Final Girl character type mediates between normies vs. abnormality, not hedonists vs. puritanism

The received analysis of the "Final Girl" character type in horror movies -- the one who is left standing at the end, as the others are killed off -- is that her endurance owes to her being more abstinent than the other characters.

She is typically a virgin, or far less sexually active at any rate, and is less inclined to drink or do drugs compared to the others. The villain, in this analysis, is an enforcer of puritanical morality, punishing the hedonists and going lighter on the relatively more abstinent one. When they do confront each other, the Final Girl is in a stronger position to outwit or outlast the villain, since she has not had her energy and focus sapped by sex and alcohol.

Two opposed camps have sprung up around this shared analysis, the hedonists taking a negative view of this character type because they don't like the puritanical moralistic message that they believe the movie conveys, and the abstainers appreciating the hard-nosed no-nonsense view of the dangers of hedonism.

But this analysis misunderstands the relationship between the villain, the Final Girl, and the rest of the characters. The villain is supposed to be an enforcer of patriarchal and puritanical morality -- yet he is typically neither a husband nor a father, not a powerful elder of the community, and is a slave to his own desires and passions, primarily bloodlust. He is a poorly socially integrated loner or outsider, powerless at an institutional level -- resorting to violence as an impotent form of blindly lashing out -- and if anything, his sexual identity is that of a bitter angry incel.

He targets the rest of the characters not because they are hedonists, but because they are socially integrated normies -- teenagers having sex and socially drinking were things that normies used to do back during the outgoing / rising-crime period of the 1960s through the early '90s. He lashed out at them for taking part in the normal social group behavior of their time and place, which he was ruthlessly excluded from (whether or not that ostracism feels justified to the audience).

The Final Girl mediates between these two sides, as a marginal normie. She associates with the rest of the characters, but is still less likely to participate in their normal social behavior. Or her family life is more disintegrated than the families of the other characters. Compared to the others, she is noticeably farther away from the ideal teen of her environment.

Her being less than a total normie means the villain feels less hostile toward her than toward the others, and perhaps even feels a certain kinship with her, as a fellow loner or outsider. Rather than single-mindedly destroying her, the villain may try to seduce her, feeling that she is reachable in a way that the others are not.

This creates some tension within the Final Girl herself -- does she sympathize more with someone who is even more outside the norm than herself, or more with the normies who are under attack from a force of abnormality? Fundamentally, she is normal herself, not pathological like the sociopathic villain, so she sides with her fellow normies -- even if, in some cases, it takes her awhile to figure out that the villain is a warped psycho, qualitatively the opposite of her, rather than a kindred spirit who is simply quantitatively further out toward the margin than she already is.

And it sets up tension within the villain as well, leading to his downfall. He thought he could win her over, and it would be the two less socially integrated figures joined in a non-normie union -- or even an anti-normie union, where they go beyond withdrawing from the normies to actively trying to destroy them. By misinterpreting her marginal social status as stemming from pathology, projecting his own status onto hers, he goes easier on her, and lets his guard down around her.

This could be his only chance to become socially integrated -- albeit with just one other individual, rather than an entire group, but that beats total isolation and ostracism. His wishful thinking gets the better of him, and viewing her as a kindred spirit leaves him vulnerable to her plans to kill him off in order to protect her fellow normies. Her mere withdrawal of respect -- whether it had been out of fear or affection -- is enough to shatter his delusional dreams, and cause him to collapse into despairing powerlessness, neutralizing him as a threat anymore.

* * *

Without going into an exhaustive review, three key examples of this tension come to mind.

First, Nancy Thompson in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Krueger is clearly intrigued and fascinated with her. He taunts her with hallucinations of her dead friends, rather than treating her as just another prey to be hunted down. He also takes on a more flirtatious tone with her, rather than an angry or hostile tone, and explicitly refers to his killing off of her boyfriend as eliminating his romantic rival ("I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy"). At the end, it is her withdrawal of fear and respect that causes him to collapse.

