In which the pond does what a blogger's got to do while deep in reptile land ...

It was of course only a coincidence, and a deep, dark, furtive secret that, inspired by the recent robotic Westworld - about which the pond remains ambivalent - the pond has been off on a western jag recently, not least the westerns of Budd Boetticher, made with an ageing, elderly Randolph Scott, a white, philosophical, laconic, courtly dignified male, who was some 62 when he strapped on his last holster with Budd in 1960 ...

These are the westerns for genuine western lovers, emulated but never matched by the likes of a retro Monte Hellman making Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting, but in their own courtly, dignified courtly way, a summary of the western ethos and the films of Ford and Hawkes that had gone before, given a final dignified, courtly coda by Sam Peckinpah, when he paired Joel McCrea against Randolph Scott for a discussion of philosophical and moral values in Ride the High Country ...

The last Boetticher/Scott outing, Comanche Station, was shot around the spectacular Alabama Hills and Lone Pine, with Mount Whitney as a backdrop ...

The thing is, even the villain in that show - not the Indians, who do what Indians must do - but a cad played by Claude Akins, is dignified in his own courtly way.  A cheeky "hello" is all that's needed to establish his profound corruption.

Yes, he's just gone bad, and the reason he's gone bad is his desire for money ...

Fronting up to the final inevitable shootout, he's got to try - Come too far to turn back now, he tells Randy.

Naturally he's shot plumb dead, and his last line, spoken as a soprano in an opera might sing her last lines before finally getting dead runs, "It's a pure shame, ain't it, how a man'll push himself for money ... yes, sir ... pure ..."

It's impossible to imagine a world, disdainful of money, valuing a lost love, celebrating loyalty to a blind man (that's the punch line) that's further removed from the world of the vulgarian Trump and the barbarian hordes at the gate ...

So naturally the pond was inspired this day when David Martin Jones brought it all together for the lizard Oz ...

Well there are many westerns and many wests - some even say that there are robots and aliens in the west - and sure as shit, the dumb coot launches into the usual blather about progressive elites ...

Actually the tradition most long lost is that of the western, as exemplified by futtocks who blather on about westerns without apparently having seen any, or what they might actually be saying ...

Now the pond has an interest in all this. It's one of the prouder family boasts that not only did certain vigilante members head out on the hunt for the Governor brothers, but just to balance the books, others in the family were on friendly terms with Captain Thunderbolt and welcomed Mary Ann Bugg into the fold ...

There were many strands in the old north west, and as soon as someone starts to talk of unique myths, the pond begins to twitch at the notion of "unique" ...

Now you don't have to have grown up in Tamworth and been inducted into westerns by a father who spent too long in picture theatres as front of house to realise this is total crap, and it's also simple enough to understand that if you end up getting it wrong, you might end up talking through your hat, or talking to a chair ...

Plumb loco, as crazy as a critter on hooch ...

And it's even worse when the western is dragooned in by a prime klutz as evidence that the way of the west is the way of the alt right fascism of Steve Bannon.

Sorry sir, and ma'am, if you don't mind, that's another movie, that's another movie altogether ...

It's impossible to go into the many ways that Jones gets it wrong, not least the bizarre notion that Bannon and Trump are somehow in the classically realist, European realpolitik tradition ...

Not least that in the quintessential western, moralism might be construed as misguided ...because moralism saturated the movies of Ford, Hawks (see that homosexual boy come to terms with his stern dad in Red River) and others ...

Oh fuck, more blather about elites, by a man who signs himself off at the bottom of the article in a way designed to ensure we all remember that he's part of an academic elite ... and scribbling how a billionaire is now suddenly not a member of the elite or in need of elite guidance ...

Who do they think is buying this sort of moonshine?

Well there are some things the pond can't walk around, and that's the rampant confusion arising from the resulting baying at the moon ... 

He may well be right?

He may well be wrong ...

Stupid academic 'leets ...

Let's take a look at a more extended version of that Hollywood Reporter quote ...

Bannon might only have been talking about a 50 year reich - Hitler was inclined to blather on about a 1,000 year reich - but the delusionalism is just as strong in this one ... and that last line is revealing ...

It will be as exciting as the 1930s ...

Well it wasn't Jackson  or Wilson who was in charge in the 1930s, it was FDR, and all that implied ...

And then there's that other quote ...

The funny thing here is invoking Satan and Darth Vader, and correctly comparing Dick Cheney with them, and even better, getting away with it ...

Imagine anyone else invoking Satan as a role model... imagine an elitist, a progressive or a liberal ... how long would they last in the world of fundamentalists, evangelicals and all the other fools who talk of westerns and seem to have diddly squat knowledge whereof they speak ...

Well the pond can spot Bannon from a mile off, and here's a picture of him ...

Now should Martin Jones feel the need to scribble again, can the pond suggest a better metaphor for him?

Professional wrestling ... which is to say, fake wrestling staged to relieve believing punters of money that uselessly burns holes in their pockets ...

More here, but the pond reckons that Martin Jones is just another sucker who has fallen for kayfabe ...

And if anyone wants a good example of where infrastructure, autobahns and people's wagons and cruise ship vacations for workers and the whole Kraft durch Freude Strength Through Joy movement can take them, including fighting until death or final victory in glorious wars, here's a tidy bit of propaganda ...

And now, thanks to the infallible Pope, it's time to return to the local scene, and to another movie, featuring men shouting obscenities at goats ... and more Papery here ...