so. There were more whites alive then than ever before. May have tapered off slightly since. It’s just that non whites grew a lot more. A LOT more.
fakeemail #446729 March 6, 2025 10:18 am 7
I felt the same way; it “ended” somewhere around the 2000s. I think the Maguire Spider-man (cgi crap) was a sign of end of hollywood. Crazy thing, is that Britney Spears stuff is GENIUS compared today’s so-called musical offerings!
Nikolai Vladivostok #446930 March 6, 2025 9:55 pm 3
I remember crappy pop songs I hated being pummeled with on the radio circa 2000 when working retail hell; hear them again now and they’re pretty melodic and pleasant. Like that Cher song. Now the modern rubbish I hear in the gym is much worse. Lyrics so dumb even a teenager ought to be embarrassed by them.Mogged by Cher, that’s how bad it’s gotten.
Ostei Kozelskii #446925 March 6, 2025 9:46 pm 1
Art is culture. And both lag demographic and sociological decline. For the record, I checked out of the pop culture in March or April of 1992. It was at that point that I could no longer find anything upon which I was willing to spend my money and my time.
Carl B. #446689 March 6, 2025 9:19 am 17
There is no room for art of any kind in The Brave New World.
ray #446716 March 6, 2025 9:56 am 5
The personal is fully political.
Filthie #446748 March 6, 2025 10:39 am 6
Or humour, for that matter…
karl von hungus #446758 March 6, 2025 10:55 am 7
who needs art when you have soma
Clayton Barnett #446761 March 6, 2025 10:56 am 15
My wife works at Home Depot and does not want any of those fuckers anywhere near her store.
Vizzini #446756 March 6, 2025 10:52 am 14
Of course, the content itself will soon be generated by robots. In the long term, the dumbing down of the population through the “robot revolution” will be self-limiting. Eventually so much of the population will be ignorant savages that they will be unable to maintain the technology bequeathed to them by previous generations. The end game will look a lot uglier thanIdiocracy.
TempoNick #446778 March 6, 2025 11:31 am 14
You know, that’s a good point. The Bible warns against idleness in many places. If machines start doing everything for you, your skills deteriorate, you’re learning through trial and error also deteriorates. Just look at people’s math skills since the advent of the calculator.
Mow Noname #446739 March 6, 2025 10:32 am 14
Next on the chopping block, after movies nobody watches:Auto makers manufacturing cars nobody wants to drive;Utility companies closing power plants and replacing them with systems that consume electricity; and,Schools/ hospitals/ churches/ governments which eat taxes and produce…expenses? My children study math, science, literature and history. Unfortunately, the most important skill I’ve taught them is how to field strip small arms.
mmack #446780 March 6, 2025 11:33 am 7
Auto makers manufacturing cars nobody wants to drive; Z Man needs a car rant for us to comment on, or a Friday podcast dealing with the frustrations and foibles of new cars. And another Xirl Science Friday Podcast Z!
TempoNick #446852 March 6, 2025 2:51 pm 0
They just canceled the spring’s car show here.
BigJimSportCamper #446788 March 6, 2025 11:53 am 5
Great!! Next up – reloading.
RealityRules #446698 March 6, 2025 9:32 am 14
Corporate America embraced White erasure and mass immigration because its sole goal is to grow the consumer base. Of course, there is never one faction. This faction of soulless ghouls fused with equally demented people who think White genocide will rid the world of evil and oppression. Of course the corporate ghouls, being simple minded dolts and psychopathic money grubbers, also saw this latter faction’s mission as the ultimate moral good. It lent weight and gave a moral sanction to their doing the ultimate evil – abandoning their own people, destroying their homelands, and targeting them for total erasure – extinction.Of course, this also melded with the government managerial regime who saw this emergent pastiche of diversity as the ultimate client group and patronage network. Then finally, you add all of the corporate managers who are alien and not American who mostly could care less and if they do have every incentive to perpetuate and accelerate the dispossession of America from Americans.AI is going to destroy the film industry. People can make films for themselves. Most will generate TikTok level garbage as talent is extremely rare and non-existent if it isn’t cultivated.The destruction of the film industry couldn’t be happening to a more deserving lot of scumbags. I hope that AI applied to porn will reduce significantly the number of young women who are reduced to such a degraded existence. That industry will carry on sadly.Nonetheless, AI will usher in the ultimate age of massification. This means, like drill rap and other garbage, there will be unprecedented new lows in what people make. However, you can sequester yourself off and make your own things or find that needle in a haystack. I think quality is going to see a return to home productions and local theater as quality has a thirst for authenticity and aspirational human endeavor.The great bifurcation will accelerate. I tip my cup to the destruction of the film industry. I think the game industry is also in the firing line. Consumers can also be producers with machines capable of re-constructing what humans have already built and cultivated.May the film and game industries collapse as their participation in the crime against our people and our civilization make them very deserving of that fate.
