David Dubrow

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Movie Review: The Last Jedi

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Despite my abhorrence of gigantic show business franchises, I watched The Last Jedi on Netflix. I’d seen all the other Star Wars films, not counting the side-story movies, so I was interested to find out what happened.

This was a mistake.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is awful. Objectively awful. It’s so awful that ten minutes into the film you realize that writer-director Rian Johnson made such an awful film because he wanted to make an awful film to alienate fans of the first trilogy. Johnson’s intent was to destroy the Star Wars universe as previously conceived because he hates it, and he succeeded beyond anyone’s most fevered nightmares. Not only does Johnson hate Star Wars, but he also hates masculinity, heroism, and traditional storytelling. The proof is in the movie.

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Part One: Rian Johnson Hates Masculinity

Every one of the male characters in the movie was evil, stupid, foolish, or a combination of the three. Every one of the female characters was brave, strong, wise, and properly scornful of the worthless men infesting the galaxy. It’s a male feminist’s perspective of male-female qualities, and as we all know, there’s little on this Earth more deserving of contempt than a male feminist. Male feminists loathe the masculine virtues and eschew the responsibilities of being men. Here’s a brief rundown of Rian Johnson’s characters. Star Wars is his now, not yours. The characters don’t belong to you. Love them or adopt the mantle of misogynist.

  • Luke Skywalker: Homicidal RE: Ben Solo (hence evil) and retreats to a distant planet to eliminate the Jedi order, arguably the last objective force for good in the galaxy (also evil).
  • Kylo Ren: Childish, evil, destructive, stupid.
  • Finn: As useful as a chocolate teapot, foolish.
  • Poe: Foolish, impetuous, mutinous.
  • DJ: Evil.
  • Leia: Brave, strong, wise, slaps Poe because she can. Always has her jaw clenched, presumably because she has to deal with stupid men all the time.
  • Holdo: Brave, strong, wise, condescending, brilliant.
  • Rose Tico: Brave, strong, wise.
  • Rey: We’ll get to her later.

None of these characters were the least bit likable. No effort was made for us to care about them or what they did.

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Part Two: Rian Johnson Hates Heroism

Every time a male character was about to engage in some sort of heroic activity, his plan was either quashed or interfered with, because the Star Wars universe isn’t about heroes. It’s about…um…I don’t know what it’s about anymore. I do know that Luke Skywalker, the hero of the Rebellion from the original trilogy, the man who blew up the first Death Star and saved Darth Vader’s soul, did nothing at all heroic in The Last Jedi. He ran away to be a disgusting hermit who drinks green milk from the tits of gigantic space walruses. He seeks to destroy the Jedi order, which used to be a hero factory, and erase his own legacy. Then he kills himself. That’s the Rian Johnson version of a hero.

Poe disarms the First Order’s most frightening ship, the dreadnought, but Leia slaps and demotes him because some people died in the fight. Even though it’s a war and people die in wars. His heroism is unwelcome in the Rebellion, you see.

Finn attempts an act of self-sacrifice that will give the Rebellion precious time to find a path to escape, but the brave, strong, and wise Rose Tico stops him at the last second, because these kinds of heroics are unwelcome in the Rebellion. She even tells him, “I saved you. That’s how we’ll win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” So it’s a war fought by devotees of My Little Pony. That’s the Rebellion.

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Part Three: Rian Johnson Hates Traditional Storytelling

The terrible plot holes, dialogue, and storytelling could only have been created by someone deliberately attempting to subvert audience expectations regarding the nature of a well-told story.

