When Burt Reynolds drove his celestial Trans-Am into the Great Beyond he took a significant chunk of America’s dwindling reserve of testosterone along with him. Unless you grew up in the ‘70s, its hard to understand his influence and impact, and how he reflected what Americans (particularly American men) wanted to be. Flicks like The Longest Yard, Smokey and the Bandit, and the criminally underrated Sharkey’s Machine, all offered us a tough but funny hero who took on the bullies in authority with a smirk, a joke, and when appropriate, a football to the “nether regions.”
Of course, you couldn’t make any of those movies in 2018. They are all too subversive, and Hollywood – a key component of the elite establishment – isn’t interested in subversion. It’s won. It’s taken power. Now it’s interested in submission.
Your submission.
Forget movies that challenge the status quo by violating our elite’s delicate sensibilities and myriad taboos. Count out Blazing Saddles. It’s perhaps the most powerful attack on the utter stupidity of racism ever put on film, but the snowflakes would melt and besides, as the New York Times demonstrated by hiring bigoted no-talent Sarah Jeong, today’s elite is actively pro-racism.
Forget Dirty Harry. He’s not understanding enough of the criminal’s point of view – which was the same liberal crook-coddling attitude the movie critiques. Also, guns are scary and we should solve our problems with words unless it’s politically useful to, say, conduct a weapons-drawn pre-dawn raid on a white-collar crime suspect associated with a conservative political opponent. Then guns are cool.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High? No way. The spectacular Phoebe Cates swimming pool scene reaffirms the cisnormative male gaze and we can’t have men enjoying beautiful women. Male happiness makes liberal feminists melt. In a 2018 reboot, Pheobe’d be wearing a burka to show solidarity with her oppressed sisters and Judge Reinhold would be fantasizing about watching her write an article for Vox on how men disappoint her by not being hairy versions of women.
If Animal House were to be rebooted, Hollywood would make the Omegas the heroes. After all, today’s establishment is essentially a fraternity of stuck-up snobs. Smarmy Greg Marmalard is Cory Booker or Elizabeth Warren without the real or faked ethnic change-up, and Neidermeyer is one of those retired Obama-loving generals that CNN periodically hauls out to explain why Normal Americans can’t be trusted to own fully semi-automatic assault cannons with high capacity clips.
Once upon a time, Normal people were Hollywood’s heroes, rebelling against the pompous windbags who wanted to keep them down. But that’s changed. Today’s elitists are those pompous windbags, and they are terrified by the rebellion of the people they desperately want to keep quiet and submissive. Hollywood doesn’t want to stir us up with entertainment that breaks the narrative. That’s why it serves us wimpy mush, cinematic Xoloft to lull us into dead-eyed passivity.
My upcoming book Militant Normals: How Regular Americans Are Rebelling Against the Elite to Reclaim Our Democracy explains this phenomenon in greater and more profane detail (think of my book as my meanest and funniest Townhall column ever, except it’s 288 pages long and full of swears). The left fought a culture war back when we were led by the same spineless Fredocon sissies who are now mad that Trump is showing them up by actually fighting against the left. The left won, because our cruise-shilling betters in conservatism were too weak to throw a punch. Now that the left is in the society’s driver’s seat (excepting, to its limitless fury, the White House and Congress), rebellion is out. Assimilation is in.
What could be less rebellious than a tongue bath ode to the Deep State? There’s a reboot of The FBI coming out, because of course there is. Really. After all, since its leadership has gone all-in on #TheResistance and demonstrated its incompetence and corruption to the world, it has to be rehabilitated. So, you’ll probably not see much sexting, though that appears to be about 75% of what agents do these days. Another 20% is leaking. And what do you think the chances are of a story arc involving evil FBI brass trying to subvert an elected outsider conservative president?
About 0%. But if there was such a plot line, the plotters would be the heroes.
But there’s about a 100% chance that the main villains will be conservative Christian NRA members that the brave agents – played by a gorgeous cast that is carefully curated for maximum diversity – must stop from shooting up a school or a baseball diamond full of congressmen. Because that’s what conservative Christian NRA members do, right? Except conservative Christian NRA members never actually do such things and the FBI never actually stops such crimes, but who cares?
Remember, this is the same Hollywood that is pushing The Handmaid’s Tale, which is Harry Potter oppression fan fic for lonely cat ladies, as a powerful critique of Trump’s America. Have you noticed that literally the only people actually covering their bodies under folds of clothes are the Muslim activists that libs drool over and the idiotic live action role players who show up dressed in red robes to protest dressing in red robes? Like Burt Reynolds and his Normal fans would be down with sexual repression and shapeless clothing. The libs are the ones with the anti-hottie agenda, not us.
Burt’s passing leaves a void that none of the simpering femboys trying to pass as modern movie stars can hope to fill. There’s just no equivalent of that Florida good old boy today, not in terms of masculinity nor in his sense of fun. Who is the star who tells the haters and the snobs to buzz off with a wink and a smile? Today, they are all over social media issuing mea culpas for real and imagined transgressions and seeking pardons for their sins against political correctness. Do you think ‘70s Burt Reynolds would have ever tweeted that he’s learned so, so very much from the swarm of social justice jackals hounding him because he failed to point out that women can have penises too?
Nah.
He’d just put the pedal to the metal and do what he wanted, when he wanted, in the way he wanted. After all, that’s the Militant Normal way, and that’s why we’ll miss him.