Imagine me having more of a handle on TV and movie making these days. Two items from the news:
First, about two recent films presenting Ted Bundy as a sex symbol.
This year marks 30 years since Bundy’s execution, but instead of marking this as a time to remember the lives ruined by one of this century’s most notorious criminals, the media has once again cast the spotlight on Bundy. Netflix capitalized on the anniversary and renewed public interest with their latest true crime docuseries*, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. As if that weren’t enough, former Disney star and current thirst trap Zac Efron portrays Bundy in the Hollywood version, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile—a title which is so absurdly long and over-the-top, it seems almost tongue-in-cheek.
And neither of these projects is being subtle about their portrayal of Bundy as both America’s most infamous serial killer and a total dreamboat. Conversations with a Killer’s first episode is titled “Handsome Devil,” and barely 10 minutes can pass in the entire series without someone describing Bundy as “charming” or “handsome” or “clean-cut.” Zac Efron’s Bundy winks out at us from his film’s trailer, tearing open a woman’s shirt one moment, peeling off his own shirt in prison to reveal rock hard abs the next. Headlines have described Efron’s Bundy as “a Very Sexy Serial Killer” and “Disturbingly Hot.”
Here's one about how the Netflix production operation aspires to become a significant player in the world capital of fantasies and lying and, not insignificantly, the promotion of amoral depravity, the place that only knows two ways to tell a story, violence and sex:
If you're an actor or producer in Hollywood, it's hard to miss the flag Netflix has planted in Tinseltown. Its new 14-story tower is visible for miles in sprawling Los Angeles, topped by the company's red logo. The smell of popcorn greets visitors in the lobby.
Inside, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos is recruiting some of TV's most successful producers and writers. Since Netflix Inc. streamed its first original series "Lilyhammer" in 2012, the company has built one of the most valuable TV networks by buying shows from others. Now, with a $16 billion budget, Netflix aims to become the world's largest creator of entertainment, making programs just like current suppliers including CBS Corp.
If there's one thing we know, when TV and the movies present someone as sexy, it's promoting what they did, their denials are lies.
Hollywood, though, is merely the most significant and profitable center for the promotion of the culture of fascism and, as is becoming all too clear, Americanazism.
I assume I don't have to make the same point about the location of that onetime source of mediocre cartoons and phonied up history movies about the likes of Davy Crockett, Disney, that is now in the business of making a necrophilic mass murderer of women into a sex symbol.
Reading about this Hollywood glamorization of a sadistic, woman hating serial killer and necrophile (who was a Republican, by the way) I have to wonder what the Hollywood-show biz #MeToo campaigners intend to do about that glamorization of the most extreme real-life end of what they have campaigned against by these mega-corporations they work for. I don't see how they can let this pass without massive criticism of all involved and retain their credibility. How any Woman could agree to be part of such a production is something I don't understand. People talk about the Black and other actors of the past who, if they were to work in the movies, had to work in productions that reinforced the stereotypes and discrimination against their People. But, then, I don't get how anyone could participate in movies or TV productions that reinforce the oppression of groups they are members of, gay men have done that since the advent of the medium. Show biz of that kind soils pretty much everyone involved in it, eventually. And turns societies that imbibe it into cesspools.
* I remember far enough back when they used to peddle soft porn under the guise of "science films". I concluded quite a while ago that "documentary" movies were just movies with a pretense of presenting reality. The genre, as a whole, has a very mixed record of rising far above the level of Hollywood "historical" and "biographical" shit. While it is, admittedly, a lot easier to casually digest a movie or TV show and so to make money from, as a means of informing its audience, it is probably about the most expensive and least informative effort of the kind. Especially if you present people like mass murderer misogynist necrophiles as dreamy. The movies are mostly shit.
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