Feminism vs. Feminine Mystery in Film

 

 I first saw Jessie Buckley in War and Peace as Princess Maria, whom she portrayed with depth and sincerity. And she has done well in other things I have seen her in, I have been really impressed. Such a shame she chose this vile film; she is probably being poorly advised. From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

Take the rage of modern feminism, the scourge of pornography, and add classic Hollywood movie musical and horror elements, overlap with an insane storyline, sew them all together, give the resulting monster a jolt of pointless modern violence, and you’ve got the new movie The Bride! It is, quite possibly, the worst film I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the plot—and no, this is not a joke. The Bride! is set in 1930s Chicago. Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale), or “Frank,” is living in the Windy City. Suffering from loneliness, he visits Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), a surgeon who specializes in reanimating the dead. Frank is matched with a recently murdered woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley). Ida, it turns out, was murdered shortly after she was possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelly, the original author of the novel Frankenstein. The resuscitated couple go on a Bonnie and Clyde-style road trip, committing crimes that attract the attention of Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penelope Cruz). The couple gets caught, shot down—and then reanimated …  again. The Bride! is the kind of film where you sit in the theater, incredulous both about what you are watching and the fact that you are bothering to watch it.

The film is directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who, through this film, may be signaling that she needs professional help. The point of the movie, as far as I can tell, is that patriarchal society abuses women, kills them, and drives them mad. The only way to cope is to become a kind of punk rock mercenary (Buckley’s makeup and electroshock blonde hair is pure 1980s LA). The only acceptable male companion is an obedient monster who, like you, is an outsider—or “a non-compliant,” as Dr. Euphonious puts it. Gyllenhaal is a Hollywood A-Lister, so she was able to attract the best actors for her movie. Jessie Buckley switches between Ida, who has a Yonkers accent, to Mary Shelley, who was British, to the Bride, who falls somewhere in between. Buckley gives the performance her all. It’s just sad that her dynamic energy wasn’t put to use for something that makes sense. Ditto for Christian Bale.

There is something deeply disturbing at the heart of The Bride!, but it has nothing to do with the so-called patriarchy. It is more about the corrosive effects of our porn culture.

Every male character in the film has, in some way, abused a woman. The men in the 1930s nightclub at the beginning of the film are not the mannerly companions one might expect from that era, but leering, aggressive abusers with dirty minds and dirty mouths. The dialogue is pure 2026—I don’t think anyone during the Great Depression, for example, regularly used phrases like, “What the actual [expletive]!” Frank is a huge fan of the movie star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), but even Reed turns out to be a jerk. When Reed dismisses an emotional Frank with a quip about the monster “not being my type,” Frank implodes, crashing a chandelier and helping the Bride escape after she shoots a cop. Did I mention that this might be the worst film I have ever seen? 

The depressing takeaway from The Bride! is a theme that conservatives have been warning against for decades. Namely, that we now have multiple generations of young people who are so emotionally fragile that the smallest criticism becomes a mental health crisis and turns them into raging monsters. Take Ronnie Reed’s innocuous line about Frank not being his type. Reed is not even rejecting Frank outright, just offering an innocent quip. Yet it is somehow portrayed as an excuse for monstrous behavior. 

If America’s pornography culture really has corroded sexual relationships and men to the degree portrayed in this film—where they cannot be with women in any social situation, or any situation at all, without acting like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (Christian Bale’s true monster role)—then we do, indeed, have a crisis. But it’s worth noting that that crisis, like American Psycho itself, is about the gay culture’s hatred of women, and something that Hollywood will probably never confront honestly. If you want to see real toxic misogyny, gay Hollywood is where you’ll find it. (Read more.)

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Trump’s Epic Fury Strategy Is Working Even If Critics Cannot Yet See It

 From Amuse on X:

Public debate about military action often suffers from a simple problem. Many observers evaluate the present through the lens of the past. The United States fought long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those wars produced exhaustion among American voters and deep skepticism toward any new military engagement. This skepticism is understandable. It is also sometimes misleading. When people assume that every use of American military power will automatically lead to a generation long occupation, they may fail to see when a different strategy is unfolding.

That is the background against which Operation Epic Fury must be understood. A joint US and Israeli campaign has conducted one of the most effective air offensives in modern history. In roughly ten days more than 5,000 major targets inside Iran have been struck. Entire layers of Iran’s military leadership have been eliminated. The infrastructure that sustains the regime’s ability to threaten its neighbors is being dismantled piece by piece. Analysts across the defense community describe the speed and scale of the campaign as unprecedented.

The operation has been driven by unusually deep coordination between two highly capable militaries. American and Israeli forces are not merely cooperating in the loose sense typical of coalition warfare. Their command structures have been integrated to a remarkable degree. A US three star general and full staff operate inside Israeli headquarters, while an Israeli general and staff work inside US Central Command. Intelligence flows continuously between the two commands. Targeting information is shared in real time. Decisions that once required slow diplomatic coordination now occur within a unified operational framework.

