Steve Bannon’s mentor, the late Andrew Breitbart, famously concluded that modern politics is downstream from culture.
MAGA’s ascent, in part, can be attributed to their manufactured culture wars that feed the GOP base a 24-7 intravenous drip of hate, fear, and anger against an evolving gallery of villains.
One day it’s Muslims, then it’s immigrants of color, then it’s transgender people, and on and on it goes. Since they don’t have actual policy proposals to help Americans, they focus on a black Little Mermaid, Teletubbies, Bud Light commercials, “woke” cartoons, and the diverse cast of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Odyssey.
Not content with spending $300 million to destroy our democracy, Elon Musk took over Twitter and transformed it into a perennial hate machine that amplifies and promotes the toxic views of white supremacists and extremists. He jumped on The Odyssey hate before the movie was even released, lamenting that Nolan cast a transgender actor, Elliot Page, and a black woman, Lupita Nyong’o, as Helen of Troy. The movie was destined to fail according to these grifters. If you go “woke,” you go “broke.”
Well, The Odyssey just broke box office records and nabbed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in its first three days. It has amassed a 95% critical and audience rating and has completely exposed the right-wing grift machine that actually represents just a few people who are amplified and mainstreamed by algorithms and the MAGA media. It’s such a hit that the traditional grifters, such as Ben Shapiro, had to concede that it’s an amazing movie.
In this conversation, I talk to film critic Zaki Hassan about the movie and its very “woke” and topical themes, and we break down how the right-wing grift machine should finally be exposed and dismantled after its stunning failure to take down Nolan’s latest blockbuster.
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Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity, Jason Gael, Lalisa, Victoria Priya, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with Zaki Hasan! Join me for my next live video in the app.