I don't think that move would have had the same neutralizing effect if it had been one of the fully normie girls or guys who he had targeted earlier. "Fear me or don't fear me, I don't care, I'm killing you off because you're normies who have ostracized me." But because Freddy did feel misplaced kinship with Nancy, and tried to seduce her in a way that belied some level of affection for her, he opened himself up to his own destruction when she dashed his dreams of winning her over.

Second, Sarah in the horror-tinged fantasy movie Labyrinth. She comes from a broken home, in which she is marginal compared to her baby brother. In a moment of anti-sociality, she wishes that the villain would take away her brother so that she wouldn't have to babysit him, and could indulge her own interests. She regrets making this deal with the Devil, and yet still has trouble resisting the Goblin King's fascination with her, as he attempts to seduce her over to his side, hoping that the two of them could be a union of anti-normies against the rest of the world.

She disillusions him about the idea that she wanted her baby brother gone for sociopathic motives. It was just out of fleeting frustration, not an enduring desire to sow chaos, subvert norms, or sever social relationships. As she realizes that he is her opposite, she withdraws her fear, respect, and affectionate curiosity toward him, causing him to collapse. That would not have worked if it had been a target who he did not already care about winning over as a kindred spirit. If Hoggle, Ludo, or the baby brother himself had withdrawn their fear of him -- big deal, he would keep callously exploiting them anyway. But the one chance of winning over an object of his affection? That is too much for him to withstand.

Third, Veronica in the serial killer comedy movie Heathers. She not only makes a deal with the Devil (J.D.) to kill off her fully normie friends, who have made her the black sheep of their social clique, she gives into his sexual advances, and they do become an anti-normie couple. Like Sarah in Labyrinth, she comes to realize that her anti-social impulse was an unimportant frustration with certain individuals, whereas the villain who she has aligned herself with is pathological and therefore targets normies in general.

When J.D. wants to blow up the whole school, that is the last straw for her. By the end, she does not just express regret or balk at his plans, as she had done in earlier attempts to wiggle her way out of his grasp. She directly confronts him with a withdrawal of fear and respect, calling him a mere psychopath, not the cool rebel she originally thought he was. After she ruins his dreams of winning her over to kill all normies, he gives up his entire anti-normie project and commits suicide. That ego destruction would not have worked if she had been a generic popular girl or jock who called him a psychopath -- it had to be someone who he treated as a kindred marginal spirit and felt capable of winning over to the anti-normie crusade.

These two Final Girls show a character arc that wraps up in redemption after making a deal with the Devil. In what way did they align themselves with the villain? Not to punish the hedonism of her peers -- Sarah's object of hostility was a little baby, incapable of sex and drugs, and Veronica engaged in casual sex and drinking herself. So that cannot be the role of the villain, and those are not the themes of the movies that the Final Girl appears in.

Rather, she aligned herself with the villain around the goal of lashing out at full normies who were in some way responsible for her assuming a marginal social status. Veronica was the black sheep and butt of jokes in her clique, and Sarah was stuck babysitting her brother instead of living a normal teenage lifestyle because of the baby himself, and her callous stepmother who stuck Sarah with the duty of looking after the baby while she herself spent the evening out on a prestigious social date.

The true theme is deviance vs. normality, with the Final Girl being a marginal-status go-between. It has little to do with hedonism vs. puritanism, with the Final Girl being the abstinent go-between. And the Final Girl becomes a heroine by defending normality against the pathological forces of deviance that threaten it -- an effort on behalf of a group that she belongs to (however marginally at first). She does not become a heroine by winning a contest among individuals as to who can outlast the villain -- the socially blind conclusion of the standard analysis.

* * *

Boomers originally came up with this completely clueless analysis, which stems from their undying worldviews that every action must always take the form of a status contest, and that their hedonist project is under assault by puritanical forces that must be stopped.

