Lurking despised in the annals of horror cinema history is a 1995 film called The Mangler, adapted from a Stephen King short story (readable here). It is about an industrial laundry press that is, to just come out and say it, possessed. This ludicrous concept enables much gore but also gives the film its comic notoriety.
"In the real world, we see constant cultural decline. Your handwriting is probably not as ornate as that of your parents, which in turn is inferior to that of your grandparents." This is just perfectly spot on. And once you notice it, you can't stop. Manners of speaking decline with each generation. Dress too -- especially in just the last couple of years. Whenever I go to my family's church I'm still a bit surprised at seeing almost no men wearing ties or jackets. Even few women wearing dresses. Even just a decade ago and certainly 20 years ago, people wore their Sunday best.
Your article reminds me of this over focus on decline. And the issue of merely noticing decline. Just a tangent.
Problem I find with conservatives if their hyper fixation on decline and wailing about it. I'd rather watch a cat die than listen to another conservatard wail about decline. It's the most depressing, whiny, most anti-life affirming shit imaginable. People like Douglas Murry speak. Wailing about decline. How "The West (some liberal degenerate shopping version of it)" is in decline. Something that is not original with Conservatives (and many Nationalists too. not Fascists). There's 10,000 of them. Peter Hitchens. Take your pick. How does one not want to throw themselves out a window, listening to that shit? Ironically, what is lost on them is that they're part of the decline themselves. The decline of one's spirit. The embodiment of despair, despondency, sloth, that leads to paralysis, and a lack of action, vitality, and purpose. If everything is in decline, why do anything and not just watch it all wither and die? Nihilism.
These people don't believe radical rebirth, regeneration, revolutionary hierarchical idealism, etc. Anything life-affirming. They don't believe in paragonism-being a paragon- striving to embody higher ideals and higher states of being. No future progressive hierarchy. That moves yourself, your society, onwards and upwards. No. Just stasis and atrophic decline. One forges hierarchy in one self and society.
Decline is not the only state that exist. So does ascension. Transcendence. Incline. Rebirth. Life and the universe is cyclical.
Wasn’t sure where you were going with this at the start, but I have to give it 10/10 for very creatively weaving this unheard of film, Mangler, with problematic political points of our time
We seem an inherently hierarchical species (but what species isn't?). A management consultant I talked to back in Germany told me that when he was brought in to help with problem companies/departments, 100% of the time it was down to bad leadership. Even with so-called emergent behaviour, the leader must encourage or discourage such things, there's no getting away from top-down responsibility. Thus, in a sufficiently horrific society one might as well hypothesise a "demon" as guiding principle, whether a malign non-human intelligence is literally at work, or if "demon" is just a word we use for certain patterns of human thought & motivation.
Anonymous Conservative noted that we've found evidence of child sacrifice all over the planet, as if totally isolated, disconnected populations spontaneously decide that they can accrue some benefit from killing babies.
I've come to believe these malign intelligences exist and interact with us; that they in some way require our suffering & relish our degradation. There are the isolated cases of influence, e.g. a serial killer; even worse, they occasionally seem able to influence an entire society through conventional material means (propaganda etc). My guess is, those at the very top of society have some ritualistic means of interacting with such an intelligence, and that ritual has become a means of in-group cohesion, like wearing a badge or having a secret handshake. I prefer not to speculate too much but there's so much purposeful evil about us now, that I can't just shrug and say "yeah people are weird, it must be emergent behaviour".
Next time someone asks what happened to my hand I'll whisper, horribly, "Tell me, how do you feel about industrial laundry presses...?"
Truly a fascinating essay. I think it's remarkable that you're able to glean so much insight from a frankly mediocre source. I rented the movie via old school Blockbuster and remember dismissing it as typical Stephen King hatred of traditional America.
I found this bit in particular very interesting:
"In the real world, we see constant cultural decline. Your handwriting is probably not as ornate as that of your parents, which in turn is inferior to that of your grandparents. This decline affects everything from manners to cultural tastes to thought itself - what Humanities professor today can hold a candle to his predecessors from 1890?"
