Rationalized Lust

“The evidence, however, is all in, and the verdict is clear: modernity is rationalized lust . . . . Critical parlance notwithstanding, there is no postmodern age, just thinkers following the ever-constricting ruts of sexual liberation in increasingly compulsive, increasingly self-negating ways. If there is ever to be a postmodern era, it will have to …

Thank You, Thank You

“‘Sentimentality,’ by definition, is an outpouring of false emotion—for sentimental people do not feel much genuine emotion, wallowing in substitutes. (‘You’re a wonderful audience; I love you all.’)” [Richard Grenier, Capturing The Culture (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991), p. 313].

And This From An Industry That Specializes in Brazen Hypocrisies

“Low-cast Hindus, in short, suffered humiliations in their native India compared to which the carrying of identity cards in South Africa was almost trivial. In fact, Gandhi, to his credit, was to campaign strenuously in his later life for the reduction of caste barriers in India—a campaign almost invisible in the movie, of course, conveyed …

Well, Not Exactly

“A result of all this is that New York’s purveyors of high cinema art have chosen to import from France, Germany, Italy, or wherever, a hand-picked selection of those countries’ intimate, unconventional, or intellectually ambitious movies. There is certainly nothing wrong with a nothing-but-the-best policy for that American elite within the elite which enjoys foreign …

And It Appears To Have Worked

“A deviant from a Leninist (and even Marxist) point of view, Gramsci formulated in his Prison Notebooks the doctrine that those who want to change society must change man’s consciousness, and that in order to accomplish this they must first control the institutions by which that consciousness is formed: schools, universities, churches, and, perhaps above …