  • Space Bombers: There’s no gravity in space. Everybody knows that. And yet the Rebellion has spaceships that drop bombs onto other spaceships. In space.
  • Dreadnought: The First Order’s most frightening ship was rendered useless by one X-wing and a space bomber. That drops bombs. In space.
  • Leia’s Spacewalk: Who knew Leia could manipulate the Force so well that she can survive explosive decompression and the deadly environment of outer space? Why hasn’t she done this kind of thing before?
  • Holdo’s Hyperspace Trick: Why hasn’t every Rebel force used this tactic until now to wipe out First Order fleets? Why can’t the hyperspace-capable ships have a remote “turn into fleet-destroying missile” system in place so the captains don’t have to die? How do you not slam into a star, meteor, moon, or other ship if hyperspace is just a way of going very, very fast?
  • The Casino Planet: The Last Jedi was the longest movie in the franchise. It didn’t need to be. Nothing Rose or Finn did throughout the film had any effect on anything else that happened. They went to the casino planet, heaped scorn on all the rich white people, went back, and achieved absolutely nothing except for wasting several minutes of our time. They didn’t have anything else for Finn to do and they needed another box to check with Rose Tico, the charmless, dwarfish space mechanic. Plot padding this obvious has to be deliberate.
  • Finn’s Phasma Fight: An anticlimactic ordeal that lasted about a minute. Phasma is the new Boba Fett: cool outfit, no personality or interest to her character, had a stupid death. Or maybe she’s not dead. Who cares? There wasn’t enough build-up between Finn and Phasma in the previous movie to make this fight anything other than dumb.
  • Rey: She’s the ultimate Mary Sue. She can do anything and everything better than everyone else. Brave, strong, and wise, she spurns Kylo’s offer because there wasn’t anything in it for her: she can rule the galaxy herself, thank you. Her training, such as it was, consists of minimal strain and meager introspection; she’s already stronger in the Force than Luke himself. Especially in lifting rocks. Even her parentage is meaningless: like a god, she just is. No Hero’s Journey for her, no sacrifice, no self-discovery; she transcends all that. Yawn. Why should we care?

—

On top of hating everything else, Rian Johnson really hates the original Star Wars movies, and proves that by having Luke casually toss his old lightsaber away the first minute you see him. That’s Johnson giving the middle finger to you sad, neckbearded fans who wanted to see the old stuff. Luke’s pathetic, fade-away death puts the exclamation point on that. No mourning scene over Han Solo. Admiral Ackbar just dies off-screen. C-3PO and R2-D2 get throwaway lines.

So…so you liked the original Star Wars? Well, that’s done: we’re throwing that crap away and remaking it into our own image, where the Force is female, where wars are fought with love, and where the masculine virtues are squatted over and pissed upon. And if you don’t like that, you’re sexist. And probably racist. That’s what the new Star Wars is about. I hope you dig it, because there’s nothing else coming. Deal, manbabies.

Inevitably after a review like this, someone will say, “Well, I liked it.” Good for you. You were entertained.

I wasn’t. This was an awful movie, and everyone involved in it should be embarrassed to be part of such a piece of SJW trash. And if you liked it, maybe you should be embarrassed, too.

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An Appalling Interview

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Christian Toto interviewed Paul Hair, Ray Zacek, and yours truly on his site Hollywood in Toto:

HiT: “Bake Me a Cake” is ripped directly from the headlines with a sneaky twist. Can you share why you decided to tackle that topic head on?

Dave Dubrow: A writer friend suggested the idea behind Bake Me a Cake some time ago: a story about a mom-and-pop bakery asked to do “The Aristocrats” of cakes. He/She requested that he/she remain anonymous, which is one of the reasons why Appalling Stories is necessary: the far-left stranglehold on publishing is so pervasive and frightening that even moderately left-wing writers avoid controversial subjects for fear of social and professional backlash.

I had to write the story because the underlying concept behind it is playing itself out right now in the real world, and it’s as ludicrous as any fiction you can bring to mind. Sweet Cakes by Melissa has been ordered to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to a lesbian couple for not baking them a wedding cake.

The plaintiffs’ hurt fee-fees are more important than the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Read the whole thing here!

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Beneath the Ziggurat: The Rest of the Story

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Whenever I have to make one of those dumb lists of all-time favorite books I’ve ever read, Gary Jennings’s Aztec usually finds itself in the top five. I found the novel in my parents’ bookshelf in the late 1980’s: it was a huge, white hardback tome, utterly different from the Leon Uris, Lawrence Sanders, and Philip Roth novels that surrounded it. At the time I was in a dry spell between Stephen King and Clive Barker books, so I turned to the first page and fell completely inside.

(What’s funny is that my dad, whose book it was, didn’t even like it very much.)