This is true. It is so true and so tragic and so bizarre, and when you mention it to normies you get the sense that they can sense it too and yet have been conditioned to not think about it too much. Pursuing it to it's logical endpoint is embarrassing. References to 1984 have become more than cliche at this point, but I'm reminded of how the regime was able to not only make certain ideas illegal but to even make them shameful.
Still I think that eventually the disparity between what we have NOW vs what we had THEN will be impossible to ignore. The other day my daughters and I were watching an old movie set in the 70s and they asked me what it was like back then. I told them, we had way less people back then (our country's population has doubled via immigration since I was born), and nearly everyone was white. My younger daughter said, "Honestly that sounds really nice."
This brought back some memories for me. In between the ages of 10 and 15 you couldn’t find me without a Stephen King book (probably not the best material for a developing child to read but it gave me large vocabulary).
Here in America (and the West generally) it seems we’ve lost the plot. The people running the show have these looney tune ideas about how the world works and they’re completely and utterly detached from what is actually going on. I’ve personally seen that anywhere and everywhere from the southern border to college campuses.
I shall seek this one out now, 30 years after its release. I cannot recall even seeing this on cable at 3 AM on a weekend after coming home from the bar back in the late ‘90s. It must have been a single-weekend flop at the theaters.
"Capitalism equalises people in a much more insidious way than Communism. Under capitalism, moronic mediocrity is celebrated while anything beautiful or refined or rare is despised, and encouraged to mix itself with the common and base."
Very true. This is a great piece. Critiques of capitalism from the right are always very refreshing. The Reform's and Republican's of this world are just as much part of the problem because they operate within the tight confines of neoliberalism.
Sometimes, people hate what is true - especially when they see it in themselves. At least, that was my initial thoughts when reading about the reception of the film by viewers and critics.
I assume it resonated on some level (conscious or not) with many people and that left a bad taste in their mouths.
An excellent example of where the "west" is, how we got here and what is ahead- a lot of gore.
Probably your best article.
"In the real world, we see constant cultural decline. Your handwriting is probably not as ornate as that of your parents, which in turn is inferior to that of your grandparents." This is just perfectly spot on. And once you notice it, you can't stop. Manners of speaking decline with each generation. Dress too -- especially in just the last couple of years. Whenever I go to my family's church I'm still a bit surprised at seeing almost no men wearing ties or jackets. Even few women wearing dresses. Even just a decade ago and certainly 20 years ago, people wore their Sunday best.
Your article reminds me of this over focus on decline. And the issue of merely noticing decline. Just a tangent.
Problem I find with conservatives if their hyper fixation on decline and wailing about it. I'd rather watch a cat die than listen to another conservatard wail about decline. It's the most depressing, whiny, most anti-life affirming shit imaginable. People like Douglas Murry speak. Wailing about decline. How "The West (some liberal degenerate shopping version of it)" is in decline. Something that is not original with Conservatives (and many Nationalists too. not Fascists). There's 10,000 of them. Peter Hitchens. Take your pick. How does one not want to throw themselves out a window, listening to that shit? Ironically, what is lost on them is that they're part of the decline themselves. The decline of one's spirit. The embodiment of despair, despondency, sloth, that leads to paralysis, and a lack of action, vitality, and purpose. If everything is in decline, why do anything and not just watch it all wither and die? Nihilism.
These people don't believe radical rebirth, regeneration, revolutionary hierarchical idealism, etc. Anything life-affirming. They don't believe in paragonism-being a paragon- striving to embody higher ideals and higher states of being. No future progressive hierarchy. That moves yourself, your society, onwards and upwards. No. Just stasis and atrophic decline. One forges hierarchy in one self and society.
Decline is not the only state that exist. So does ascension. Transcendence. Incline. Rebirth. Life and the universe is cyclical.
Eh. Equality matters. Caring about others. A sense of fairness.
However, without hierarchy, we descend into the muck.
The two are manifestations of the human experience and life itself.
Humans are complex creatures.
Wasn’t sure where you were going with this at the start, but I have to give it 10/10 for very creatively weaving this unheard of film, Mangler, with problematic political points of our time
Fight or die.
