Eyes Wide Shut keeps coming to mind!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2024

Silver screen gives us the world: Is the United States on its way out?

We can't swear that it isn't! No one knows where this is going—where the apparent madness could end up.

For ourselves, we keep thinking about Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). In particular, we think about the scene in the mansion out on Long Island, where a secret society is seen to be conducting a ritualistic orgy.

For what it's worth, we recall the ritualized orgy as being built around throwback practices involving the ancient, prehistoric rights of male dominance. We haven't yet rewatched the film, but as we recall it, the secret lurking within that scene is this:

At some point, certain types of powerful people will insist on reinstating the dominance of ancient impulses and ancient practices. 

We can't help thinking that we may have reached some such time here in this country—a time when Blue America's insistence on the headlong pursuit of certain types of social change have convinced a certain assembly of powerful elements that the time has finally come to stop putting up with such arrangements.

The western world began on the plains outside Troy. Among other problems of the present age, the primitive sexual politics of that era seems to be found all through the annals of the Trump appointments.

The western world came to life in an age of unhinged kings like Agamemnon stealing young women from neighboring villages and from other warriors as they fight to get Helen back for their tribal group. This is where we humans started. In the sometimes comically awful sexual histories of the Trump nominees, it begins to seem that we may be headed back there.

The lack of discernment within our own Blue America is making it very hard to resist this onslaught. In our view, the incoming president has nominated a toy chest full of broken toys to serve him during his upcoming term. Over here in Blue America, we barely know how to describe these remarkable events, let alone how to resist them.

We Blues! As we've sometimes noted in the past, we're silly and clueless and nobody likes us! Despite that unmistakable fact, the landslide inflicted upon us last week now looks like this, CNN reporting:

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 76,657,498 (49.9%)
Candidate Harris: 74,064,106 (48.3%)

Thanks to the erratic behavior of the greatest president in modern history, the losing candidate didn't even know she was running until late July—and no, she didn't run "a flawless campaign," as we hear some Blue Americans saying.

Under the circumstances, that victory margin strikes us as remarkably slender. Will it be enough to bring our society down, such as it ever was?

Eyes Wide Shut and (Hitchcock's) Notorious and Gladiator oh my! We think of them as major films which seem to hint at where we actually are.