TempoNick #446757 March 6, 2025 10:53 am 13
A bunch of different things going on here. I will just list my pet peeves and you can agree or disagree.1. Ugliness of the so-called stars. Watch any old movie and there is always somebody in there who catches your eye. I don’t know what it is about movies these days, but the women they cast in these movies, even the white ones, just don’t have anything about how they look that interests me. Not everyone, of course. Occasionally, someone will catch my eye, but not like they do in the older movies.2. Too many trashy people in Hollywood. They are artists and many of them think being trashy is edgy or creative. It just makes me want to go take a shower. And then you have the fact that so many people in Hollywood these days are trash or come from trashy backgrounds. There’s nothing aspirational about it. Hollywood is full of disgusting people with trashy lifestyles.3. Digital photography sucks. There’s nothing like looking at digitized film in an old movie. I also liked the older mechanical camera movements. Everything these days is too smooth and too robotic. Too computerized.4. Maybe the real beauty queens simply have better options these days. Hollywood stars don’t really make a lot of money in the whole scheme of things, except for the top stars. At a company I worked for, it is said that Slim Pickens of “Doctor Strangelove” fame worked at one of the stores as a security guard between gigs. And that’s even before we consider that you have to sleep with disgusting (((movie moguls))) and work with trashy people. Most women who come from a halfway decent background just aren’t going to do that.5. If you’re a real beauty, you’re better off finding some oligarch to marry. Or even a successful local doctor or attorney. At least you keep your privacy and don’t have lowlifes fapping to your posters and stalking you.6. Even white women in media are fat and ugly these days. Too many of them have that lower class tattoo and too much green eyeshadow look. And don’t get me started on diversity. I don’t really want to pay $13 to see a bunch of browns on the big screen.7. Too much content. The talent is spread out too thinly. Profit margins are also getting squeezed too much. It’s harder to invest in product.8. Lack of action comedy movies and actors. Back in the old days we had Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even Clint Eastwood and Sly Stallone uttering a funny line or two during an action movie. Now we’ve got some minstrel talking jive and we’re supposed to be entertained by that.9. Computer generated special effects are boring. Give me a real stuntman.
Jeffrey Zoar #446803 March 6, 2025 12:34 pm 17
The uglification of women on screen had a lot to do with women casting directors trying to feel better about themselves. And women ticket buyers trying to feel better about themselves too. It’s not that I demand actresses be drop dead gorgeous. Back in the day, many weren’t either. Just don’t stick some horse face up there and tell me she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
Mike #446858 March 6, 2025 3:26 pm 4
Sarah Jessica Parker
Dr. Dre #446861 March 6, 2025 3:33 pm 5
Watching the Democrat female contingent at the Trump speech to Congress the other night made evident that politics is show biz for the ugly. What a bunch of misshapen freaks — Tlaib, DeLauro, Pelosi with her shiny face lifts, and on and on. Waddle-assed Amy Klobuchar is so smug and certain of her intelligence. Then crazy man Al Green started waving that cane around. I would have thought the Secret Service would have nailed him to the floor, with his unhinged hatred for the President and the possibility that the cane concealed some sort of firearm. It was a sickening performance by a bunch of crazy old people!!
ray #446980 March 7, 2025 11:33 am 0
lol
din c. nuffin #446750 March 6, 2025 10:45 am 13
An advantage of becoming older than rust is that I’ve forgotten most plot lines of old movies. “Ben Hur” captivated my attention for about three hours just last week, and at the finish, I was thinking “They just don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
Steve #446834 March 6, 2025 2:13 pm 4
Bearing in mind the new Trumpian anti-Woke zeitgeist, shouldn’t that be Ben Him? Don’t annoy Elon!
