All the mainstream articles on the Obamas’ first fictional Netflix movie seem to deliberately miss the truly rotten propaganda touted by their Higher Ground production company. For some reason, it seems that a former President and First Lady should have a far higher standard of quality and morality. People seem to recoil at Trump’s lack of morality but rejoice at the Obamas’ more sophisticated celebration of cultural rot.
Leave the World Behind is an apocalyptic book, by gay author Rumaan Alam, made into a Netflix film by writer/director Sam Esmail. The book is rife with pornographic scenes, graphically described in language that would be unbefitting of any President or First Lady. Alam seems to enjoy describing numerous sexual encounters of the main characters (husband Clay and wife Amanda) and describing the sexual fantasies of their teenage son, Archie. I’m sure the book enjoys shelf space in public schools nationwide.
The movie did not reproduce those scenes. I guess Julia Roberts wasn’t up for the X-rated material. The film’s language was on par with the book, though, choosing to drop f-bombs more than Taylor Swift drops lovers. Both the adult's and the young children’s dialogue was needlessly filled with it.
Then came the racism. So, apparently, Barack Obama provided lots of notes for Director Esmail to switch things up. In the book, no overt demonizing of people because of color existed. President Obama once proclaimed in 2008: “We may not look the same and may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction.” Clearly, he wanted to go in a different direction in 2023 for Netflix.
The movie centers on an upper-middle-class white family from NYC who takes an impromptu vacation. They rent a beautiful home owned by a very wealthy black family. Their getaway is interrupted by what seems to be a cyberattack on the nation, somehow muddled with climate change hysteria, dashes of xenophobia, and a near-total absence of religion.
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As things turn to peril in the movie, the black daughter (Ruth) says to her father (G.H.): “I’m asking you to remember, trust should not be doled out easily to anyone, especially white people.” The words “white people'', by the way, don’t even appear in the book. Later, she protests her father’s decision to allow the White family to return to their AirBnB, scolding him: “And that, right there, is what’s going to f**k us in the end.”
These were the “empathetic” script changes the Obamas wanted or affirmed. They elements weren’t part of the original story.
The propaganda gets worse, and this is where mainstream media stops. Some of them highlighted the racist parts, and rightfully so. (Although, I will say, that the movie somewhat redeemed part of that between the two characters. It will be lost upon most, however, because the cruel divisiveness of the dialogue lingers longer than any moment of goodwill.)
Then came the caricature of the white male. Yup. Guess the Obamas had to include someone who was “clinging to his guns and religion or to antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” That character, Danny, was changed significantly from the book version. In the movie, he’s a racist conspiracy theorist who has an American flag hanging outside of his house – the only American flag in the film. Unlike the book’s non-racist Danny (who only got a few groceries when he heard the news of the attack), the movie’s racist Danny was a truck-driving, supply-hoarding “survivalist” who met the other male characters with a shotgun in his hands (there was no shotgun wielding in the book). Danny explains the origins of the unknown attack: “It’s the Koreans behind all of this. Trust me. It’s the Koreans. Or the Chinese or one of ‘em.” Or, one of them?
Then, his next line startled me (again, because the film is executive-produced by a former U.S. President): “We made a lot of enemies around the world. It looks as though some of ‘em teamed up.” Nothing shows love for your country like a former President bashing the same nation that made him the Leader of the Free World…twice.
Then the clincher came in the form of a monologue by G.H., who revealed to Clay that he knew of a Defense Department program, purportedly to be used in other countries, that explained the terror that was happening. It had three stages. The first was to “isolate people” by cutting off their technology, hence the cyberattack. The second was to simultaneously coordinate the chaos, making things happen on land, air and sea. This would lead to “covert attacks and misinformation.”…okay I had to laugh at this point…which would render their “weapon systems vulnerable to”…wait for it…”extremists in their own military.”
Well, there you have it. A clincher that had nothing to do with the book but was contrived by the Obamas to explain how our world would end as we know it: our own armed forces. You know, because Americans are an existential threat to Americans. Not terrorists. Not the Iranians (also mentioned in the film). Not even Gaia, the “earth spirit” that turns on humans for being pollution to the planet. Nope. People dedicated “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” are the enemies in this cinematic Obama-crafted fantasy.
The former President, who once campaigned on unity, had nothing good to say about the USA. Some would call it a cautionary tale; I call it a nihilistic and needlessly divisive worldview. G.H. described how things would culminate in stage three: “If the target country were dysfunctional enough…it [the program] would, in essence, do the work for you.” There you have it. We’re irreparably dysfunctional, America. Thank you, Obama.
I highly recommend you Leave the World Behind alone. Don’t let the book or the movie take up space in your mind. They won’t take anyone to higher ground.
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