I brought up the tragedy that Steven Spielberg, director of Disclosure Day (an empathetic work of images that abhors fixation on images without knowing what they are, that abhors the conservative worldview that treats images as truth, in lieu of the joy of creation) has helped fund The Genesis Prize, which used dead images of the past (10/7) to propagate the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
When I pointed this out, a Facebook friend asked me: “Are you saying Israel shouldn’t have retaliated after 10/7? Let me be clear I hate what Israel did to Gaza but if someone trashed your home and kidnapped your loved ones, you wouldn’t just sit there and let it happen.”
I say this with all the love I can have for a person, and after witnessing Disclosure Day, a profound act of cinematic empathy directed by someone who is potentially (almost certainly, but what do I know, I’m not a Zionist) propagating genocide, my capacity for hate and love, for fear and hope, my capacity to exist in the world around me, has increased profoundly. (That’s also the PTSD meds that are helping me sleep, but let’s make it sound purely poetic for those of us who believe in and allegedly cherish poetic beauty, but refuse to admit that mental health leads to poetic horrors)
With this response, I am graciously being allowed to criticize genocide, even saying they agree with me, so long as I don’t criticize the gut reaction to dead images that *may* have inspired that genocide. That gut reaction is valuable, right? If you had your own stuff, and people (your family) were among that stuff, and you were surrounded by a planet full of evil people, you should concede that the desire to protect your stuff (which includes people) from the planet full of evil people is good and true. Don’t question the fact that Israel killed its own civilians, with the justification for this death being “well there were just so many evil people down there that we had to shoot them all”, and then question why images of Israel additionally and openly massacring its own people are being used to propagate Israel’s genocide. (I actually don’t know if images of Israel massacring its own civilians was used by Gal Gadot to propagate Israel’s genocide when she won The Genesis Prize. Would it have made a difference so long as you establish the right narrative to accompany your images of death?) If you acknowledge that, yes, it was bad that Israel killed lots of people, then the motte to your Bailey is to just say “surely you can agree that Israel’s gut reaction is understandable”, and we’re back at square one.
Must I have the same gut reaction as a Zionist to the deaths of Israeli civilians on 10/7 because Hamas killed them (disgust, horror at barbarian killers), or must I have the same gut reaction as a Zionist to the deaths of Israeli civilians on 10/7 because the IDF killed them (pity, sadness at the poor innocent killers)?
Before we get to myths of planets full of evil people in this writing that just so happens to mention Noah’s Ark, I’m going to talk about wrestling.
If your response is to cringe when I point out that Disclosure Day’s opening images of wrestling are political, you, objectively, can’t just be cringing at me for perceiving it that way. Because, if you’re only cringing at me, then you did not see Hulk Hogan performing at the Republican National Convention in 2024, like he was at a child’s birthday party but was actually endorsing their leader of the free world. If aliens needed to ask someone “take me to your leader”, they could ask 80’s wrestling star Hulk Hogan to take them to Donald Trump.
If you saw the red hats at the opening of Disclosure Day and thought of MAGA, you were correct to do so, because MAGA is associated with red hats, and ever since 80’s wrestling star Hulk Hogan endorsed their leader of the free world at a MAGA event, MAGA became associated with wrestling, and since MAGA is a political movement, it would make sense to associate the opening wrestling match with MAGA, and therefore associate wrestling with a political movement, specifically, the political movement we call MAGA and 80’s wrestling star Hulk Hogan.
MAGA wanted the association. They asked for it specifically.
So when I say that the opening images of Disclosure Day, where a wrestler stomps on the camera as well dressed fascists use the wrestling match as subterfuge for suppression of truth, MAGAts don’t get to be upset at the implication that the images of wrestling are political, and they especially don’t get to pretend that their perception of their childhood didn’t inform their politics. Because, if Hulk Hogan was a part of someone’s childhood, there he was, in 2024, informing their politics.
They might not like that Steven Spielberg, the guy that took them on their favorite childhood theme park rides, is creating images of MAGA folk delighted in anger for its own sake. They may not like that these images show people who confuse the delight they feel watching staged violence with the alleged intellectual satisfaction of their “mythological truth” (something a hack like Jordan Peterson might call “truer than true”). I certainly didn’t enjoy the humbling realization that I was ignoring the Avatar films’ value as works of cinematic tarot in favor of pathetically pleading “see, they actually fulfill the truth of my (allegedly progressive) worldview! The bad guys kill the good guys, so then the good guys kill the bad guys!” It’s not fun to realize an 80’s icon wasn’t the determiner of reality but was just a part of reality, but it is freeing to know that which is part of your reality does not have to determine the reality of everyone else. Your nostalgia existing doesn’t have to determine the nostalgia of anyone else, nor does their nostalgia deny existence of yours, so why are you forcing it to? Why do you think it’s normal for an 80’s wrestling star to shout about how happy he is to be angry when promoting the leader of the free world?
