TRIFECTA OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY – CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, LOVE, SIMON AND ****BLOCKERS

 

 

SHORT TAKE:

The movies: Call Me by Your Name, Love, Simon and C***blockers (recently released as just Blockers with a picture of a rooster attached) are, in a phrase, child pornography.

WHO SHOULD SEE THEM:

NO ONE!

LONG TAKE:

Now here’s a truly offensive Trifecta for you:

DUE TO THE UNFORTUNATE NATURE OF THIS REVIEW AND PHOTOS NECESSARY TO MAKE MY POINTS,  PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW MINORS TO READ THIS!!

Pornography: From the online Dictionary: "Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings."

I have been freshly disturbed by the succession of child-sexploitative movies recently released.

In full disclosure, I have not seen and do not intend to see any of these movies. Blockers, as it so happens, is not even in theaters yet so my information was limited but easily accessed and assessed merely by the unfortunate happenstance of seeing the trailers.

As to Call Me by Your Name and Love, Simon – I am of the philosophy that you do not have to shoot yourself in the foot with a nailgun to know doing so would have unpleasant consequences. I can, however, figure out the destructiveness of a storyline based upon its synopsis, which you can read for free either at wikipedia or the movie spoiler. You can also get details on the explicit content of a movie from a subscription to screenit – everything about a movie is available, from jump scares to smoking to exact numbers of which profanities are used to explicit descriptions of sexual and imitative behaviors.

I would certainly not pretend to be able to comment on cinematography, effectiveness of the music score or the acting. Then again, if I only read a book or the screenplay I would not be able to assess that either. However, I CAN tell you, after due diligence research, without question, about the extremely vile, sexually exploitive, pedophilia-promoting agenda of these stories.

First there was the Oscar darling Call me By Your Name which featured an older man seducing, sexually using, then abandoning a 17 year old boy. This movie featured graphic displays of male-child sexual behavior and one grotesque event involving a peach which I will leave to your imagination. Not only does the 17 year old boy persuade his even younger girlfriend to have sex with him multiple times but he switches between her and the grown man, putting both members of the young couple at risk for whatever other contacts the grown man has had, not to mention risking pregnancy for the girl. The parents go blithely along with the abuse of their son by this much older grown man. The girl finds out about his homosexual extra lover and, understandably, breaks up with him. The grown man takes advantage of this boy’s raging hormonal state to use him as a sex toy for the summer, then abandons this now damaged youth to his confusion and solitude. This movie, predictably, got all kinds of positive attention from Hollywood and liberal intelligensia for cinematography and acting. It has also been pointed out to me that sex with a child this age is legal in Italy.

Well, if sex with sheep was legal it would still be bestiality. And sex with a child is pedophilia whether it is legal or not. And in our country if you put photos of this behavior on your cell phone you could end up in jail.

Onto the stage appears Love, Simon a story about a young man who is also confused, as most boys are, about the raging inferno of hormonal emotions churning through him. With no adult guidance he decides he is homosexual and spends the entire movie secretively embarking on a quest to find out the identity of and "hook up" with the "other" "gay" boy –  Bram – who has anonymously come out via electronic social media in their high school. There are a few exchanged emails to justify Simon's infatuation with someone who could be anyone, including an adult predator. Simon rebuffs any romantic consideration of a girl who is already a friend, with whom he shares similar interests and who likes him. Instead, Simon pursues an anonymous gay "other," whom he knows little about, objectifying him to use him to gratify a sexual fantasy. In short, Simon refuses to pursue a promising and meaningful relationship with a friend to pursue someone solely on the basis of a shared sexual fetish. 

His parents are shown to be clueless and non-judgementally accepting of a decision which has far more long-reaching and permanent consequences than college choice or purchase of a car, which you know DARNED well they would have had PLENTY to say about.

Tipping the hand of the script writer and directors’ intentions, without question, is the choice of high school play. In the source material book Simon vs The Homo Sapien Agenda, the high school play to be performed is the innocuous musical Oliver! based on the Charles Dickens story of the orphan boy. For the movie, Love, Simon, Oliver! is thrown out and Cabaret is chosen. CABARET! One of the singularly most sexually graphic and disturbing musicals in the mainstream.