Aztec sparked an interest in historical fiction and pre-Columbian history that continues to this day. As a completist, I had to get the entire Jennings oeuvre: Spangle, The Journeyer, Raptor, Aztec Autumn. And thence to Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian, and…you know how it goes. You ever read something in a new genre that’s so good that it spoils you, and nothing else can quite compare? That’s what happened with me and Aztec. Mary Renault, James Michener, Bernard Cornwell: they’re great, but not Jennings great. Except for Ken Follett.

A couple of years ago, when I was momentarily stalled on the first draft of The Nephilim and the False Prophet, I found an ad from a publisher looking for horror-themed short stories. The story criteria intrigued me with one caveat, so I outlined the bare bones of what would become Beneath the Ziggurat: a Lovecraftian tale of pre-Columbian Mexico. The caveat wasn’t that troubling: the publishers specifically encouraged white men to submit stories, and I fit the bill, so I was a shoe-in.

Or so I thought. As it turned out I got a nice rejection letter, saying that the story wasn’t quite what they were looking for.

Obviously that’s a disappointment, but you swallow it and move on. I shelved the story for the time being and finished The Nephilim and the False Prophet. A year later I gave the story in a non-exclusive format to Jasper Bark as electronic bonus content for his graphic novel project Beyond Lovecraft; the lucky people who donated a certain amount to Beyond Lovecraft‘s Indiegogo campaign will get to read it in PDF form once it’s out.

I always thought it was too good a story to bury or let languish, despite its earlier rejection, so I decided I would release it as a Kindle Single, with an original cover. And, well, there you have it-

Huh. Wait. Going over what I just wrote, I found I made an embarrassing typo. When I said that the publisher specifically encouraged white men to submit stories, I erred. The publisher had actually made it a point to encourage women and people of color to submit stories.

That’s racism. When a publisher tells you that it’s encouraging people of a certain skin color to submit work, they’re acting on a racist impulse. And now that we’re in a culture that has redefined gender as a “social construct,” it doesn’t matter who’s a man and who’s a woman: it matters what sex you say you are. How you identify. So sexism’s no longer a thing, right? I’m not sure. The rules are so plastic.

Somehow it’s become acceptable to discriminate against white people, particularly white men. Check out this post, written close to two years ago: our culture has somehow devolved since then. Writing off an individual because of immutable, innate characteristics like skin color is the essence of racism, whether that individual’s a white man or not.

If you’re at all interested in stopping racial or gender discrimination, don’t write stories for publishers who consider skin color or sex organs in their submission criteria. Don’t read stories from these publishers. Don’t do business with racists and sexists.

I’d have preferred to just talk about my love of pre-Columbian history and Gary Jennings, but when things like racial discrimination turn up, I have to address them. If you sit back and say nothing you’re accepting it, tacitly or otherwise. Discrimination against people of any skin color or ethnicity is wrong, and it’s ludicrous for me to have to point this out. But that’s what’s happening to our culture, including the publishing industry.

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Cindy Brady’s Big Sin

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At The Loftus Party, I put the Susan Olsen situation in its proper context:

The public spat was terribly ugly and unprofessional, and even if Olsen hadn’t used the term “faggot,” she should’ve been fired anyway, because that’s not how adults settle differences. Nevertheless, Acord-Whiting initiated the spat by publicly whining about his difference of opinion with Olsen, as though Olsen committed a crime by disagreeing with him in the first place. In the end, Acord-Whiting made out like a bandit: he got publicity to bolster a career virtually unknown outside the rarefied, if smog-filled air of Los Angeles; he garnered sympathy from all the right people for having to endure online name-calling in this, the year 2016; and he exacted revenge against a political adversary (which, let’s face it, trumps everything).

Read it all to get the big picture.

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The David A Riley/HWA Dust-Up: Analysis

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(I discussed the genesis of the David A Riley/HWA dust-up here, and interviewed Riley himself about it here.)