We all had to see that shit! We all had to see that child’s birthday party disguising itself as a veneration of divine masculinity, with a has-been on steroids, the has-been screaming with a smile, communicating that anger is happiness! We all had to watch them happily-angrily profess this live action rerun of the 80’s was actually an ode to the beauty of their divine views of masculinity (otherwise known as anger with a hard-on), to their religious holy land, and its red white and blue idol. We all had to see that pathetic shrine to steroids, fireworks, and tiny dicks. Now they have to see what other people see, and they don’t get to be mad when one of your favorite filmmakers from childhood shows you exactly who you are.
“Disclosure Day” is Spielberg trying to lovingly correct the man-children he has created, before it’s too late. He’s disclosing to them that their fantasy word of Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones or even movies from his buddies like Star Wars were all a fantasy, and they, like frightened children, just don’t want to see the man behind the curtain.
It is claiming truth can be known to all through beauty, and the empathy and vulnerability you need to create it. You are not determining the value of images by pretending you exist outside of them, anymore than Noah could understand the world around him by perceiving the alleged apocalyptic event of death (the flood) as some sign that that everyone who drowned just deserved to to die, and if the god that killed the people who deserved to die didn’t kill Noah, what else would Noah think if not “everyone deserves pain except for me and my family unit.” Isn’t that what our myths have created? Isn’t that what we say when death on the Holy Land (9/11, 10/7) necessitates genocide?
Spielberg is attempting to create the anti-Noah’s Ark, because as I just said, and yes, I will repeat myself as much as I can because some of us need to hear this again, if Noah’s Ark was a myth that told some people that everyone was damnable to hell for the crime of existing outside our families, then these are the people that run our country. This is the myth that Pete Hesgeth grew up on. It’s the myth he thinks he’s enacting when they post a video of that fucking loser achieving a PR on bench press. Pete Hesgeth believes in Noah’s Ark, because he believes that god* has chosen him to be the toughest man who tells tough guys to be tough guys and not question any of their microdicked impulses. If other people die, so says Noah’s Ark and Pete Hesgeth, then they fucking deserved it for the betterment of my narrative development.
*(yes, the word “god” will be lower cased to damn the idol American conservatives have crafted in their own image, to maybe see that being upset about capitalization of a fucking word is not a testament to absolute truth to the damnation of all, to maybe see that even if god exists, their idols are nothing, the work of men’s hands)
When I make this claim, that Pete Hesgeth grew up on a grotesque myth of genocide that reflects his pathetic, angrily joyous entitlement, will the gut reaction from reactionaries be “well, are you saying God SHOULDN’T have killed an entire planet full of evil people? Are you saying the people who run our country SHOULDN’T like those fables about god killing an entire planet full of people? I can totally understand why you might not want ALL of the evil people to die, a genocide might be too far, but are you saying Pete Hesgeth’s gut reaction of wanting to kill evil people is wrong? Don’t you think our military operations SHOULD be called ‘Epic Fury’?”
Would they even question why that was their gut reaction, or why we’re even telling fables with planets full of evil people to begin with? Would they even question why there was a military operation entitled EPIC FURY? ARE WE NOT BEING LEAD OFF A CLIFF TO ETERNAL TORMENT BY A PIED PIPER FOR HIGH SCHOOL JOCKS?????
Now, after taking a breather, I can say this angry, petulant myth has created man-children who righteously cry at images of Hulk Hogan endorsing the leader of the free world, as well as cry with righteous (dare I say EPIC) FURY that the images of their childhood (Star Wars, for instance) are being desecrated. When a reactionary youtuber claims the plot holes in the ethereal “Star Wars narrative” matter more than the series of images, the series of tiny, perpetual scientific miracles of light and shadow that we call cinema (and sometimes, for two hours, if you have the right images, you’ll call that cinema “Star Wars”) they are denying a fundamental factor of their actual existence. They are denying the actual science of light and shadow that created their experience, in favor of the mythology known as “Star Wars lore.” Jesus did say that in the end days they would be turned to fables, but don’t worry, reactionaries, he probably didn’t mean yours. Jesus probably really cares that the Holdo Maneuver is a plot hole that ruined Star Wars lore forever. He definitely cares more about the Holdo maneuver being a plot hole than he does about bombing a school of Iranian schoolgirls, because they were on the planet of evil people, and he would have to concede the gut reaction to instill death on a planet of evil people is moral. So moral, in fact, that he doesn’t even want to think about it. Instead he wants to talk about true things in Star Wars, things that are, as Jordan Peterson might say, “truer than true”, which means the lore of Star Wars is “truer than true”, and because Star Wars is “truer than true”, it deserves more of our passion than dead Iranian schoolchildren, because we can be sympathetic to the dead schoolchildren, but we can’t let dead children on the evil planet get in the way of the “mythological truth” of fucking Star Wars. Am I repeating myself? What have I been repeating? Why would I be repeating it?
