The scope of Robert Kennedy’s story—a hero’s journey, even an Augustinian allegory—possesses a grandeur missing from Washington right now. Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, just after winning the California Democratic primary of 1968. That Kennedy’s moral fiber was rooted in his family’s staunch Catholicism is a point made early in Episode 1 (“A New Generation”). After his brother’s assassination—a point after which a hint of sadness never quite leaves R.F.K.’s eyes—he evolves, gradually, into social progressive and crusader. Kennedy saw himself as the only hope for both ending the Vietnam War and keeping someone like LBJ or Nixon out of the White House. While running for president is usually not considered an act of self-sacrifice, for Kennedy it was—though to what extent, no one could have foreseen. The cast of talking heads that Porter assembled further this image of Bobby as a man worth idolizing despite his faults. His shrewdness, according to “Bobby Kennedy For President,” is integral to understand just how large his metamorphosis was into the radical humanitarian he became.
Not only do they tout his political acumen and his ability to connect with people across the country, but they claim that he was never an absent father, that he was the quintessential family man. What’s apparent throughout the film is how many of the problems Kennedy spoke up about during the 1960s continue to divide America today. In 1968, the year of Kennedy’s presidential run and assassination, the country seemed driven by violence. January saw the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and subsequent protests raging at home. At the end of that month, the journalist Pete Hamill wrote a letter to Kennedy imploring him to run for president, which Hamill reads from in the series. “I don’t think we can afford five summers of blood,” Hamill had written. “If you won, the country might be saved.” In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Porter includes archival footage of Kennedy breaking the news to a largely black crowd in Indiana, and quoting Aeschylus. What the country needs most now, he tells them, isn’t more division and hatred, but “love and wisdom and compassion toward one another.” Just a few months later, Kennedy himself was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Porter, who has an extraordinary amount of footage to work with, restages the event via photographs of a dying Kennedy lying in the arms of a busboy, Juan Romero. She interviews Romero, as well as Paul Schrade, one of Kennedy’s staff members who was also shot that day. There are certainly parallels to be drawn between current extremist movements in the U.S. and the wave of assassinations of political figures in the ’60s, but Kennedy himself is such a charismatic presence throughout that the series loses momentum after his death. The question of who might have killed him—and why—is obviously a compelling one. The final line in the series is Kennedy quoting Tennyson. “Come my friends,” he intones. “It's not too late to seek a newer world.” Source: www.theatlantic.com
In short, White Fragility is a horrifying call for Whites not simply to be paralyzed by White guilt, but to become active participants in their decline, and willing accomplices in their demographic destruction. Robin DiAngelo’s introduction begins with accusation. America “began with the attempted genocide of Indigenous people. American wealth was built on the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants.” So far, so familiar. But the book very quickly moves to an outline of the theory of White Fragility. DiAngelo points out: “Of course, some whites explicitly avow racism. We might consider these whites actually more aware of, and honest about, their biases.” In other words, even if we’re moral monsters in DiAngelo’s eyes, we aren’t “fragile.” Again, because of the extremes of the some of the dialectics here, certain truths emerge. DiAngelo remarks early in the book that “race matters,” something that many of our readers would agree with, even if it’s from a slightly different angle than the author intends. She also argues that: "All humans have prejudice; we cannot avoid it. People who claim not to be prejudiced are demonstrating a profound lack of self-awareness. Ironically, they are also demonstrating the power of socialization — we have all been taught in schools, through movies, and from family members, teachers, and clergy that it is important not to be prejudiced. Everyone has prejudice, and everyone discriminates." I couldn’t agree more: Whites have been uniquely affected by mass propaganda designed to brainwash them into viewing as morally evil something that is natural and instinctive to all humans. DiAngelo concludes her book with the blunt assertion that “a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.” White identity is therefore to be destroyed wholesale, and White ethnic interests crushed alongside it. DiAngelo proclaims with all the vigor of the subversive or the brainwashed that she will “strive for a less white identity, for my own liberation and sense of justice.” Liberation and justice. These words were uttered a long time ago in France. The beheadings started soon after. Source: www.theoccidentalobserver.net
Why does Hollywood feel such a need to humanize a villain? I feel like since the popularity of Breaking Bad, where we see Walter White go from being a good person to a disgusting kingpin, Hollywood took the wrong lesson away from it. They saw it as “oh, people like humanized villains who do horrible things but are just like us at core. So let’s make every villain that.” I’m okay with showing shades of grey and making a compelling character. But to outright make someone who murders for fun someone you should feel bad for is morally fucked. You shouldn’t sympathize with someone who sees murder as their only solution.
The Joker shouldn’t be seen as a character to look up to. You should never use mental health as a reason why a man starts a movement to kill others who are bothering you. The half baked storyline of mental health in Phillips' Joker pisses me off, because it could have been better but he was more focused with remaking Scorsese movies. For what it's worth, Joker's presentation of its main character is morally dubious. It's exactly the sort of underdog lone wolf vengeance narrative that would appeal to basement-dwelling alt-right sociopaths, whether or not that's what the filmmakers actually had in mind. Although I don't think that problem is necessarily a result of Fleck being humanised in the script; you can just as easily glorify a total asshole without humanising them (look at Nolan/Heath Ledger's Joker - an inhuman monster - for a perfect example).
In TV, we'll soon have a new show called Ratched created by Ryan Murphy about the villain of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Nurse Ratched is going to be more sympathetic since she'll be shown as mentally unwell. No sane, rational, or caring person would withhold lifesaving medication as part of a power play or lock people in boiling tubs. This show is from the same guy who made Hollywood, where Henry Wilson (the Harvey Weinstein of early Hollywood) got a happy ending by making the first big screen gay love story. At no point did anyone look at that and say “maybe this isn’t a good idea?” I’m okay with showing shades of grey, and making a compelling villain you want to feel bad for. But these films glorify the killing, they make it seem like this is the right thing to do, they justify it. They take a bad guy and make him someone to look up to instead of making sure that he/she is seen as the bad guy. I know I’m coming off as “humanizing a villain shouldn’t be done.” But you can humanize a villain and still show why they are completely wrong and you never shouldn't see them as an idol. Source: decider.com
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