Steve #446840 March 6, 2025 2:21 pm 3
It’s Ben Their. I can see the possibilities of a show named Ben Their, Done Thot.
Dr. Dre #446864 March 6, 2025 3:37 pm 2
My Sixth Grade class got bussed into NYC to see Ben-Hur back in the day. One of the greats!
Gespenst #446873 March 6, 2025 4:20 pm 4
The chariot race in Ben Hur was all live shooting and makes any CGI I’ve ever seen look silly by comparison.
RDittmar #446715 March 6, 2025 9:55 am 13
I’m not sure if it’s a symptom or a contributing cause to the death of Hollywood, but the disappearance of physical media has to be another nail in the coffin. They’ve created all these streaming services in a desperate attempt to nickel and dime you for access and nickel and dime you even further if you want to tune into an old Bond movie and as part of the desperation it seems that they’re trying to deny you access to a physical copy of your entertainment so you always have to go through them to watch something. It’s ultimately going to makeeverythingHollywood makes from now on completely disposable like TV shows were prior to the VCR. When I was a kid we’d watch those shows thinking that once they were off the air, they were essentially gone forever. Now the same is true of recent movies. They disappear behind some streaming paywall and those not interested in paying for access willneversee them again.
Steve #446806 March 6, 2025 12:39 pm 2
Yes, but… I think it’s probably the other way around. And for pretty good reasons. While much of the older content is worth re-watching, the younger generations realize they never want to watch the new stuff ever again. Why pay $20 for a Blu-Ray that will just gather dust in their already too-small apartment when you can just rent it for a buck?
karl von hungus #446694 March 6, 2025 9:27 am 13
you touched on something that is more significant than you give it credit for. and that is the “long tail” effect. we have all the wonderful things made in previous times, without the need (or desire) for AI slop. also, there will be user directed AI, and all it will be used for is scatalogical ends. think “Ow My Balls” and you are there.
Dr. Mabuse #446722 March 6, 2025 10:04 am 16
there will be user directed AI, and all it will be used for is scatalogical ends. think “Ow My Balls” and you are there. I’ve always liked Star Trek and had little difficulty suspending my disbelief to enjoy the plots. Except for one thing: the Holodeck in TNG. They always showed us people using it to simulate whitewater rafting, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, or Sherlock Holmes and noir mystery plots. We all know that if such a thing existed, it would be used almost exclusively to produce porn fantasies.
Steve #446802 March 6, 2025 12:33 pm 3
“We all know that if such a thing existed, it would be used almost exclusively to produce porn fantasies.” Just say what you mean. Jeri Ryan and Marina Sirtis on endless loop. 😉
Ploppy #446821 March 6, 2025 1:40 pm 1
They had to tone it down to stay PG but there’s that episode where Barclay stops showing up to Geordis meetings because he’s using the holodeck to make MILF porn with Beverly’s likeness. Guy had good taste.
Bitter reactionary #446812 March 6, 2025 12:54 pm 12
I’m not an artistic person so I have no sophisticated critiques to offer, but I do have a personal theory about why our stories are so poor – aside from the usual (((problem))). I think it is because Westerners now, to an extraordinary degree, lead boring lives and therefore have nothing interesting to say, simply due to lack of experience. To use a film reference, in the old Blackhawk Down movie there’s a scene where the warlord character says to the captured pilot something like “None of you Americans smoke anymore. You all lead dull, uninteresting lives.” I think that line hit the nail on the head.People going on real life adventures are rare. It is seen as deeply unwise to go out into the world without an array of safety nets.Each year I get to spend a couple weeks in a 3rd world beach town full of weirdo expats who left home and hearth to sail around, do stuff, and take (usually smallish, calculated) risks. It’s the only time of year I encounter someone who can tell me a story I really enjoy listening to that isn’t pure hearsay/2nd hand. Our hyper feminized safety society is killing our reason to live. I also believe this is part of why the birthrate is falling – this way of life isn’t just ugly due to diversity and corporatocracy. It’s also boring.
fakeemail #446839 March 6, 2025 2:20 pm 3
it’s true. my ideal society would offer more to the working man then 9 to 5 drudgery he gets.