Putting this silliness into its proper context isn’t difficult. The Horror Writers Association asked for volunteers to serve on the jury for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology, and former HWA trustee, author, and publisher David A Riley held up his hand. After all, he had served on the Bram Stoker Award jury for First Novel some time before. This is far from a prestigious position, requiring several unpaid hours of reading short story collections, but Riley wanted to help the HWA and give it the one thing no one can ever give back to you: time.SJWHWA

But because Riley had been a member of the UK’s National Front party, an association he now regrets being a part of and left over thirty years ago, he has been deemed a racist, fascist, and awful person. Amidst outrage from Social Justice Warriors everywhere in the horror community, Riley withdrew from the jury. This didn’t satisfy the mob, who would only be happy with Riley’s racist, fascist blood spilled across the shattered remains of a freshly-sledgehammered bust of H.P. Lovecraft.

When I first saw so many SJWs get so upset about this issue, I knew it was bullshit, because SJWs are always full of shit. So unlike the angry Social Justice mob, I actually had the intellectual curiosity to go to the man himself and talk to him. As it turned out, the truth was a lot more complex than the racist, fascist fantasy cooked up by leftist drama queens. If former Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd was good enough to serve in leadership roles in the U.S. Congress throughout a decades-long political career despite having filibustered multiple civil rights acts, I think David A Riley could serve on the Bram Stoker jury. The problem is that “Sheets” Byrd was a leftist and Riley is not.

I can’t help but draw some parallels between Riley’s experience and my own, when Jim Mcleod kicked me off the staff of Ginger Nuts of Horror and subsequently called me, a Jewish man, a Nazi for expressing opinions in my own space that had nothing to do with genre fiction. That was also a politically-motivated attack perpetrated by SJWs intent on damaging my career. While it hasn’t had much effect in that regard, it did damage some relationships and ruin others. Not over anything I did to them, of course, but because I had the wrong opinions and dared to talk about them on my social sites. Despite the books of theirs I reviewed, the time I spent on their behalf doing favors and promoting and supporting, I had become a fascist (a claim historically-ignorant leftists throw about with at least as much abandon as Rick from The Young Ones). To a SJW, it’s never about the work you do: it’s about your ideological purity. Having the right thoughts. Expressing the right opinions.

Prove you’re not a racist. Are you white? Are you male? Do you use outdated terms like male? Sit down and shut up. You’ve had your time in the sun. It’s our time now.

The lack of self-regard on the part of Riley’s detractors would be hilarious if it wasn’t so disquieting. I thought only vampires feared mirrors.

In a few weeks this will blow over and a new outrage will rise to give the SJWs in genre fiction a fresh reason to feel good about themselves. Who’s going to be the next scalp?

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Interview With David A Riley

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(Interested readers can check out my earlier post on the David A Riley/Bram Stoker Awards dust-up here.)

Horror author and publisher David A Riley was gracious enough to consent to an interview, which I am posting in its entirety.

You’ve been a member of the Horror Writer’s Association for some time. You were also on the Board of Trustees. During that time, did anyone express any concerns about your political views?

No one. Several years ago, when the HWA forum was considerably livelier than now, I was a frequent participant in discussions on it, and no one so much as mentioned my political views, either what they are now or what they were in the past.

Do you have previous experience serving on an awards jury?

I served on the [Bram Stoker] awards jury for First Novels several years ago. So far as I am aware my participation was viewed satisfactory by everyone concerned and I found it easy to do what was expected to the best of my abilities. There were no complaints.

Why did you withdraw from the jury of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology?

Because, as I saw it, that was the best thing to do for the good of the HWA. There is nothing prestigious or glamorous about being a juror. It does involve a lot of unpaid, unseen, arduous work reading an enormous number of books by authors or publishers or, in the case of anthologies, editors, keen to have their books included amongst the finalists for the Stoker awards. Of course the juries cannot add more than a few books, but it does mean reading all those submitted, good, bad or indifferent. I know from when I was a juror for First Novels this can be a hell of a chore. Standing down, therefore, was easy – it saved me a lot of hard work, some of it far from enjoyable. I only put my name forward because the HWA sent out a last minute email appealing for volunteers from active members for this position. I thought I was helping the HWA by stepping forward, never realising the reaction stirred up by certain individuals, some of whom already had a personal grudge against the HWA and are not even members.

Tell us about the UK’s National Front Party. What drew you to it?

