Critical Drinker Knows Why Most Modern Movies Suck! | Yes!...But... | YBT005 CWP043

Are we witnessing a storytelling crisis in the realm of modern cinema? Oh yeah we are! And the Critical Drinker gets it!

Tune into our latest Cloud of Witnesses Radio episode, where we dissect the heavy-handed integration of social politics in today's films and series with our special guests Jeremy, Nick, John, Joshua, Dom, and Robert. We'll unravel the trend of humor overload, often labeled 'Marvel humor', and the polarizing effect of gender and role-swapping within cherished franchises. You'll hear us share candid moments of media discontent, as we grapple with the distinction between the seamless weaving of diverse characters into the narrative fabric and instances when it feels like a clumsy afterthought. We navigate the tricky waters of delivering social messages with finesse and invite you to consider if there's still room for subtlety in the art of storytelling.

Join us as we celebrate films that resonate on a deeper level, like "Man of God", and question whether modern movies are too often guilty of hollow moral posturing. Can the power of art truly unite us in these divisive times? We debate this, illustrating the dangerous potential of division orchestrated through film. Our conversation culminates with a powerful reflection on the role of authentic, connective storytelling in society. This episode is an urgent call to all who cherish the transformative potential of cinema to foster unity and inspire profundity through the stories we tell and receive. Don't miss this engaging chapter of Cloud of Witnesses Radio, where we confront the challenges and champion the successes of contemporary storytelling.  Yes, Critical Drinker, But...

Thank you for journeying w/ the Saints with us!

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I think the same is true of the critical drinker. As much as I like his commentary and he's putting his finger on why so many modern movies are terrible, his answer is well, just preach at us less or write better, whereas I would want to say, as an Orthodox Christian, no, how about we write stories that reflect the truth of the reality of the universe? Ie that God created this world, he created men and women with particular roles. We have, we are stewards of this earth and we can, we are called to fulfill those roles, et cetera, and in there is heroism and courage and loss and sacrifice, and I believe that's where the true romantic, historically speaking movie shines. And so I think that's where the critical drinker is probably lacking. 

But a good art, or just good art in general, like I said, is, is, is participatory, it brings you in. You're supposed to, you're supposed to get something out of it. Right, you're supposed to learn something and in what you guys have been talking about, I think, most importantly, you're supposed to learn about yourself through this process as well, because you're stepping in the shoes. It's basically a spiritual journey that they're allowing others to go through this prism of a movie or visual art or literature. 

My first thought is what Jonathan Pageau refers to as parasitic storytelling and why I think that's a perfect descriptor for what's happening with Snow White is they're not interested in the Snow White story. They're just using that name to get attention and then telling the story they wanna tell Interesting. So there's nothing actually creative about it. And if they were being honest, they would just tell the story they wanna tell, which would have nothing to do with Snow White. The problem is no one would care, wow well played. 

God bless you!
IC XC NIKA

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

A really clunky insertion of social politics into things, because previous generations are screenwriters. My name is Michael, I'm out of the Senate, or the Supreme being.

Speaker 2: 0:11

I am not an atheist, I've never been an atheist. I've never been People are too afraid to believe that they have control over their own actions.

Speaker 4: 0:19

Hi, I'm Jeremy, Hi, I'm Nick.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hi I'm John, Hi I'm Joshua, hi I'm Dom.

Speaker 4: 0:28

Hello this is.

Speaker 5: 0:28

Robert, and this is Cloud of Witnesses on our series. Yes, but but Awesome.

Speaker 4: 0:35

Today, you guys, we're going to be jumping into a video that most of us in fact, everyone but me has not seen yet. So we're excited to see this. So here we go. Let me get this cued up for you guys real fast. Let's do this.

Speaker 2: 0:48

What are some of the tenets of bad modern writing? The?

Speaker 1: 0:50

tendency to take an existing property and swap in a female lead who's going to replace the old war knight male lead. The injection of humour into everything. We call it patented Marvel humour, because that really took off in the Marvel films and it seems to have slowly infected everything. The really clunky insertion of social politics into things, because previous generations of screenwriters they knew how to work in social ideas and stuff. That was good. It's good to get people thinking. There's a big difference between that, though, and just straight up telling them you have to think this particular way and if you don't, you're a bad person. And it feels like we've gone way down that other road now with the movies, where it's just about the writer's got some hang up over something and they're just going to shove that into their storytelling.