Trek #446685 March 6, 2025 9:18 am 12
I’m not an artsy person, but I would love to see real movies and literature again. It doesn’t even have to be American.
terranigma #446915 March 6, 2025 8:07 pm 0
Like it or not, for better and worse, the new mainstream culture is Japanese and animated. Disaggregation is a form of death, so that mainstream is fractured and limited, but this is the best thing going today. Particularly for the young.Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End might be the height of today’s mass culture. Even if you enjoy it, it is still better than you think.Saga of Tanya the Evil would be your fantasy war epic. Harry Potter is for the weak.Legend of the Galactic Heroes would be your slower, more thoughtful piece on politics and leadership.Psycho-Pass Season 1 for your crime thriller and social commentary.Jujutsu Kaisen even does capeshit better than Hollywood.Although you might have to go back to Princess Mononoke to find a real movie in the genre. There are a few others after it, but most are very Japanese and might not be your idea of a real movie.As an aside, the good in American culture died out in video games slightly after 2010. What is left is a very basic, almost subliminal form of culture that is teaching both independence and teamwork, rapid iteration and improvement. Look up Factorio for the poster child of three of those concepts. Team shooters for the last. It is having an effect:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm947uFzrJw&t=4384s
S K #446933 March 6, 2025 10:14 pm 0
At least *mention* FMA: Brotherhood!
The Wild Geese Howard #446686 March 6, 2025 9:18 am 11
Uh, there is already a significant cottage industry of people on YouTube making AI-modified trailers. Go search for something like, “Star Trek as a 40s film noir,” and see what is returned.
Harbinger #446720 March 6, 2025 10:02 am 10
I can hardly wait to see the AI reboot of Idiocracy. How could it possibly be improved upon? The original had it all – morons, tech gone wrong, strong anti-White male overtones, diversity on ‘roids. All that needs be done is recast the [White, male] protagonist as a sassy, crippled, gender-fluid negress with an IQ of 180 and Hollywood will fall all over itself at the Academy Awards, sucking its own protuberances.
Vizzini #446842 March 6, 2025 2:25 pm 4
Yeah, and President Camacho will be a dim White man who needs her to save him.
Epaminondas #446717 March 6, 2025 9:57 am 10
A review of “The Brutalist” which appeared in the Unz Review…https://www.unz.com/ejones/the-brutalist-america-turned-upside-down/
Alzaebo #446830 March 6, 2025 2:05 pm 6
“(Director) Brady Corbet can now chime in with Kate Winslet, who said ‘now I’ve done my fucking Holocaust movie'” Are Holo movies our replacement Christmas movies now?
jrod #446822 March 6, 2025 1:49 pm 8
At one of the parks in the neighborhood, some people with dogs gather in the evenings. It’s mostly the upscale suburban women and an occasional man. Last year I walked my dog up to a group of women and their dogs. One woman was proudly telling the others about some event. I asked one of the women what they were discussing. “Karen went to the Oscars.” Then she added, that Karen was there as one of the people who fill the seats when one of the celebrities has to leave their seat for some reason. I walked away thinking, “Well….. bye.” Ahh, life in the land of platitude yard signs.
Vizzini #446845 March 6, 2025 2:31 pm 2
The seating version of “Stick a chick in it and make it lame and gay.”
Mike Tre #446701 March 6, 2025 9:34 am 8
“One of the runners up was a film calledThe Brutalist, which is about hideous architecture.” Uh… I think it was about a little more than just that. LOL
Hemid #446786 March 6, 2025 11:45 am 5
A notable entry in the new America’s Holocaust genre. I shouted out, “Who killed the Edelsteins?” After all, it was you.
Jack Boniface #446687 March 6, 2025 9:19 am 7
I’m looking forward to AI Bond films starring “Sean Connery,” with the plot and vibe of Goldfinger and Thunderball and the villains Blofeld and Spectre. As Trump said, it’s a Golden Age.