THE FOLLOWING SECTION CONTAINS GOOGLE PHOTOS FROM THE MOVIE AND THEATRICAL VERSIONS OF CABARET. THEY ARE OFFENSIVE. BUT THE FOLLOWING IS WHAT THE CHILDREN IN LOVE, SIMON ARE TO BE IMITATING ON STAGE. CHILDREN!!!:

Cabaret is set in Germany just before World War II breaks out. It takes place primarily in a seedy bar and dance hall from which the movie takes its name. The lead is Sally Bowles who sings about her life of promiscuity ("Mein Herr") and lives it. She sleeps randomly with men and during the course of the play "hooks up" with Brian, a bisexual who also, during his relationship with Sally, has sex with another man and impregnates Sally. (Brian’s a busy boy.) To his credit, Brian wants their child but Sally doesn’t so has an abortion. This ends their relationship (no surprise) and she finishes up the musical singing about life being a cabaret. During the play there is a number where a man is sandwiched by two women ("Two Ladies"), a song and dance about a man in love with a Gorilla ("If you could see her through my eyes") where the punchline is "She wouldn’t look Jewish at all" – a double punch of bestiality and anti-Semitism. And in the musical there is a LOT of sexually suggestive Fosse-dancing of scantily clad women and men. These are not the only unsavory parts of the movie but they are certainly highlights.

Regardless that the original intent of the movie was to demonstrate the degenerate disintegration of German society in tandem with the rise of Nazism, there IS no way to clean this musical up to be appropriate for children to watch much less perform. And THIS, Cabaret, is what the scriptwriter and director chose for a group of HIGH SCHOOLERS to perform, in public, to memorize, to repeat over and over as they rehearse, and then to act out in front of their family and community…..That alone is the lionizing of child – sexual exploitation.

It appears from photos on Google from the movie Love, Simon that the children in the movie did, in fact, act out these sexually explicit scenes.  This alone tips the hand of intent of the pedophiliac sexual objectification prevalent in Love, Simon.

During the course of Love, Simon, along with the lovely Cabaret, there is a plethora of profanity and bodily references, some rather creatively but not constructively, used, including an adult using the word "virgin" as an insult. There is also excessive drinking, homosexual kissing, casual references to masturbating, and casual sex amongst teens.

There is also a montage in which Simon fantasizes that straight kids have to "come out" to their parents. This montage is not challenged. There is no one and nothing in the movie to point out the obvious – that a child coming "out" as straight to the negative reaction of their parents would be the equivalent of a child "revealing" to his parents that they have: normal eyesight, made the honor roll, or do not have juvenile diabetes and having their parents react negatively. Like the reverse of that stupid Geico commercial about people who enjoy sitting on gum or walking into a glass door.

Regardless whether you believe homosexuality is a genetic or learned behavior, only the most deeply entrenched in blindly held propaganda would deny that homosexuality is a biologic disadvantage – never mind the medical, emotional, social, and spiritual repercussions. But logic has nothing to do with anything involved in this movie – only objectification of the children in various sexual connotations.

And now soon to arrive on the scene is C***blockers. Can’t even put the full name of the movie in this blog in good conscience. The premise, according to the trailers, is a group of parents, after translating emojis left on their daughter’s laptop, correctly figure out that their children plan to have sex on prom night. Simple solution: mom and dad go with them to the prom or they don’t go. Problem solved.

Do they do this? No, of course not. Then there would be no opportunity to: show parents as incompetent boobs, have one of the fathers engage with one of the high school boys in a colonoscopy style beer chugging contest, listen to underage girls talk explicitly and with blasphemous language about how they plan to lose their virginity, (with GREAT regret I heard the young ladies express their plans during the trailer in an open public theater in far more graphic language than that I just used), and watch scenes with CHILDREN drinking and carousing in a Caligula-like orgy.

These movies are all designed like a pedophile's dream and every one of the people in these movies should be arrested for sexual exploitation of juveniles. While the kids in the first two movies, Call Me and Simon were, and this is small consolation, JUST 21 when the movies were made, portraying a child who performs sex acts even if you are not in fact a child is still a demonstration of pedophilia. And it seems to me that the film makers knew darned well that what they were doing WAS pedophilia or they would have not chosen the age of the actors so carefully. Had they genuinely thought what they were doing was wholesome they could have hired underaged performers.

The third movie, Blockers, interestingly does not post the age of the teen actors on us.imdb.com. I suspect THEY think they can get away with underaged sexuality because it is a "comedy".

So there we have it – examples of explicit pedophilia, sexual objectification of children and the advocacy of sexual promiscuity amongst children!!

Arriving just in time for Easter.