Speaker 4: 1:31

Raise your hand if you felt like a movie has preached to you in the past year. I know I have. I haven't finished any of them. Yeah right, Exactly.

Speaker 5: 1:41

Such a turn off yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:43

It's such a great point. I have started so many Netflix series because I happen to be a junkie, I love that stuff, I'm a sucker for it, and they'll get me with the first episode, because it's easy to do a first episode that hooks you but then, without fail, by that second episode, they're introducing their you know their token, you know homosexual character. They're this, they're that, they're non-binary, this and it's right in your face, it's, you know, it's two guys kissing, it's all this and I'm just like why? I just wanted to see a really cool science fiction film.

Speaker 6: 2:20

Batman, the latest version of Batman, and then I made it about five minutes in and then the character who was going to become Catwoman said something very, very close to verbatim, like those white privileged assholes. Excuse me, but that was what she said and I was like, all right, that's how far I made it into that movie and I just turned it off because it was just so blatant, you know.

Speaker 5: 2:42

I'm agreeing with almost everything. I'm not. I'm finding a lot of yes and I'm not finding a lot of, but you know, and it's probably because he didn't really make any claims, he was more just saying, he was more just being critical about modern storytelling, but he wasn't saying this is how things should be.

Speaker 3: 2:57

Yeah, my gut reaction is that there's kind of this general dumbing down. Like people can't really think for themselves, we need to educate them. You know, come hell or high water, we don't care really what they believe or if they have actually a well educated opinion or whatnot. We're just going to tell you how it is and that's that really is a turn off, because you just feel like you being preached to and it's like I was going to bring up Batman.

Speaker 2: 3:24

That's exactly what I was thinking of, that one scene with Catwoman. But I continued watching because I was in theater with my parents and my sister. It was pretty well executed, with the usual effects, cgi, decent acting. If you're going to preach to me, tell me the right things, but if you're going to preach to me something that I, that's obviously wrong. Yeah, goodbye. Interesting, that's how I am really. But yeah, just the execution of some of the films and the way that they just force it right in, that's a huge gripe of mine.

Speaker 7: 3:59

I think a lot of us who line up right of the spectrum, you know our gut reaction is to get tense at those things. You know the whole social justice things that are popped up in movies and films. But even to what even John said, I think the movie executes even the preaching well, it doesn't really bother me that much. I watched the gangs in New York recently, this last week, and even that movie, even though it's the context, is completely different, the characters are completely different, way out of our time. But there's two opposing sides, like one Catholic, one Protestant, you know, in this, in this movie, and both sides preach their own, their own things throughout the film. But it's it's important that those things, that those ideas are ideologues or even the tribalism is there in the movie, because that puts the characters in that movie, or at least it puts the necessary attention in that story for the characters to actually grow and develop.

Speaker 4: 5:03

Interesting. I think that you know this series is called yes, butch and Nick. You were kind of, you know, looking for where's the but in this. I would liken this to something like we talked recently about Jordan Peterson, who's given this great motivational speech and yet the question becomes well, motivation for what? Like? What's? What is his North Star Right Like? What is this orientation that Jordan Peterson is referring to?

Speaker 4: 5:26

And I think the same is true of the critical drinker. As much as I like his commentary and he's putting his finger on why so many modern movies are terrible, his answer is well, just preach at us less or write better, whereas I would want to say, as an Orthodox Christian, no, how about we write stories that reflect the truth of the reality of the universe? Ie that God created this world, he created men and women with particular roles. We have, we are stewards of this earth and we can, we are called to fulfill those roles, et cetera, and in there is heroism and courage and loss and sacrifice, and I believe that's where the true romantic, historically speaking movie shines. And so I think that's where the critical drinker is probably lacking. So I'd love to get you guys' thoughts and, yeah, yeah, I agree with that.