Pickle Rick #446704 March 6, 2025 9:37 am 13
Well Amazon just bought the rights to James Bond. It remains to be seen if Bezos, who has taken notice that there is a cultural shift and began to rein in his employees’ fanatical hatred over at the Post, might decide that making a “classic” Bond movie might do far better than gay transgender Black Bond.If they were smart, they would reset James Bond back in his historical context and make them period pieces, because James Bond can’t be James Bond in Clown World, yet. I’d set the very first one in 1945, and have James doing his thing not against the Nazis, the most overused villains ever, but doing something against the Japanese in the exotic Far East.
3g4me #446747 March 6, 2025 10:38 am 13
That’s the problem with some of these franchises and using them as period pieces. I used to enjoy reading espionage novels set in the 1950s -but I read them in the 1970s. Anything pre-2000 is ancient history to most of AINO’s diverse population, and the last thing I want to do is continue to focus any attention on hollow victories in brother wars that never should have happened.
karl von hungus #446760 March 6, 2025 10:56 am 4
what’s the over/under bezos casts himself as the new Bond? :p
Pickle Rick #446776 March 6, 2025 11:21 am 12
I guess casting himself as a Bond Villain would be a little too on the nose.
mmack #446783 March 6, 2025 11:39 am 2
Ernst Stavro Bezos. 👨‍🦲 When does he buy a secret underground lair beneath a volcano?
Jeffrey Zoar #446808 March 6, 2025 12:42 pm 4
He already has one Inside the mountain where billionaire Jeff Bezos is building a clock that will last longer than us – CyberGuy
Barnard #446724 March 6, 2025 10:10 am 6
There is a partial explanation on the fake ratings in this DW article.The total number is calculated by adding the Nielsen measurement of viewers on ABC to live streaming viewers watching the ceremony on Hulu.The streaming services start you on a program they think you will be interested in when you open them. They just defaulted people to the Oscars whether they wanted to watch it or not and then counted them as viewers. A good guess is that half of these 19.69 saw less than five minutes of the broadcast. I have heard no one talking about the Oscars, even women in the office who would have been obsessing over it in the past haven’t mentioned it once.https://www.dailywire.com/news/oscars-viewership-dropped-this-year-for-first-time-since-covid
Krustykurmudgeon #446902 March 6, 2025 5:31 pm 5
its interesting to look at who the top singers are for each age group.Drake is the most streamed singer with 109 billion streamsof all the artists older than Drake – Eminem is with 54 billionof all the artists older than Eminem – Queen has 24 billionof all the artists older than Queen – Beatles have 21 billionof the artists older than the Beatles – Elvis and Frank Sinatra have 9 billionof the artists older than either Elvis or Frank Sinatra – Louis and Bing have 3 billionIt’s interesting to look at the evolution of pop stars through the decades
Hokkoda #446921 March 6, 2025 9:22 pm 4
It’s much worse than that. More and more people are simply tuning out.Most of society’s control mechanisms on behavior stem from media. Movies, TV, Social Media, etc. Those are being abandoned or fragmenting to the point that if you don’t want gays and trannies imposed on you…click…gone.In a practical sense, we are getting back to a world of free association. Talk to who you want. Shop where you want. Hire who you want. Watch what you want, including nothing at all.The death of the managerial state – all those funding cuts and bureaucrat firings – have been greeted with a mix of applause and yawns. Nobody cares because none of that stuff matters, and the propaganda intended to compel people to care?We just turn it off.
Lakelander #446907 March 6, 2025 5:49 pm 4
The last good movie to come out of Hollywood wasTHERE WILL BE BLOODin 2007.
Hi-ya #446819 March 6, 2025 1:28 pm 4
Maybe it’s cause I’m middle aged and am out of it, but are there any black musicians nowadays besides, ahem, rappers? When I was growing up there was prince, Michael Jackson Terrence trend D’arby and Toni, tone, Tony! And that don’t worry be happy guy and the dancing in the ceiling guy and the blind guy. I could go on, but except for John legend (and I don’t know his music) is there any good black musicians?!?! what was the topic?