The Gen X-ers who appreciate these movies, however, have still accepted this framing, only disagreeing about which side is good or bad. Yes, it's still a status contest among individuals, and yes, the more abstinent individual wins instead of the hedonist individuals -- but that's a good message, not a bad message.

It's time for a fresh look at the pop culture phenomenon of the Final Girl, as well as the quarter-century of analysis on the topic, from a late X-er / early Millennial perspective that sees the Boomer view for the fundamentally mistaken view that it is, rather than accept it analytically but take the opposite side of the value judgment. That stance prioritizes the Culture War implications rather than the objective understanding of the culture itself. For when you troll into the Culture War, the Culture War will troll back into you.

The correct understanding of the Final Girl trope still allows for a battle between two sides who approve or condemn the message. But now, it is between who approves of deviance threatening normality, vs. a marginal normie defending full normie-dom from deviance, even if they are somewhat sympathetic to the deviant side.

Boomers cannot appreciate this drawing of battle lines, because their worldview is all about the debate between "If it feels good, do it, man" or "Keep it in your pants, if you know what's good for you." It's a guide to individual survival and pleasure, only arguing about how those two may conflict with each other. It's not about social cohesion, which opposes normality and integration against abnormality and disintegration.

Boomers grew up in a socially cohesive world, which they took for granted, and have only ever concerned themselves with individual well-being. But Gen X-ers, and especially Millennials, grew up in a more and more socially fragmented world, making them more aware of concerns about social welfare. That allows them to understand a cultural phenomenon that is distinctive of a socially fragmenting climate -- like the Final Girl -- and to more generally re-analyze the zeitgeist of the mid-1970s through the present.

Baggy replaces skin-tight, as manic exhibitionism gives way to vulnerable coziness, echoing early 2000s, late '80s, and early '70s

One of the most bizarre reminders that we have entered a similar cultural phase as the early 2000s is the revival, seemingly out of nowhere, of really long boxy sweater jackets on girls. I can't find any contemporaneous pictures, but they do reliably make lists of early 2000s fashion items.

I distinctly remember seeing them in college. Was it a bath-robe? Trying to imitate granny's duster? Whatever it was, why are you wearing that outside of your dorm room? It just seemed so unnatural for young babes to be dressed up like old maids.

Fast-forward 15 years, and here is just one of many in Forever 21's sweater section:

The rest of their sweaters are a lot more billowy, boxy, bulky, and balloony than just five years ago, when slim-fitting was the norm.

And it's not just what they're wearing on top -- pant legs have not flared out this wide since the heyday of the boot-cut, velour trackpants, and JNCO jeans during the first half of the 2000s.

Since the late 2010s, several articles such as this one have taken note of the revival of looks from the early 2000s. And while some may be meaningless self-aware references on the runway, the flared pant legs and oversized tops are widespread and spontaneous shifts among ordinary people.

There were similar shifts during the second half of the '80s, as the skin-tight jeans of the early '80s gave way to the looser-fitting "mom / dad jeans" (and parachute pants at the extreme), and as sweaters, jackets, and coats blew up to blimp-like proportions.

Finally, the early '70s saw the same shift -- pant legs flared far out from the slimmer "mod" look of the second half of the '60s. This was the peak era of bell-bottom jeans, but all pants were flared. Tops were not as boxy as they would become by the late '80s, but they were still more loose and flowy in the sleeves than during the '60s. Collars were also gigantic, along with big ascots on blouses -- similar to the rise of the turtleneck during the late '80s, and the slouchy cowl neck during the early 2000s and today. Something that obscures the underlying body contours.

What the late 2010s, early 2000s, late '80s, and early '70s share is their place in the 15-year cultural excitement cycle: they are the vulnerable, mellow phase after energy levels have crashed from the manic invincible phase.

During this social-cultural refractory period, no more excitement is possible, and they're over-sensitive to attempts to get them excited again. So they just want to be left alone for awhile while their energy levels have a chance to recover to normal. Normal levels are reached during the restless, warm-up phase, when they are excitable again, but have yet to take off on another manic spike. Then the cycle repeats.