Speaker 3: 6:27

I think one of the problems that you know that I really struggle with and why I don't have patience for this kind of thing, is because it's following a formula. It's very formulaic. It's like you know, they lay it all out and you're just like you know, like a little baby, just you know, just eating it up, you know, and it's like no life is more complex than that. It's not easy. There are shades of gray, things are not clear. Let's see if we can work this out so that these complexities we can make sense of. But don't feed it to me as if these things are not complex and it is just the way it is. And boom, here it is and you eat it. You know, I just don't like it. If it's simple like that, I just don't believe it. Life is not simple.

Speaker 5: 7:07

Yeah, even some Christian movies can be a little cringy to watch because it's so one dimensional. It's like, and now what we're seeing in mainstream media is more of the left, one dimensional storytelling, right, and I think the reason why the left and why mainstream media has become so one dimensional in its storytelling is because no one wants to talk about what truth is. And if you don't have truth, then you don't have character development, then you don't have purpose, right, you can't have any of these things. So what do you have? I love what he said. It was like Marvel. What was it? Marvel comedy-ism or something when it's just like pointless characters just kind of walking around and telling pointless jokes right, and that's about the only thing you can do is this is this kind of goldfish joke telling with CGI to kind of spice it up.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Yeah, I agree entirely with the idea that no storytelling is inherently neutral, and so whoever's writing that story is obviously gonna be pulling out of his own baggage closet, his own worldview baggage closet, and he's gonna be importing his own paradigm and worldview and or religion into the storytelling, just like Tolkien. Tolkien didn't like Allagorist, but he was kind of forced to write along those lines. So, yeah, I believe that a good movie will be able to. If it's gonna preach, it'll preach the right things. It will show you the truth of reality, it will reflect reality itself. But it will show people the truth and at the same time, execute it well, to present it well, right messaging, right execution, both at the same time. That's why I'm like I don't mind being preached to as long as it's done well, as long as it's the truth, as long as it's something I can agree with.

Speaker 2: 8:59

So it's not like these people who are saying, oh, but I don't wanna be preached to. Well, you're gonna be preached to and one way or another you're gonna be preached to. You're gonna be given some kind of you could say a paradigm. You're gonna be given some kind of paradigm. You're not gonna be given this totally neutral thing that doesn't really tell you anything. It's gonna tell you something about reality.

Speaker 6: 9:21

Sort of brings it down to. For me, and maybe what the butt is is like Okay, yes, but what is the distinguishing characteristic of a good movie that's not so obviously preaching? The one thing that I would say is it puts the viewer in the hot seat. It doesn't put the viewer in this disembodied space to just judge everything. A good story is going to draw you into the conflict and you're going to feel that internal conflict within yourself. You're going to feel the complexity of that struggle, like Robert was talking about, and so it's going to make you look at yourself right, rather than what is being offered by the left and in their movies, which is this unerring sense of moral superiority, which is cheap. It's completely cheap and it's already presented to you, like you said, robert, like it's already the formula. All you have to do is accept it. Just accept how bad, how obviously bad these people are, and now you get to be good because you don't have that particular sin. But it's not making the viewer look at their own sin.

Speaker 7: 10:35

There's a difference between art and entertainment. Right, and art is what you're saying, joshua, art is. It flows right, it brings you in, it's kind of just like and of course, it's saying right, it's like when we go to divine liturgy at church, like there's a flow to it, there's not just like this formulaic thing that we do, there's a flow that draws into into the liturgy, and good art does that, whether it's like a film or or visual arts, like it's there to tell you a story and it's there for you to help you internalize what's going on, what's being presented in the art. Right For you to be participatory. Like I think art is an example of, of synergy between God and man, whatever that art may be.

Speaker 7: 11:23

But a good art, or just good art in general, like I said, is, is, is participatory, it brings you in. You're supposed to, you're supposed to get something out of it. Right, you're supposed to learn something and in what you guys have been talking about, I think, most importantly, you're supposed to learn about yourself through this process as well, because you're stepping in the shoes. It's basically a spiritual journey that they're allowing others to go through this prism of a movie or visual art or literature.

Speaker 3: 11:55

So yeah, I think there's a role for preaching, but preaching it's very one-sided, isn't it? It's like one person downloading information, if you will right, and the recipients just are merely that, just recipients, and I think that's a real, there's a place for that, don't get me wrong, but I think it's usefulness is limited. I think, and I think we're all object to watching a movie and you're feeling like you're sitting in a pew in church and all you're doing is just listening and you can't really do anything and you're not engaged. I think what I never said you guys, fantastic conversation.