Hemid #446912 March 6, 2025 6:24 pm 3
Black guys who play instruments are nerds now. True since disco, which contrary to prog myth—in which disco was a great mega-corporate victory over whiteness—primarily displaced working black musicians. Hiphop was them taking the club back with consumer electronics. Lenny Kravitz was the last one to become a real rock star. Thundercat is the only somewhat famous young black rock guy now, as far as I know. He does retro pre-disco stuff too (better played but much less interesting than Lenny’s).
Brandon Laskow #446924 March 6, 2025 9:41 pm 2
Saw Thundercat play for free in Golden Gate Park last fall. He’s a freak but an awesomely talented musician with a great band.There are talented young black jazz musicians out there, none of them are going to have anything more than small niche fandom due to the genre. Jason Moran, Ambrose Akinmusire, Keyon Harrold, Kendrick Scott, many others.Some of these cats collaborate with hip-hop artists and most of them do make their blackness part of their presentation. E.g. there’s 41 year old trumpeter Chief Adjuah who up until a few years ago was Christian Scott. So there’s that aspect but they’re all serious, highly skilled musicians.There’s a vital jazz scene coming out of London these days. Yussef Dayes, Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia. Some others I can’t think of who might even have regular English names.
johnmark7 #446887 March 6, 2025 4:53 pm 3
I used an AI vocal for a song I’d written and it came out pretty well I thought. But on repeated listening, I lost interest in the vocal because it’s lack of true human feel to it became more apparent. This will be true for all art by AI after awhile. Even now, all those images you see on various sites and X generated by AI are obvious and obnoxious after awhile.
Zulu Juliet #446799 March 6, 2025 12:25 pm 3
Thank goodness for Turner Classic Movies. Most of the stuff was made in the before times, and features heartfelt stories, or terrific set dance pieces, or beautiful white people, or all three. I can’t think of anything made in the last ten years that I would waste my time watching or didn’t regret watching.
A Bad Man #446805 March 6, 2025 12:35 pm 5
I hate to say it as I like classic movies too, but the notion that they were not a bunch of degenerates back then is just not accurate.
Vizzini #446844 March 6, 2025 2:30 pm 4
They just felt as if they had to hide it a little more. Then they won, turned mainstream America degenerate, and could let their own degeneracy show.
Steve #446835 March 6, 2025 2:14 pm 1
You can get any number of classic movies up even on YT. The Russian “ru” site does loads too that aren’t available on Western sites. Watched the original “Italian Job” with Michael Caine last week with my son. He loved it, as he did “Duel”.
Diversity Heretic #446792 March 6, 2025 12:08 pm 3
Why do I have the feeling that the technological possibilities discussed in the last few paragraphs of the z-man’s post will appear first in the pornography industry?
Mister #446836 March 6, 2025 2:16 pm 2
Interesting speculation about the future of film. I don’t know what comes next but I know what exists now is a societal cancer so good riddance to bad rubbish.
Arthur Metcalf #446730 March 6, 2025 10:18 am 2
I love these threads. Boomer breakfast time. Half the comments: “I haven’t watched a film since Aught-One and it’s gonna’ shtay that way, dadgummit!” Like your grandparents weren’t saying the same in the 1960s and 1970s. Oh but they were wrong, aesthetic heights were crested by titans like Robert Plant and Don Henley, kid!
3g4me #446764 March 6, 2025 10:58 am 9
The thread definitely shows the age of Zman’s average reader. Thing is, I didn’t watch that many movies or listen to the radio even when I was a teen. Friends in the ’60s swooned over Bobby Sherman and I had no idea who he was. Yes, I’m familiar with music I heard all around me or that friends and siblings listened to, but on my own I couldn’t be bothered. I know some late ’70s music because I had a mad crush on a guy in a band when I was a college junior/senior. I watched a lot of movies on video when overseas because that’s what my now husband liked to do to relax, when we didn’t have to attend parties and receptions. I like some European metal because that’s what my older son listens to (the younger one likes classic American metal). My husband listens to rock/pop songs on Sirius that he remembers from high school and it drives me nuts.
Zulu Juliet #446809 March 6, 2025 12:43 pm 9
Listen, whipper-snapper. I never said I haven’t watched anything since 2015. I said I have, and it’s all C-R-A-P. Now get off my lawn!
