President Barack Obama smiles while talking with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the phone in the Oval Office, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
What Not to Watch
Buying into the movie list decreed by former President Barack Obama is akin to succumbing to the “Obama world of snide superiority and condescension,” argues Armond White in NRO:
Progressives love Obama for encouraging their disdain for America. And contemporary film culture goes along with the deception by reinforcing its lie. Obama’s annual movie list is part of a stealth transformation, launched by our supposed betters, establishing a new cultural canon.
The sentient her is a connection between four years of the Biden administration, abetted by legacy media, misleading the nation and the suspiciously hasty way that film reviewers and institutions rushed to ratify the 2024 movie year before the year was actually over, leaving many releases unseen (such as Robbie Williams’s amazing Better Man). Add to that propaganda, Barack Obama’s annual culture-czar decree on the year’s best movies.
The media are used to influence or persuade the populace — to further an agenda or encourage a particular, biased perception. For purely political purposes, these movie lists oppose rational and aesthetic responses. Anyone who believes them demonstrates “the self-deception that believes the lie,” as lyricist Lorenz Hart wrote. This hardcore credulousness first began when Obama issued a favorite TV and sci-fi movie list in 2016 to maintain his grip on the minds of gullible followers.
This is a contemptible media strategy, argues Mr. White. Think of it in the same light as Lenin did in 1919:
“The cinema for us is the most important of the arts.”
Lenin encouraged the nationalization of the Soviet film industry.
Obama’s recommendations flatter film culture’s already established socialist principles. Early year-end movie lists show the activist media at their most calculating and pernicious.
Mr. White asks readers to consider the perimeters of Obama’s 2024 list, the latest “Millennial version of the Bolshevik decrees:” Here, Mr. White also gives his unrestrained views.
- All We Imagine as Light (third-world feminism for the dupes who purchased Michelle’s obtuseBecoming )
- Conclave (shades the Catholic Church while leaving room for political fellow traveler Jorge Mario Bergoglio.)
- The Piano Lesson (caters to Denzel’s bowdlerization of August Wilson. It’s either a desperate Democrat-socialist celebrity-endorsement deal or a last appeal to “the brothers.”)
- The Promised Land (a history of Denmark’s Jutland and a conqueror’s dream that comes suspiciously close to advertising Obama’s 2020 memoir,A Promised Land.)
- The Seed of the Sacred Fig (sentimentalizes the feminist revolt that benefited from Obama’s 2016 airlift of a $400 million palette of cash to Iran.)
- Dune: Part Two (another fantasy of third-world power struggle, is dull but dedicated to globalism.)
- Anora (an open-borders sit-com, peddling immigrant decadence as a soft-core porn.)
- Didi (another DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) tale, indulges DACA sentimentality.
- Sugarcane (repeats Obama’s feigned concern for the plight of indigenous people that first worked magic in 2008, an America-last doc about Canada’s Sugarcane reserve.)
- A Complete Unknown (a Boomer nostalgia for godhead Dylan, a sure way to hold on to ’60s liberal sanctimony.)
These choices take command of the struggle against any possible counterrevolution. Didi might indeed be better than Nickel Boys, but Anora as better than La Cocina, Conclave as better than Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, Wicked as better than Rebel Moon: The Scargiver — these are all unlikely propositions. (It’s possible that some race- and gender-bait films didn’t make his list because Obama’s expansive Kamala Harris campaigning crowded out his viewing time.”
Did Barack Obama believe he could fool the public, especially those who actually believe that Obama chose these titles himself? Mr. White doesn’t believe any of these film choices come from random, individual, devoted movie watching.
Only die-hard birth-certificate sycophants can support these selections. There’s not a fun, entertaining movie on the list; that’s what makes it propaganda — an edict for some, a joke for others.
A political personality type, warns Mr. White, can be drawn from this list: Obama clones, anti-American globalists, and media lackeys.
A forensic investigation of the Obama list would reveal what the media won’t tell us about the Obama sexual, racial, political enigma, reconstructing him ideologically, film by film.
Buying into this list makes one nearly succumb to the Obama world of snide superiority and condescension.
Progressives love Obama for encouraging their disdain for America. And contemporary film culture goes along with the deception by reinforcing its lie. Obama’s annual movie list is part of a stealth transformation, launched by our supposed betters, establishing a new cultural canon.
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