Speaker 4: 12:34

That's why I really appreciate all of your input. I wanna draw your attention to a couple of examples to Injection Position. I think all of us here have had the great pleasure to see the movie man of God, and those of you that are watching this video right now, if you have not seen the movie man of God, I think all of us would say, please go watch it right after this video. It's a wonderful film. It's a Christian film telling the story of the life of Saint Nectarios, who is, in many ways, is a modern day, if you will Saint. And what's amazing about that story is is that you have preaching, in so far as his life preaches Christ. Right, the director doesn't have to preach. The writer, who happens to be the same person as the director, didn't have to write it to say, oh, we're gonna preach this and we're gonna convince the audience of this. She just had to tell the story of Saint Nectarios and that story is what presents the message in such a beautiful way. And to contrast that with maybe you guys have heard of, they are about to release the new Snow White.

Speaker 4: 13:51

Have you guys heard of this, the new live action Snow White film.

Speaker 4: 13:56

It stars an actress named Rachel Zegler, who is evidently like in Latina, and there was all kinds of controversy around this film because they got rid of the Seven Dwarves, because of course that's not cool anymore, and they replaced it with some men and women and some non-binary people and it's just kind of off the rails. And the Rachel Zegler she has said a number of things that got her in a lot of trouble, and so they've postponed the movie from 2023 to 2024, now to 2025. My point is is that to me, that encapsulates modern movies with the critical jinkers talking about, and that is, they don't wanna tell a good story. They want you to see a Latina as Snow White. They want you to see non-binary dwarves or magical creatures. They don't want the story to be about love and romance. They want it to be about her seeking the power, the woman boss that she knows she can be, because we all think of women bosses when we think of Snow White, right? So I just wanted to bring those two to our attention and get your guys' thoughts.

Speaker 6: 15:09

My first thought is what Peugeot refers to as parasitic storytelling and why I think that's a perfect descriptor for what's happening with Snow White is they're not interested in the Snow White story. They're just using that name to get attention and then telling the story they wanna tell Interesting. So there's nothing actually creative about it. And if they were being honest, they would just tell the story they wanna tell, which would have nothing to do with Snow White. The problem is no one would care, wow well played.

Speaker 6: 15:42

No one would care, and so they have to take somebody else's creativity right and become parasitic upon that and then just to say, conversely with man of God, yeah, it preaches without preaching. And I mean it's just so amazing when you watch somebody like that, because it's not overdone, it's not overstated at all His demeanor throughout the whole movie. I mean I've never seen anything like that. I've never had a movie convict me so subtly, without trying to tell me that I'm doing something wrong.

Speaker 5: 16:22

Yeah, whether it's life or it's storytelling, exactly what you're saying, Joshua. Preach the gospel always and when necessary, use words Right. Walk the walk, Walking the walk. The proof is in the pudding.

Speaker 2: 16:38

I guess the older you get and the more aware you are of the implications of art and creativity and films, the more realistic films become a lot more interesting than the purely fantastical fictional works.

Speaker 3: 16:56

The more I think about this subject, the more I think that this is not simply a message to movie makers, but it's a message to all of us that we should stop trading in stereotypes. We should stop trading in playing tropes, playing on people's feelings. I also think we should stop with the oversimplification. Whether you're left right, I don't care. We've got to stop with this stuff because it is not helpful. It's a figment of our imagination and we're not furthering dialogue. We're only making enemies and we're not getting any further in understanding what is truly behind these things and how we can further working together.

Speaker 7: 17:38

When you start to become insrespected by just watching a film. Like you know, that's a good film. It's harder more in the culture where people are just wanting to be entertained for the sake of entertainment.

Speaker 4: 17:50

You know, I think that good art brings people together, right, it draws people together, whereas the modern day films seem to be, as Robert was saying, dividing us. Right, and to me, if something's dividing us, it's straight from the devil. Right, it's demons. All right, you guys. This has been Cloud of Witnesses Radio, yes, but thank you so much for watching this long. We'll see you guys on the next one.