It is a frustrating and disgusting phenomenon that this kind of debauchery – even against children – can masquerade as entertainment with impunity. Despite the romantic implications of the names of the first two films – Call Me by Your Name and Love, Simon, and the pretend to comedy of the third – Blockers, to paraphrase Mae West, a jaded performer who likely would have been horrified at the proceedings of these movies – Love and humor had nuthin' to do with it, dearie. 

Don’t go.

If you do, don’t say you weren’t warned.

The Orville – A Delightfully Fresh Change of Pace to the “Star Trek” Universe

 

SHORT TAKE:

Never thought I'd say this but I have come to recommend (tentatively) a TV show by Seth (Ted, 50 Million Ways to Die in the West) MacFarlane. The Orville is a homage to the Star Trek Universe … but only for mature sensibilities. Soaked in mild adult humor it is a charming combination of Star Trek and Galaxy Quest with just a pinch of Saturday Night Live thrown in for a bit of spice. In the honored footsteps of Gene Roddenbury, MacFarlane uses the setting of a space ship in the future to intelligently examine sensitive cultural issues, but takes this trip with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

LONG TAKE:

Ours is a three generation science fiction family – Heinlein, Asimov, EE Doc Smith were read to me as bedtime stories by my Dad.

I introduced my kids to Star Trek. I have been a Star Trek fan my entire life. The first show came out when I was seven years old and I grew up watching the shows in syndication.

I accepted the fact that Star Trek went off the air after 3 years and was excited by the movies.   I was ecstatic when Star Trek: Next Generation appeared and devastated when it was killed at the height of its popularity and in its prime because it became cheaper to syndicate the old shows than create new ones.STNG None of the other Star Trek shows quite hit the bull's eye for me the way STNG did. And the last show to date, Star Trek: Enterprise, ended on the lamest of notes by killing off one of its main characters as a flashback told by an embarrassingly … out of shape Riker. While I enjoy the reboot of Star Trek it  has no TV show to back its alternate universe up…. And it's a long time between movies. *sigh*

So when they said there was going to be a new Star Trek TV show – Star Trek: Discovery – no one anticipated its premiere more than me – or was more disappointed to find out it was to be held hostage by CBS's membership "service"  – like I need to pay for another subscription on top of Amazon, Netflix, Pureflix and Youtube payments.

Then out of nowhere, like a Galaxy class ship to the rescue, appeared an unlikely contender –The Orville – brain child of Seth MacFarlane – positively infamous for his crude humor, liberal attitudes and atheism. Hesitant is a massive understatement to describe my feelings about this project. But the trailer was funny and desperate for anything even close to a Trek fix, I tuned in through Amazon. Shocklingly, I found it good. NOT for kids – this is not your or your father's Star Trek to be sure.

I've seen all four of the shows they have released so far and I've come to the conclusion that THIS is what was REALLY going on aboard all those impressive star ships while Kirk and company presented us with the sanitized version of the events.

And no, it isn't even really part of the Star Trek universe at all. But it follows so closely in those stellar footsteps that thinking of The Orville as Star Trek's little brother is inevitable.

While not part of the Trek universe, everything in The Orville is a Trek echo, but with a slightly different spin. In The Orville universe the ships are part of the Union (And every time  MacFarlane, as Captain Ed Mercer, refers to Union ships, I can't help but wonder if they get overtime. LOL) The aliens are "new" but very familiar. The Orville's Moclus – an all burly-male single-gender planet whose main industry is weapons making

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are very much the Orville's version of Trek's Klingons, only without women. And there's Isaac, from Kaylon-1 – an entire planet of artifical lifeforms whose Greek chorus objective view of the human race is obviously a nod to Trek spock dataVulcans and Data. Then there is the caring but tough female chief medical officer, Dr. Penny Johnson Jerald (Claire Finn – Kassidy Yates from Deep Space Nine),   counterpart to Trek's Dr. Crusher and Alara (Halston Sage) a tough female security officer like Trek's Yar.

potato headOne early sub-plot examined a mainstay topic of our favorite emotionless aliens – humor. Without giving any spoilers, let's just say that there is a more "no holds barred" to their…ahem…Enterprises. The humor is rougher and slightly bawdier but nothing you wouldn't hear in a day to day after hours conversation with close friends. They gossip, they gripe, they insult, they even occasionally threaten each other – and that's just on the bridge.