I joined in 1973. At that time it was widely viewed as a patriotic nationalist party with serious concerns about the high numbers of immigrants who were coming into the UK at the time. Amongst its members were a number of retired senior servicemen from the Armed Forces, clergymen, teachers and other professionals. The chairman of the nearest branch to me had just defected as a leading member of the Conservative Association in Blackburn. It had a pseudo-respectability in its early days which only gradually disappeared over the years. It denied being fascist, having a totally democratic internal structure, including annual elections for all officers. Splits at the top, though, happened a lot over the years, the most devastating coming only three or four months after I resigned from it. After each split many of our best members would become disillusioned and leave. The skin-headed thug was not typical by a long shot in the earlier years. Unfortunately, as violence against the party escalated over time, these became far more predominant.

I would add that I was involved in the north west of England, far from the party’s headquarters in London and the people I worked with were local. We only had intermittent involvement with anyone from the leadership and were more or less left to get on with things as we saw fit. Also, you did develop a sort of siege mentality over the years, so that exposés about the party’s leadership were generally viewed as smears, a bit like the reaction, I would imagine, goes on in groups like the Scientologists.

Are you still part of the UK National Front?

I resigned in 1983 and have not been involved since.

A lot of people have characterized you as a fascist. Would you say that’s a fair description of your politics?

No.  It’s an easy label to flash around, usually by those who are fascists themselves, particularly from the left. Fascists don’t believe in free speech and try to suppress it for their opponents. I have never in my life tried to do that. They are also prepared to use physical violence against their political opponents. I was never involved in anything like that. I would add that during the time I was involved in the party any member who associated with a neo-nazi group, either in Britain or overseas, faced expulsion. This, I can confirm, was enforced.

Do you feel as though you have anything to apologize for in regard to your politics, past or present?

Who should I apologize to? To those who have been baying for my blood? Most of the people involved in this debate come from the States. Since I have never been involved in politics there I should certainly not have to apologise to them. Do I regret having spent those years that I did in the National Front? Yes. If I had my time over again I would not do it. But the early seventies were a different time. Still recovering from its loss of empire, Britain was in a poor state, with strikes, the three-day week, regular power cuts, uncollected rubbish bags piling on the streets, the danger of Militant Tendency (the extreme left) taking over the Labour Party, unprecedented numbers of people arriving from overseas and the air that something had to give, that the country was on the brink of collapse. By the time I left the National Front we had Thatcher. A year later I took part in a non-party march through Blackburn against her notorious Poll Tax.

In your professional career as a writer and publisher, has anyone questioned your competence because of your political views?

Till this recent fracas, no.

Have you ever refused to work with anyone in the writing industry because of his or her politics, race, or religion?

No, that would not make sense and I have never done it. Even when I was involved in politics I never treated anyone differently because of their politics, race or religion. As a small press publisher I have twice paid for artwork from Vincent Chong, one of my favourite artists. I am currently working with a young black British writer over publishing a collection of his stories. I mentioned this elsewhere recently and had it thrown back in my face as being the equivalent of someone saying “I have black friends therefore I am not a racist”. Take a look at how many small press publishers in the UK have books written by black authors. I have only been publishing for just over fifteen months and before this year is out at least one of my books will be by a black writer. I don’t need to do it. I could so easily have turned him down. The fact is I like his work and would be proud to publish it. Which is the only thing that matters. End of story. Re politics, a writer who happily admits to having been a member of the extreme-left wing Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers Party, approached me for a story to be included in a charity anthology he was putting together. I sent him one and it was included. I have also helped to advertise the book. His politics, past or present, meant nothing to me and I was more than willing to help.

What would you tell a writer who is considering joining the HWA?

Weigh up the pros and cons, what the HWA can do for you, then make your decision, but study what it can do for you carefully and don’t be put off by those who seem to spend inordinate amounts of time decrying it, often for very selfish reasons. Make your own mind up from the facts. I have been a member for ten years and have not regretted it, in spite of the recent controversy. There are a lot of good people in the HWA and if you need help, particularly as a new writer, it’s there to be had.

Thank you very much for your time.

At the end of the week I’ll provide some analysis. Stay tuned.

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