It's straightforward to interpret the shift toward blanket-like clothing as one method of insulating themselves from social contact during an over-sensitive refractory phase. Apart from insulation against unwanted attention, it gives them a cozy and secure feeling that they're more likely to seek out during a period of vulnerability.

I wrote two comments here and here on exhibitionist clothing styles during the manic phase -- mini and micro-mini skirts during the late '60s vs. midi and maxi dresses during the '70s, skin-tight jeans during the early '80s vs. loose and even baggy jeans during the late '80s and early '90s, thongs during the late '90s vs. boy shorts during the 2000s, and leggings-as-pants during the early 2010s vs. the return of denim and now flared legs during the late 2010s (and presumably the early 2020s).

An earlier post on the decline of the No Pants Subway Ride discussed the long-term trends in exhibitionism vs. covering up as reflecting the long-term trends in violent crime rates. As crime rates soared, it brought the risk of rape into the front of women's minds, and they responded by covering up and obscuring their figure, so as to not draw unwanted attention in the first place. That was evident by the early '70s, and reached its peak during the late '80s and early '90s. And it happened as well during the Jazz Age, with its boxy shapes, during another wave of rising crime rates.

It's only during falling-crime periods when women start to worry less and less about rape, and feel less worried about going out in public with their shape easily visible to all. We've seen that not only since the second half of the '90s through the recent trend of "leggings as pants," but also during the Midcentury, whose iconic woman is the "sweater girl" wearing a tight-fitting "bullet bra" that left nothing to the imagination.

Here, then, we see a case where the manic phase of the cultural excitement cycle does not resemble the outgoing / rising-crime phase of the crime-and-cocooning cycle. Manic, invincible-feeling people are exhibitionistic, whereas rising crime rates make people feel vulnerable and want to cover up in everyday settings.

Typically, the manic phase and the rising-crime phase resemble each other, since it is outgoing-ness that leads to rising crime rates, as potential predators find more targets when more people are out and about, and when people are trusting and letting their guard down during a fun-loving zeitgeist. Manic energy levels and extraversion are similar, but not identical, and the case of covered-up vs. baring-all reveals their separation.

No higher finance gods left to be deus ex machina for neoliberal bubble: Full pantheon of central banks already divinely intervening

As we near the end of the neoliberal bubble that began nearly 40 years ago, it's worth reflecting on the escalating scale of interventions that have been needed to resuscitate the economy (for the elites, anyway) after each successive near-death catastrophe. By the 2010s, we have reached the peak of that scale, as an entire global network of central banks has teamed together to prop up the "everything bubble".

The basic logic is that when an institution is about to go bust, a relatively bigger institution must intervene to save it. Bigger in scale, in wealth and resources, in social status, in influence, etc. A peer institution would not suffice, since whatever is causing the first institution to suffer near-death collapse could just as easily affect institutions at the same level of complexity. And certainly lesser institutions can not rescue greater ones.

"Big" can only be rescued by "bigger", and once there is no bigger, further rescues become impossible, and they sink or swim on their own.

Almost right out of the gate, the deregulation agenda of the Reaganites nearly blew up one of the largest banks in the nation -- Continental Illinois, in 1982. In the first clear case of "too big to fail," it was rescued by the FDIC, a federal government agency. That was a fairly small-scale rescuer needed to jump on the grenade.

By the end of Reaganism's first decade, deregulation mania had wiped out an even larger swath of the economy -- not just one bank, but an entire group within the finance sector, the savings & loan industry. Now it was no longer possible for just one puny federal agency to bail them out -- the full national government had to pass legislation, sign it into law, and survive judicial scrutiny. That was the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989.

As the Reaganite trend continued toward pointless financial speculation, in place of productive investment, the rescuers would bail out hedge funds, not just lowly regional banks or thrifts. In 1998, Long Term Capital Management imploded and posed such a risk to the Wall Street banks that not even the federal government could serve as the rescuer. They had to go higher to the big banks on Wall Street themselves, along with the central bank (the Fed) serving as a mediator, giving its stamp of approval and trustworthiness.

That was before the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999 (by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), so the Wall Street banks had not been able to scale up to the behemoths they would become in the 21st century, after the barriers were removed between commercial banking, investment banking, and insurance. Any individual one of them was not so much greater than a hedge fund, or group of hedge funds. One of them bailing out LTCM would have been closer to a peer trying to bail out a peer -- not good enough, and the full network of big banks was needed, plus the central bank coordinating the rescue without, however, supplying funds itself.

When the Tech Bubble 1.0 popped in the early 2000s, it was not bailed out and re-inflated, since the tech sector controls the Democrats -- who had pumped up the Dot-Com Bubble under Clinton -- and the Republicans had just taken office under George W. Bush. So even though the central bank slashed interest rates to cope with the popping of a bubble, there were no "too big to fail" cases that got massive rescuing. Rather, with the military party now back in full control of the government, it would be pointless military speculation that would misallocate trillions of dollars -- the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and receive "too big to fail" protection by the federal government and by the senior member of the governing coalition (the Pentagon).

At the end of the Bush years in 2008, the finance sector would again face a collapse -- not of an individual bank, a sub-industry within finance, or a hedge fund. Now it was the entire finance sector that was about to get wiped out, and nearly 10 long years after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, these Wall Street banks were much higher on the complexity scale than their Clinton-era dinosaur ancestors. In a quantum leap from LTCM, the central bank itself had to directly intervene to bail out these "too big to fail" mega-banks, except for Lehman Brothers.

But even as the big banks survived near extinction, the broader economy was still moribund. And simply slashing interest rates to 0 was not enough of an intervention. Now the central bank would purchase assets directly by the trillions of dollars (quantitative easing). And even then, it needed the other central banks of the major economies to do so as well!

The (re-)inflation of Tech Bubble 2.0, not to mention all the rest of the "everything bubble," could not have been orchestrated by just one central bank alone. That scale of intervention had already been taken out with the rescue of the mega-banks in 2008, just a few years earlier. A bigger rescue requires a bigger rescuer, meaning now a single-minded team of central banks. It was as though they had formed a single central bank for all of Planet Earth, with the Fed, ECB, BoJ, etc., serving as mere district banks within it, akin to the member banks of the Federal Reserve system, albeit with some members ranking above others, in the same way the New York Fed ranks highest in the Fed network.

So, after this everything bubble of globally synchronized growth got popped earlier in the year, who is there left to rescue it? No one -- that's who. There is no central bank of the solar system, no central bank of the Milky Way, no intergalactic central bank, and no central bank of the universe or parallel dimensions. We have reached the maximum on the scale of complexity -- globally synchronized growth, propped up by globally synchronized central banks. That's as big as big gets, leaving no one bigger to bail it out.

This history suggests that it's not so much about the scale of financial resources that could be deployed -- with fiat currencies everywhere, there is an infinite amount of cheap money that could be pumped into the failing system.

But everyone would look at that and say, "Sorry, I don't believe it." Their gut intuition is that big requires bigger to rescue it. So it's more about the social standing of each layer in the institutional pyramid. It's not so much a central bank coming to the rescue by providing money to a cash-starved bank -- it's more about the qualitative stamp of approval from a higher-ranking institution, not the quantitative amount of resources that stem from that approval.

"Credit" comes from the word for believing, in the sense of trusting -- you extend someone a loan if you believe they're good for it, and you don't if you don't believe they're good for it. When in doubt, the borrower needs someone or something to vouch for their credit-worthiness. When a bigger institution rescues a big one, it's like they're vouching for the dying one -- we think they're good for it, so we'll extend them a lifeline. That approval from a higher-up assuages the doubts of the spectators who are witnessing the crash victim.