But don’t worry. You can remove your sympathetic mask of alleged sadness over alleged moral complication of 120 dead Iranian school girls. Just put on the mask of righteousness when you think of your preferred dead children, the ones that died on 9/11 and 10/7. The ones that died on your holy land. Now that you’re righteously angry, one can feel righteous about the experience of heroism of “Star Wars”, righteously angry about the holdo maneuver, all while pretending that this experience is above human experience.
Does the creation of Star Wars matter to the reactionary, or does it not? Star Wars is not created by the physics of tattooine’s atmosphere or whatever the fuck, but the math and science of the camera. If you are like the angry loser who makes 17 hour videos about being angry about Star Wars videos, if you’re like the angry loser who says “images don’t matter, ‘storytelling’ is timeless”, if you get angry that people admire the beauty of images in favor of your fictional, mythological “lore”, then you think that mythology is more important than reality. You think fake science is better than real science. You think fake is better than real. You can rhetorically ask me what a woman is, but when you think that fake lore is more important than real science, you have violated EVERY standard of evidence. You’ve infantilized anyone who only wanted to understand what they’d witnessed. You’ve brutally stifled their questions, shouted them down. Ridiculed them, shamed, and overridden them for the crime of SIMPLY BEING ASTONISHED, for who the fuck is a person who “objectively” whines about the Holdo Maneuver as if it’s a moral failure! Who the fuck is a person who thinks the joy of magic and splendor is beneath them, when in truth it’s all they have! Do I need to tell them that Chewbacca isn’t real? Will they respond to the assertion that Chewbacca isn’t real by asking me what a woman is?
In Disclosure Day, Spielberg is screaming with loving, fatherly tears at the reactionaries that he raised. Through Koepp and Colman Domingo, Spielberg is screaming at these silly, dangerous, goofy and dumb motherfuckers in their cognitive dissonance. Living in the belief that your childhood nostalgia is all that mattered, yet claim they felt nothing while experiencing it. They claim there was no experience at all when Luke Skywalker first ignited his lightsaber, and expect you believe they are telling the truth. He is screaming at them that their childhood mattered, that it happened, that the beauty of the images they grew up on MEANT SOMETHING TO THEM PERSONALLY, AND YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM PEOPLE, LEAST OF ALL YOURSELF. Because if the veneration of Lord Of The Rings from Christian nationalists post 9/11 tells us anything, it’s that they saw Noah’s Ark as a myth that told us that only our childhood myths matter. If you see a Christian nationalist herald how popular Lord Of The Rings was post-9/11, saying it’s a good thing that The Lord Of The Rings riled us up enough post-9/11 to kill children overseas in the name of freedom, they are a living, breathing manifestation of the petulant anger of Noah’s Ark. You can care about these people, but if you want to care about the kind of people that admire Pete Hesgeth from afar in the same way Hesgeth admires Noah from afar, you have to understand them. Once you understand them, are you prepared for the terror that will come with that? Are you prepared to comprehend how afraid you should be of the people with nuclear launch codes? “Minority Report” has a line from a news anchor that says that a police officer murdering someone “puts a human face” on the pre-crime program. What’s the human face on the nuclear launch codes? What’s the face of Donald Trump? Do you see that human face of Donald Trump? Are you afraid of this face? Are you, like Pete Hesgeth, secretly harboring a humiliation fetish, so you just angrily smile as you piss yourself in fear like Pete does every day, as if to say the cause of the piss in Pete’s pants doesn’t actually bother him? Why would you want to just be angry when you can admit you’re afraid? Stop being so angry and just admit you pissed yourself, I’ll buy you a new pair of pants!
This is an attempt to reach out to these people, telling them that the images that created their childhood mattered, which means images matter, which means how we create images matters, which means how you experience those images matters, and if you can’t acknowledge this basic tenet of reality, then you’re not ready for the truth.
This dialogue between Noah (Colin Firth) and Hugo (Colman Domingo) is Steven Spielberg and David Koepp pleading to the Noahs of the world. Hugo’s words move me to tears. I think they are the anti-“Network.”
“You don’t need to fear them.”
“I fear us. The entire reason WARDEX exists is because of our knowledge, CERTAIN that the human race cannot accept what we know. That truth will upend all established order, all across the entire world, the ARCHIVE Kilner stole is a VIRUS against which the world has ZERO immunity. I have spent the last 35 years protecting-“
“Your own wealth and power, that’s all you’ve been protecting.
Noah!
NOAH!
There is an essential need in all of us to believe, and an equal need to be believed. You violated EVERY standard of evidence. You’ve infantilized anyone who only wanted to understand what they’d witnessed. You’ve brutally stifled their questions, shouted them down. Ridiculed them and shamed, and overridden them for the crime of SIMPLY BEING ASTONISHED. We believe the believers, and then deny them the chance to believe them to. But people keep wondering, encountering the unknown, telling others about their experiences, they are STARVED FOR THE TRUTH. This 79 year terror campaign of obfuscation, lies, and cover up, HAS TO END.”
devilsadvocritic 