The battle for Brexit, the nature of the struggle, has become much more clear [than it was three years ago]. Before, it was, “Ooh, should we be part of the EU? Should we not be part of the EU?” Now, I think it’s much more clearly a class struggle… On the one hand, you have people who are very much part of the establishment, people who are in the public sector, or who are members of organisations that are paid for out of taxation, whose jobs depend on regulating the lives of others… the arts establishment, the university establishment… You can tell when you go to a party, say, who’s likely to be Brexit and who’s not likely to be Brexit… The media is an utterly ‘Remain’ industry, and they’re absolutely furious.

Peter Whittle interviews filmmaker Martin Durkin.

Two of Durkin’s films – Brexit: The Movie and Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary – have been featured here before, in full, and are strongly recommended. The subsequent threads are also worth a peek.

Update: 

The old word is treason… A large part of the British political elite has deliberately gone and negotiated against their own country…. They regard [the electorate] with absolute contempt.

Via Samizdata, and very much related, David Starkey has some thoughts.  

Also, open thread.

In case you missed it in the comments:

The Secret Life of Pets 2… effectively acts as an animated ode to heteronormativity, toxic masculinity and patriarchal worldviews

Woke reviewer Carlos Aguilar watches an animated film intended for children and gets terribly upset.

It occurs to me that when the reviewer of a children’s cartoon is whining at length about a lack of discernibly gay pet-owning couples and the oppressive “heteronormativity” of a character choosing to get married and have a child – an act that is “conservative” and therefore bad, apparently – then the problem isn’t the film.

In the comments, Liz adds,

Reproduction is ‘conservative’. Normality is a ‘trope’. Sounds like someone’s been severely educated…

Such that Mr Aguilar, a 30-year-old man, is seeking validation of his own niche sexual politics in a children’s cartoon about talking dogs.

Kaleidoscopic cities filmed by Michael Shainblum.

As is the custom here, posting will be intermittent over the holidays and readers are advised to subscribe to the blog feed, which will alert you to anything new as and when it materialises. Thanks for another 1.5 million or so visits this year and thousands of comments, many of which prompted discussions that are much more interesting than the actual posts. Which is pretty much the idea. And particular thanks to all those who’ve made PayPal donations to keep this rickety barge above water. It’s much appreciated. Curious newcomers and those with nothing better to do are welcome to rummage through the reheated series in search of entertainment.

To you and yours, a very good one. 

The Wizard of Oz is a grotesque predictor of Trump’s America.

It says so here, in the Guardian. Specifically,

Oz is first wondrous and revelatory, then sinister and suspect, a good trip that goes wrong… It’s this lurking inner wrongness, the darkness at its edges and the emptiness at its core, that speaks to me now. 

The author of the above is Bidisha, a mono-named entity who may be familiar to long-term readers, and who describes herself, unironically, as a “non-white angry political female.” One who seems determined to find yet another staple of Christmas both ghastly and problematic:

It’s impossible to watch the newly crowned ‘most influential film ever’ without seeing the parallels to the sickly US of today.

Oh, ye doubters. Madame Bidisha has her reasons.

We can read the catastrophic effects of climate change into the tornado that sets the narrative off,

I didn’t say they would be convincing.

see the opioid crisis in the characters’ drugged sleep in Oz’s Powell and Pressburger-esque poppy field, and empathise with the mangy Lion, rusty Tin Man and under-stuffed Scarecrow’s search for organ donors and reliable medical support in an Oz without a solid welfare state.

If you think our Guardian columnist is perhaps overreaching a tad, I feel I should point out nothing that follows is likely to disabuse you.

I bring saucy celebrity news, which we don’t often cover. The catch is, it’s from the Guardian: 

The US magazine People has crowned Idris Elba the sexiest man alive,

A handsome chap, and popular, so not entirely surprising. Indeed, the author of the piece, Mr Caspar Salmon, refers to Mr Elba as “incontrovertibly loin-tugging.”

It’s heartening that Elba, long held to be a favourite to become the next James Bond, has cracked another predominantly white institution.

So far, so Guardian. But it could, I think, be a little more Guardian.

Elba fits squarely into an amusing pattern that People has been building up over the years, which sees them plump for decidedly masculine, established, patriarchal figures. The award, in other words, is relentlessly straight.

There we go.

The prize tells us a good deal about the cult of masculinity still prevalent in the world, which equates male looks with “sexiness” rather than beauty. This emphasis on sexual attraction brings power and dominance into consideration alongside mere aesthetic qualities.

“The cult of masculinity.” Now we’re cooking. And a trashy magazine that once a year ranks famous men by sex appeal tends to favour men who strike its readers as sexy, statusful, and manly. Shocking stuff. They even – brace yourselves – put “emphasis on sexual attraction.” Despite the aforementioned loin-tugging, I suspect this may prove problematic: 

[The magazine’s] museum-like display of strong, mostly white, straight-acting men does tell us something about the dominant culture, and is, let’s face it, funny.

What’s funny, apparently, is that the largely straight and female readers of People magazine – readers whose average age is 38 – often rate as sexy men of roughly similar age:

Elba is the fourth man in his 40s in a row to win the award… The average age of winners is 38.7 years old.

And which, it turns out, is also problematic: