Andrew Klavan has weighed in on the destruction reboot of Mad Max. The reaction to this flick could be fairly summed up as “A Tale of Two Worldviews.”

It would appear that the $200 million social conditioning tool is flopping—actually being outperformed by the sequel to some heretofore forgettable chick-flick about a singing group. (There must be some blog-worthy irony in a Grrrl Power flick targeted at guys losing out to a Grrrl Power flick for girls, but I’ll let somebody else report on that.)

However, if you perform an Internet search, you’ll find all the “mainstream” (left-wing) sources claiming that Max is strong at the box office. “Nyah-nyah! In your FACE, all you misogynistic naysayers! Your Y-Chromosome Ilk are falling for the brilliant bait-and-switch all according to plan!”

Andrew Klavan brings up a point that is related to part of Virtual Pulp’s mission (contesting the left’s monopoly on the culture):

As long as you conservatives stay on the sidelines, the left will win the culture and the culture wars.  As long as you refuse to build a critical and award-giving infrastructure to celebrate great liberty-loving works, as long as you praise only G-rated films while watching the R-rated ones in secret, as long as you dismiss freedom-supporting art because it’s naughty or contains violence and sex or four-letter words or sympathetic gay characters…

Boy, Klavan was really going in! Then he had to slip in the obligatory “gay” element.  Sorry Andrew: you can sneak mushrooms, onions, and even hot sauce into my bowl and, if the stew was tasty enough to begin with, I’ll dodge my spoon around those unwanted ingredients. But when you plop in steaming heaps of dogshit, I not only won’t eat the stew (or drink the Kool-Aid), but I will no longer trust the cook, either.

…or whatever makes you wrinkle your righteous little nose — as long as you do those things, the left will continue to use the culture to eat away the free earth beneath your feet.

And now Klavan has sufficiently recovered from his Pavlovian pander to the pervert lobby. His sights swing back on the target and he mauls it with a sledgehammer:

The results are already plain to see. Only a nation in which the left had monopolized the arts for 50 years could have elected a mean-spirited little anti-American incompetent like Barack Obama to the presidency while honestly believing him a messiah bringing Hope and Change. Only a nation that has been taught to believe what Shelby Steele calls “poetic truth” over actual truth could make that stupid a mistake. We learned to believe the Obama mythology at the movies.

For decades, feministas and white knights have been slipping their amazon superninja fantasies into action adventures. To a large degree, this has had the desired effect. More men have been assimilated into white-knighthood and the ridiculous ideas planted into the subconscious from entertainment have convinced people, for instance, that women in the military—even in the combat arms—is a great idea.

But this isn’t enough. Now the cultural programmers are trying to take it a step further. They’re gonna take an iconic hero, put his name on the marquis to draw fans in, then shove him to the sidelines to showcase the amazon superninja trope that they really care about, mix in plenty of explosions as camouflage, and assume you’re too stupid to notice their bait-and-switch.

Movies like this are an attempt at a transition. What they really wish we would do is make blockbuster successes out of overt feminista flicks like Tank Girl, Barbed Wire and Elektra, without needing to be tricked. Until then, though, they’ll hijack the heroic icons that have earned our admiration, to try programming us into liking what they think we should like.

If they had the confidence they pretend (much less some artistic integrity), the Ministers of the Propaganda Corps would come up with their own stories and characters, instead of hijacking, say, a historical figure like Noah to pimp their bankrupt mythologies. Instead they fawn in masturbatory glee over Frank Miller introducing a female Robin, and Marvel giving Thor a sex-change.

What’s sad is, George Miller himself has assimilated to the point that he willingly ruined his own creation in order to prove himself a loyal conformist.

In the past, I might have gone to see the movie anyway, in hopes that something good accidently survived to the final cut.  But the truth is, we’ve all seen this movie a zillion times already, only with different titles, actors, and camera angles. And all the desperate hype from the Marxosphere about how great it is only confirms what we knew well before it was released. Fool me once, Hollywood…

I refuse to pay for a ticket to Fury Road precisely because I am a fan of Mad Max and The Road Warrior.

Looks like some other men are finally wising up, too