The rescue is not "supplying liquidity to an insolvent institution," or "reducing uncertainty in a chaotic atmosphere," but reassuring the doubtful who fear the institution is worthless, as well as those who fear that one sick institution may by symptomatic of a broader underlying sickness. Nope, nothing to worry about, we higher-ranking layers of the pyramid give it our stamp of quality approval.

Following the lead of higher-ranking authorities, everyone else stops panicking about the sick institution, and extends it their own credit-worthiness. If these spectators are within the finance sector, that means being open to giving them actual funding. But if they are not financial actors, they will still extend their subjective approval, believing that health has been restored to the system, and acting accordingly.

Crucially, it is not taking it on blind "faith" -- there's an infinite supply of that, too. It may look delusional to a clear-minded observer who still sees that the patient is deathly ill, but it does have a rational basis, namely following the lead of higher-ranking authorities. In a world where value is socially constructed, an individual, a firm, an entire sector has value if the higher-ranking layers of their pyramid say it does. They are credit-worthy if their higher-ups are willing to extend them credit -- however misguided or hopeless some observer may think that extension of credit to the moribund patient to be.

As the global growth continues to melt down, it will reveal the uselessness of funds and faith. Unlike these unlimited resources, "order-of-magnitude higher-ups who can vouch for your worthiness" does have an upper limit, and it has already been reached with the global central bank network of the post-2008 era.

The popping of this bubble is not just the end of yet another business cycle, on the order of years, but the end of an entire period or regime, namely the neoliberal era, that has lasted on the order of decades. It heralds the transition in political periods that we are about to see, out of the Reagan / Thatcher / Mitterand / Craxi period, and into one dominated by populist figures akin to Bernie, Corbyn, Le Pen, and Salvini.

Just as in the last turning point of the 1970s, stagflation has returned for everyone but the 1% -- and suddenly, even their costs of living and doing business are going up, while their assets are collapsing in value. This will cause a crisis of belief in the entire neoliberal model, as shown by the rise in democratic socialism and conservative populism among the post-Boomer generations -- and not just among the masses, but among the elites themselves. Or at least, the would-be aspiring elites whom the neoliberal model has entirely failed.

Ocasio-Cortez won her shocking victory in a district full of downwardly mobile elites and frustrated aspiring elites, who live next door to the closeted Alt-Right Trump voters who also feel failed by the entire system -- and who may in fact work within the same industry as the socialists, namely tech, finance, and media.

This phenomenon was absent during previous collapses within the neoliberal era, and the fact that it has surged from seemingly out of nowhere is a clear signal that this era is ripe for realignment. And with no higher institutions left to bail out the global neoliberal order, the realigners will not have to contend with reformists and rescuers, and can get on with the business of building a whole new system in place of the collapsed old one.

Slutwalk era feminists ignoring Handmaid's Tale cosplay of Kavanaugh witch hunt

As discussed before, women on the Left whose main focus is anti-imperialism and foreign policy have largely tuned out of the circus surrounding Kavanaugh's confirmation. Men with a foreign focus held up pretty well, too, despite some reflexive anti-jock outbursts during the day of testimony from Ford and Kavanaugh.

Supposing the GOP buckled and installed some other orthodox Reaganite alum of the George W. Bush White House -- what difference would it make for mass surveillance of citizens, or unending military occupation of the entire world? Even if the GOP put some squeaky clean non-jock on the Supreme Court, it would make no difference for the agenda he would be implementing.

If his appointment truly would threaten the Reaganite status quo, he would not be included in the GOP Establishment's club of potential Supreme Court nominees, and George W. Bush would not spend whatever political capital he has left lobbying pro-choice moderates like Susan Collins to assure her that Kavanaugh is only going to work on corporate deregulation, union busting, and enhancing the spy agencies -- not that throwaway right-wing cultural stuff that the rube voters always fall for.