The results speak for themselves. Iranian missile launchers, drone factories, underground weapons depots, transportation networks that move missile units, and command and control facilities have been systematically targeted. Hardened underground facilities have been penetrated. Launch infrastructure has been destroyed. Communications networks that coordinate attacks across the region have been degraded or eliminated. According to current assessments, more than 90% of Iran’s ability to conduct large retaliatory missile attacks has already been destroyed.

To understand what that means, consider the opening phase of the conflict. Iranian planners attempted to launch massive missile salvos designed to overwhelm defensive systems. Early waves involved 25 to 50 missiles fired in coordinated strikes aimed at Israel, US bases, and allied facilities. Such attacks depend on volume. If enough missiles arrive simultaneously, some will inevitably slip through.

That strategy has collapsed. Today Iran is often able to launch only two to five missiles at a time. Occasionally a volley of 10 to 12 missiles occurs, but even those are well within the capacity of layered US and Israeli missile defenses to defeat. The offensive capacity of the Iranian regime has not merely been reduced. It has been structurally crippled. (Read more.)

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Lorrha Stories: Irish Monasticism

 From The Abbey of Misrule:

St Ruadhán was one of the ‘twelve apostles of Ireland’, a collective of significant early Irish saints who studied under the legendary St Finian of Clonard. Ruadhán (whose name is pronounced ‘Rowan’, and means ‘red-haired’) was, like his fellow apostles, a monk of the Celtic tradition, which later came into conflict with Rome over various issues, like the date of Easter, the correct form of tonsure and other such theological details. In reality though, these issues were secondary to the real one, which was how much power Rome should have over monasteries in distant lands.

In early Ireland, Christianity was monastic, and it was Abbots rather than Bishops who called the shots. Irish monasticism had, for around 500 years, developed a specifically ‘Celtic’ character which seems to have been greatly influenced - and, I think, directly seeded - by Egyptian desert monks. This was the age of the round tower, the beehive hut and the small-scale, ascetic Christianity of the Wild Saints. It was the world of Patrick and Kevin, Colmcille and Bridget.

The Pontiff in Rome, however, wanted this scruffy, desert Christianity reined in under a hierarchy of Bishops answerable to him, and in Ireland, as in England a century before, the Normans would be his vessels. In 1066, the Norman king William the Conqueror (William the Bastard to his friends) had invaded England, killing its legitimate (and elected) King, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings. He had done so under the Papal banner, which he had carried into battle, and on his victory he set about demolishing the old wooden Anglo-Saxon churches and building new, stone ‘Romanesque’ ones in their places. He also gave the green light to the continental monastic orders to move in and replace their indigenous counterparts. (Read more.)

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Pall Embroidered by Marie-Antoinette

From Sotheby's: "A silk chalice cover [pall] embroidered with gold and silver thread and beads; according to tradition it was embroidered by Marie Antoinette." The Sacred Heart of Jesus is shown with the Christogram IHS, symbolizing the Holy Name of Jesus. The color signifies it may have been used in the Mass of Laetare Sunday, or Rose Sunday,  that is, the 4th Sunday of Lent. Share

Accountability Is Not Dead—It’s Just Selective

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

One of the most common complaints about modern public life is the disappearance of accountability. Politicians are not accountable. The media is not accountable. Corporations are not accountable. Institutions that once claimed moral authority now seem able to operate without consequences.

The phrase “no one is ever held accountable anymore” has become almost a cliché.

We recently watched this play out in real time. Following an ISIS-inspired attempted bombing in New York, law enforcement reported that explosives had been thrown toward anti-Islam protesters during a confrontation near the mayor’s residence. Yet many “news” outlets quickly produced headlines and articles that gave the impression that there wasn’t really a terrorist attack at all—or that, if there was, it was somehow the fault of right-wing protesters.

At CNN, host Abby Phillip inaccurately described the attack as being directed at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Phillip later acknowledged the mistake and issued a correction on air, saying she had incorrectly described the target and apologized for the error. In other words, she eventually did the minimum professional standards require—she corrected the record. (Read more.)

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Chastity is How We See God

From Pondus Meum Amor Meus:

Chastity is vital. This much is clear. But I want us to understand how important it is to all of us at all times, whether you’re single, celibate, married, old, or young.

Chastity is a virtue, which means it’s a positive, life-giving presence infused into us. Chastity is not limited to only mortification and penance against our bodies. It is not exclusively negative, or defined by what we are trying to escape from. Of course, the spiritual life is disciplined and includes penance, meaning we make every effort to flee from sin. We strive to maintain custody of the eyes, and modesty, and to reject disordered desires.

But we get chastity wrong if we think of it only as a lack. A Christian is not someone who withdraws, who cedes the world to evil, who escapes. Quite the opposite. We are here to redeem the world, to replant paradise, to build the City of God. We are for the world. Virtue is not emptiness. It is plenitude, a joyful happiness so overwhelming that we hardly know how it can fit into this world. It spills out of us as if over the lip of a chalice and we feast in the presence of our enemies.