Alzaebo #446824 March 6, 2025 1:52 pm 0
I think this may be the greatest comment ever made on the Internet.
johnmark7 #446881 March 6, 2025 4:47 pm 1
AI cannot begin to do what David Mamet or I can do with a script. Great dialogue depending on wit and originality is impossible for software.
usNthem #446856 March 6, 2025 3:11 pm 1
The funny thing is, these hollywood (as well as various other entertainment) asswipes still think their opinion matters. The vast majority couldn’t give two s**** or f**** what any of those turds think about anything. F ‘em all.
Major Hoople #446820 March 6, 2025 1:38 pm 1
Speaking of which, a fellow on Twitter calling himself National Conservative, just posted the cast for a production of the Odyssey. It’s headed by some creature calling herself Zendaya, and it looks like a total freak show. Hollywood used to know enough to put men like Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster barechested in such productions.
Isleofview #447018 March 7, 2025 1:43 pm 0
Lucius Sulla try “The Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James.
The Death of Hollywood American Freedom News #446962 March 7, 2025 10:12 am 0
[…]https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=33699[…]
Video Killed The Radio Star Social Media Killed The Movie Star Dissident Thoughts #446896 March 6, 2025 5:16 pm 0
[…] core porn flick. I wouldn’t even have thought about it but The Zman wrote about it today, The Death Of Hollywood. He argues that the main reason no one watches the awards shows is that most films today are just […]
Alzaebo #446766 March 6, 2025 11:01 am 0
Let me guess. No mention of Villeneuve’sDune IIon the Oscars.
Alzaebo #446779 March 6, 2025 11:32 am 3
Okay, Zman, you suckered me into googling the Oscars.Anoraactually looks interesting…very “with” the modern zeitgeist. The mummies are trying to get one last drop of nostalgia-laden adrenochrome out of their victims.Emilia Perez? Jeebus. The last gasp of the Kamala era.Sicariothis ain’t.And at least, consolation prizes forDune II.They are definitely afraid of based.Did anybody notice the unique aspect ofDune? Not a whisper of abortion or “women’s rights.” Women in the far future are back to wielding power as only women can do. And, the unnamed subtext: the ultimate prize was not the spice. The ultimate prize was the Emperor’s daughter.
Bitter reactionary #446860 March 6, 2025 3:31 pm 2
The casting decision for the emperor in Dune 2 was, in itself, so bad that not even a valid award system could overlook it. Wrecking the Chani character was even worse. It was visually stunning tho, I admit.
Greg Nikolic #446699 March 6, 2025 9:32 am -21
Hollywood is also aging. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are both in their sixties, and Cruise’s face for sure reflects the effects of plastic surgery, with it’s weird Gumby-like reflexing of the skin. The thing is, Hollywood *wants* to be white, and male. The all-female Ghostbusters 👻 remake and the you go grrl Captain Marvel’s were half-hearted attempts by almost all-male production teams to pander to wahmen, and wahmen weren’t paying. What Hollywood used to do was throw in an all-male ensemble cast with ONE token slot reserved for the bishes in the audience. Pulp Fiction, with Uma Thurman playing the little lady, is the perfect example. All Quentin Tarantino films, with the exception of Kill Bill, fit in that mold. In the end, what you can say about Hollywood is that it’ll reform itself when the diversity pressure on it slackens. Remember diversity is a popular trend, and all trends fade away.— Greg (my blog:http://www.dark.sport.blog)
RealityRules #446705 March 6, 2025 9:37 am 17
As others her have mentioned, the polite thing for you to do, Greg, would be to stop using this site to promote your blog.
Arthur Metcalf #446733 March 6, 2025 10:20 am 7
Asking him politely hasn’t worked.
Filthie #446751 March 6, 2025 10:46 am 16
Screw you guys. I’m gonna start selling steak knives and pocket fishermen here… 🙂
My Comment #446781 March 6, 2025 11:35 am 9
Don’t listen to naysayers. Selling steak knives on other writers’ blogs is an example of making America great again. I am sure Trump would approve.
Melissa #446793 March 6, 2025 12:10 pm 5
Filthie and My Comment: Hilarious. It’s worth scrolling to the very bottom of the comment section.
LFMayor #446804 March 6, 2025 12:35 pm 4
Dude! I still have a working Ronco Tadpole.


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