Either way.
Do it quietly.
Nice photo of Bill Gates ordering at Dick’s in North Seattle. The banality of evil, eh?
Very interesting piece, Woes.
We seem an inherently hierarchical species (but what species isn't?). A management consultant I talked to back in Germany told me that when he was brought in to help with problem companies/departments, 100% of the time it was down to bad leadership. Even with so-called emergent behaviour, the leader must encourage or discourage such things, there's no getting away from top-down responsibility. Thus, in a sufficiently horrific society one might as well hypothesise a "demon" as guiding principle, whether a malign non-human intelligence is literally at work, or if "demon" is just a word we use for certain patterns of human thought & motivation.
Anonymous Conservative noted that we've found evidence of child sacrifice all over the planet, as if totally isolated, disconnected populations spontaneously decide that they can accrue some benefit from killing babies.
I've come to believe these malign intelligences exist and interact with us; that they in some way require our suffering & relish our degradation. There are the isolated cases of influence, e.g. a serial killer; even worse, they occasionally seem able to influence an entire society through conventional material means (propaganda etc). My guess is, those at the very top of society have some ritualistic means of interacting with such an intelligence, and that ritual has become a means of in-group cohesion, like wearing a badge or having a secret handshake. I prefer not to speculate too much but there's so much purposeful evil about us now, that I can't just shrug and say "yeah people are weird, it must be emergent behaviour".
Next time someone asks what happened to my hand I'll whisper, horribly, "Tell me, how do you feel about industrial laundry presses...?"
Truly a fascinating essay. I think it's remarkable that you're able to glean so much insight from a frankly mediocre source. I rented the movie via old school Blockbuster and remember dismissing it as typical Stephen King hatred of traditional America.
I found this bit in particular very interesting:
"In the real world, we see constant cultural decline. Your handwriting is probably not as ornate as that of your parents, which in turn is inferior to that of your grandparents. This decline affects everything from manners to cultural tastes to thought itself - what Humanities professor today can hold a candle to his predecessors from 1890?"
This is true. It is so true and so tragic and so bizarre, and when you mention it to normies you get the sense that they can sense it too and yet have been conditioned to not think about it too much. Pursuing it to it's logical endpoint is embarrassing. References to 1984 have become more than cliche at this point, but I'm reminded of how the regime was able to not only make certain ideas illegal but to even make them shameful.
Still I think that eventually the disparity between what we have NOW vs what we had THEN will be impossible to ignore. The other day my daughters and I were watching an old movie set in the 70s and they asked me what it was like back then. I told them, we had way less people back then (our country's population has doubled via immigration since I was born), and nearly everyone was white. My younger daughter said, "Honestly that sounds really nice."
This brought back some memories for me. In between the ages of 10 and 15 you couldn’t find me without a Stephen King book (probably not the best material for a developing child to read but it gave me large vocabulary).
Here in America (and the West generally) it seems we’ve lost the plot. The people running the show have these looney tune ideas about how the world works and they’re completely and utterly detached from what is actually going on. I’ve personally seen that anywhere and everywhere from the southern border to college campuses.
It’s disheartening, to say the least.
What power did the demon give to its subservients?
I shall seek this one out now, 30 years after its release. I cannot recall even seeing this on cable at 3 AM on a weekend after coming home from the bar back in the late ‘90s. It must have been a single-weekend flop at the theaters.
"Capitalism equalises people in a much more insidious way than Communism. Under capitalism, moronic mediocrity is celebrated while anything beautiful or refined or rare is despised, and encouraged to mix itself with the common and base."
Very true. This is a great piece. Critiques of capitalism from the right are always very refreshing. The Reform's and Republican's of this world are just as much part of the problem because they operate within the tight confines of neoliberalism.
Sometimes, people hate what is true - especially when they see it in themselves. At least, that was my initial thoughts when reading about the reception of the film by viewers and critics.
I assume it resonated on some level (conscious or not) with many people and that left a bad taste in their mouths.
The Matriarchy is the The Mangler that regularly sacrifices females to feminism. Their sacrifice is husbandlessness and childlessness.