Finally had some time to get back on mission here. I’d been working hard on the final volume of my By the Hands of Men series and a relaunch of the entire set of books, so stealing a few moments to wallow in cultural dupery was beyond me (why, no, I’m not pimping my own books here, oh no, I never).
When I had a chance to sit down and take the pulse of current commie myth-making, as presented by those Delphic Oracles lurking in the mists of the Internet and Cable, I beheld unto myself a new series called “Wayne.”
In Hollywood, there is a practice known as the “elevator pitch.” That is: can you tell your story idea in the ten or twenty interminable seconds when you’ve trapped a producer between an exit and the elevator doors he’s waiting to open and take him to the his next creatively bankrupt meeting? Since speed is of the essence, the idea has to be repackaged/regurgiated in an easily digestible unit: “It’s Die Hard in a Dialysis Ward! We call it ‘Pissing My Life Away.’”
The elevator pitch for “Wayne” was something along the lines of “He’s Dirty Harry with a Heart of Gold.”
As one of YouTube’s first series from their new network, I think hopes were reasonably high for this work. It had a certain pedigree, as it was produced by the two lads who brought us both Zombieland and Deadpool, which delivered an anarchic and original take on the two road-weary genres.
Alas, what we got was the same tired crap (with bonus cursing and more than a bit of the old ultra-violence). As the elevator pitch suggests, young Wayne (well-played by Mark McKenna) is a lad with a high-pain tolerance and apparently no tolerance for bad behavior. He’s like a teenaged enforcer, delivering Old Testament-level high-school vengeance to male evil-doers and miscreants (also male) in his crummy working-class neighborhood.
Good enough (who doesn’t appreciate seeing a righteous ass-beating, am I right?), but note the targets of his Deus Irae approach to justice. All male. Okay, we can let that go… seeing women beat up is something the Quentin Tarantinos of the world relish, not the rest of us sane individuals.
However, the dependable and tired creative cliches keep right on flowing after that.
- Main antagonists: foul-mouthed lower-class white guys who are violent, anti-social, marginally criminal, and fairly stupid. Check!
- Magic negroes: kindly female nurse tending dying man and cooking dinner for his son, along with smart, street-savvy young black kid who aids a befuddled white dude in finding himself. Check!
- Helpful homosexual (in a subtle performance by Stephen Kearin, which contains one of the few surprising and really original moments in the whole piece): speaks words of kindness and wisdom to emotionally clueless heterosexual hero. Check!
This junk (absent the exception noted above) was Daring! and Insightful! in the 1950s. “Bold and New” is now “Safely Edgy For Delicate SJW Sensibilities Everywhere.”
The times may be a changin’, but the Tropes they are a-samin’.
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