It’s a losing battle—like trying to explain to people that Lolita is not actually a book that justifies men’s sexual interest in girl children—but neither Apocalypse Now nor Heart of Darkness, the book is is based on, are about how imperialist wars are actually really cool and good.
Anthony Swofford wrote about this in Jarhead. He believes there isn’t such a thing as an antiwar movie for a young male soldier, particularly one who has not yet been to war. All images of violence are foreplay. Swofford lived to regret it all but somehow even middle-aged men are this dumb now
sigh
I think there actually is àn argument that Nabakov wasn’t really bothered by his narrator’s rape of a 12-year-old but there is no possible way to interpret ÀN or HoD in the way Trûmp does in that Tweet.
Exactly. Spoiler alert: we lose the Vietnam War.
Perhaps worth adding: The Clash actually understood that surfing-obsessed Lt Col Kilgore is a symbol of foolish American hubris and made a danceable song out of another of his lines. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFYL...
Trump and Hegseth imagine we lost because we were too woke.
See also, Springsteen's Born in the USA.
They don’t have the patience to contemplate a 4-1/2 minute song, let alone a book.
it’s a shame that no one actually reads Lolita in lieu of having misinformed takes about it because it’s an incredible work
I mean, this is mostly because Kubrick himself didn’t read it, right?
It’s been a while, literally decades, since I’ve read LOLITA / Nabokov. What a brilliant, brilliant writer!
A older friend of mine at the time mentioned that the novel described something about roadside motels that was very appropriate to the time, and I’ve never forgotten that observation.
It really is. I remember being blown away with the prose when I first read it.
People think that about Lolita?
President Kurtz.
Some influence from Michael Herr's "Dispatches", too.
No, they are about madmen, like the current POTUS. It's our Kurtz moment. Oh the Horror, the Horror.
I always think about how everyone who quotes the "napalm in the morning" line does it like a badass but the line reading in the movie is stiff and awkward. He's admitting he can't live outside this fucked up situation.
lolwut? Duvall plays it positively post-coital in that scene. Dazed ecstasy.
Same thing re: Tyler Durden
Trumpolini’s never read a book or sat through a whole movie (maybe porno films). This is written by some twisted 30 something on his criminal staff who never finished the Cliff Notes.
Wait till you tell them that Col. Jessup is the bad guy in A Few Good Men