This is not the cream of the crop. Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber) makes no bones about why Ed has been chosen to captain The Orville – because with a new crop of 3,000 new ships to be manned the fleet was spread thin…and Ed was available.

The crew of the Orville are the guys who do the heavy lifting while crews like the Enterprise in Star Trek  go on diplomatic missions and save the universe.

helmsmanThe command crew drink sodas and beer and watch old TV show excerpts while on duty. The First Officer Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki mostly recently Bobbi in Agents of Shield)  refers openly to the helmsman Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes – Mystery, Alaska and Crimson Tide) as an idiot  – and he will agree. There is an amorphous amorous blob named Yaphit who crassly flirts with the ship's doctor.  First Officer Grayson is also the Captain's ex-wife who cheated on him – an event which, while a source of great regret to both Grayson and Mercer, is the source of a lot of needling by and occasionally unfiltered amusement for the crew.

These are not the dress blues we're used to, but the cargo ship-construction crew. Though everything looks spit and polished, there is a realistic familiarity among these guys which strikes a more homespun note than the tunic tugging Picard. picard maneuverDon't get me wrong – I LOVE the proper Star Trek universe. But these guys just SAY the things we KNOW darned well Kirk or Picard or Scotty or Dr. Crusher or even Data were DYING to say but couldn't – like Captain Mercer to a bigoted and cruely rude Moclus: "Dude, you have been a colassal d*** all friggin' day. Shut the H*** up." It wasn't polite or proper etiquette for a STAR TREK captain, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to applaud and laugh when he said it.

ed and first officer.jpgAnd the storylines follow quintessential threads: examination of other cultures in comparison to our own; time travel paradoxes; stifling tyrannical societies which MUST be exposed with the help of our intrepid heroes……maybe not heroes. More like good natured friends who will follow the rules most of the time because they don't want to get their butts kicked. And The Orville crew manages to clever their way out of problems just like the best of Trek – only with the occasional dose of deliberate silliness thrown in to remind us we are here for a good time. Kind of like Firefly only with more resources and a cleaner ship.

lasersWhile they don't take themselves too seriously, they present the characters and stories with obvious respect and affection for the source concepts. There is humor but fights break out, career making/breaking decisions have to be made, people die and the scenarios have hazard – just like the original ST:TOS – if that was happening at your average family holiday get together.

shootingAnd yes, MacFarlane has a liberal world view which comes out now and again. But I was pleasantly surprised to find he does not use his platfiorm to villify or unfairly castigate points of view he likely doesn't follow…at least not so far. MacFarlane has already begun to delve into hot button issues such as homosexuality and gender orientation but with tact and civility. moclusFor example, the Moclus, the all male planet, has an inevitable male-male couple who procreate by hatching eggs. But because it is another species it is, frankly, not as in your face as the heavy handed presentation of Sulu's "husband" in Star Trek: Beyond.

security officerTo be fair Roddenbury founded the Star Trek universe on the examination of the sensitive social issues of his time: racism, class structure, the hazards of interfering in less technologically developed cultures, the definition of life forms, the inherent dangers in protracted automated warfare, the tyranny of nanny states, the constant struggle with our baser natures. So it would be hypocritical of me to complain if The Orville explores the hot button issues of our times. And I was very pleased to find that MacFarlane is following Roddenbury's example. The Orville so far has reviewed these areas wth a certain dignified grace.

trialOne story in particular dealt with the single-gender society in a way that I believe fairly examined the different sides – a rarity when most liberal agendas include screaming over their conservative opponents instead of debating. The issue of gender identity at birth became a leading topic, and was treated with thoughtful clear headed discussion resulting in the crew uniformly taking the conservative side!

hanger.jpgAll this being said, it is possible Mr. MacFarlane could be luring the mainstream population in to lower the boom and cram yet another politically-correct driven anti-"everything traditional" agenda down the throats of anyone near by. But for the moment Mr. MacFarlane has created an extremely well written show for its genre. Funny, occasionally bawdy, but thoughtful.

And as an added bonus – again no spoilers – but I will note there are a few jaw dropping "A" list guest stars MacFarlane has managed to acquire in just his first 4 shows.

The Orville is a charmingly whimsical combination of Star Trek (mostly, I think, Next Generation era) and Galaxy Quest, with a hint of Dr. Who and a restrained splash of Saturday Night Live. I'll give Seth MacFarlane credit for now and the benefit of the doubt ………… for now. I just hope he doesn't eventually hand us a politically correct disappointment.