If being unchaste is defined by turning people and things into objects of lust, and if it is the debasement of our senses, then chastity is the virtue whereby we heal the senses and, instead of objectifying and selfish use of the created world, our chastened senses deliver us through the threshold of beauty into wholeness. The senses are lifted up and transfigured, unveiling intelligible forms that lead into the unity of God. (Read more.)

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Versailles Recreates Louis XVI's Private Bedroom

The King's State Bedroom, used for the lever and coucher rituals.

 From The Times:

A king might be expected to have rather an elaborate bedchamber. Louis XVI of France was no exception and had no fewer than three. Until now, visitors to the Palace of Versailles have only been able to view his grand public bedroom, where courtiers vied for the privilege of helping the king dress and undress as he rose in the morning and retired at night. His state bed was largely symbolic, used mainly for the lever and coucher rituals, which served as daily public reminders that all power, honours and favours were accorded by the monarch. However, the formal bedchamber was uncomfortable and cold in winter because it was too big to heat properly. Meanwhile, intimate moments with Marie Antoinette were reserved for the queen’s bedroom.

Instead, Louis XVI often slept alone in a separate and more modest bed in his private apartments that was also used by his grandfather before him, Louis XV. Conveniently, it had a stairway to the room of Louis XV’s official mistress, Madame du Barry, on the floor above. The four-poster bed in this room was destroyed during the French Revolution that toppled Louis XVI, who was guillotined in public in Place de la Révolution, now Place de la Concorde, in 1793. Restorers have spent years reconstructing it and the bed will go on public display at the palace next month. (Read more.)

 The private bedroom can be seen HERE.

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Reviving Gender Roles

 From The Catholic Herald:

Unmoored from Christianity, however, the belief that women ought to obey husbands will not help heal our broken culture. Advocating strict gender roles in reaction to wider culture runs the risk of fetishising the recovery of traditional roles. When we prize submission rather than common-sense dynamics, gender roles become exaggerated and unbalanced.

Indeed, bereft for at least a generation, if not more, of couples embracing traditional gender roles, some young people turn to online influencers as their guide. While we might occasionally find a drop of wisdom in the sea of online content, it requires a discerning scroller to separate the wheat from the chaff.

An affinity for Andrew Tate-inspired chauvinism must not be mistaken for authentic chivalry. Tate reduces women to biological function, stripped of dignity and respect. His vision of gender roles fuels a war of the sexes and does away with proper tradition: he supports women’s subservience, yet warns men against marriage. Tate’s pernicious but popular views epitomise the harm that comes with believing in women’s obedience when detached from a Christian theology underpinning the dynamics between the sexes. (Read more.)

A thoughtful environmentalism. From Word on Fire:

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII promulgated Rerum Novarum, an encyclical that would become the foundational document of Catholic social teaching. Right away, Leo condemns socialism as denying the natural right to private property. In his argument, he emphasizes property’s role in upholding the family: 

It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. 

Leo claims that, for the family to carry out its natural role, it requires not simply property but “productive property.” This statement critiques not only socialism but also modern capitalism. It implies that a family which lacks the ability to provide for itself through its own capital, whether that be a family business, a piece of land, or the tools and skills of craftsmanship, and must thereby rely solely on wage labor to support itself, will be hindered from fulfilling its natural responsibilities toward its children. (Read more.)

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The Case of Marko Rupnik: An Artist’s Perspective

 From Sisters of the Little Way:

The floor-to-ceiling mosaic chapel I walked into that day was designed by Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik. A former Jesuit, the priest now faces multiple accusations of sexual abuse from female religious, many of whom were involved in the creation of his artwork. After great public pressure to address the accusations of abuse, an independent tribunal at the Vatican has been set up to determine Rupnik’s fate.

Celebrated for many years, Rupnik and his team of artists at Centro Aletti sought to create contemporary liturgical art by blending Eastern and Western tradition. As an artist, I can understand why many were drawn to Rupnik’s work. His designs maintain an interesting consistency and coherence as well as a boldness in color and asymmetry that creates a sense of movement. Drawing the viewer into a cosmos of sacred symbols, his installations encompass entire environments. Scooping the viewer into a world of intentionality, his work reorients tradition in a way that feels authoritative and purposeful.

Centro Aletti, the community that assists in producing and installing Rupnik’s work, describes their artistic style by focusing on the themes of light, movement, and brightness. Their “new organic language” is free, they argue, from anything “gloomy, dark, oppressive, or depressing—it’s an explosion of light.” This aspect of his art always unsettled me; the abundance, brightness, and proliferation of his designs struck me as impersonal, more a product of capitalism’s influence on the Church than something sacred or precious. Overshadowed by revelations of abuse, the emphasis on explosive, bright light in Rupnik’s mosaics becomes not just uncomfortable but ironic. His artistic choices, unfortunately, make sense in terms of research on people who sexually abuse others, which often highlights the stage of “grooming” victims and communities by maintaining an image that comes across to others much like Rupnik’s icons—exceedingly “bright.” (Read more.)

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