Aside from this group of Leftists whose focus is on big-picture material issues, what about feminists who focus only on the social-cultural domain? Shouldn't they be the most eager to enlist in this culture war where one side's position is "genocide the jock rapists"?

Strikingly, a major contingent of feminists has completely tuned out the alarming appeals to join the army against Kavanaugh -- the sex-positive, Girl Power 2.0 feminists from the Slutwalk era of the early 2010s. As with the anti-imperialists, it's not like they approve of his nomination -- they just can't be bothered to give a damn, when there are more pressing issues.

These include Anita Sarkeesian, Laci Green, Arielle Scarcella, Bria and Chrissy, Stevie Boebi, and others who got famous on YouTube and Twitter. At most, they have a few re-tweets of anti-Kavanaugh comments, maybe one or two of their own -- during the entire weeks-long saturation coverage -- and several have not commented at all.

One major exception is Cleo Stiller, who hosts a similarly themed show, but on corporate TV (Sex Right Now, on Fusion). Her Twitter feed is full of Resistard rage.

An earlier post contrasted the phases of feminism across the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, showing that this kind of sex-positive, invincible-feeling, girl-power feminism peaks during the manic phase. Most recently, that was the early 2010s, and before that the late '90s, early '80s, and late '60s.

As the cycle has collapsed into the vulnerable refractory phase, the main tendency in feminism is no longer to portray women as invincible badasses, but as pitiable prey for omnipresent male predators. This echos feminism of the early 2000s (Law & Order: SVU), late '80s (date rape, ritual sex abuse), and early '70s (all hetero sex is rape).

The trendy thing today among grassroots feminists is to dress up not as a defiant slut with skimpy clothing, but as a covered-up concubine from the Handmaid's Tale, or to otherwise strike a sexually submissive note, like wearing black tape across their mouth.

And now their main demand is for the white knight FBI to swoop in and rescue an entire population of damsels in distress, not to get out of the way of strong independent women who can handle their own business.

Five years later, the SJWs seem cute and quaint in comparison to the obnoxious mob of libs launching laughably false accusations of rape -- and serial gang rape! -- in a feeble attempt to score points for some do-nothing dipshit political party. Fretting about how girls are portrayed in video games, or how many genders there are, is innocuous in the grand scheme of things.

Dream pop music's 15-year cycle

While catching up on indie music for the first time since I resonated with it in the early 2000s, I'm struck by how similar the mood is 15 years later.

What stands out most to me is the revival of what's variously called dream pop, shoegaze, or noise pop. Repetitive riffs without an intricate melody, lack of contrast between verse and chorus (similar flow across the phrase structure), layers of sound (often distorted), hazy vocals, an overall impression of an ethereal dreamlike state, and a warm tone rather than a cold or neutral tone, either sweet or bittersweet -- not downbeat, moping, or funereal.

In fact, it sounds uplifting compared to what's going on in the mainstream during the same time period -- the vulnerable phase when everything is sad and emo.

My hunch so far is that the indie world has its own 15-year cycle of excited, withdrawn, and returning-to-neutral phases -- but that it lags behind the mainstream's timing by one full phase. I speculate that the indie people are waiting for the normies to clear out of the arena, as it were, before they put on their own show of a similar mood and tone, so that they don't overlap in zeitgeist.

That is, when the mainstream is excited, indie is returning to neutral, when the mainstream then crashes into numbness, indie takes off into excitation, when the mainstream then returns to neutral, indie crashes into numbness, and the cycle repeats.

So, the bounciest that indie or alternative music is going to get, happens right after the mainstream has already gone through that phase and has entered its refractory phase. That would be the late 2010s, the early 2000s, the late '80s, and the early '70s.

But that's a broader topic for future posts. Sticking just to the dream pop phenomenon, here are two contempo songs that could easily have been on the soundtracks for Lost in Translation and Blue Velvet, during previous instances of this phase of the cycle (the latter was fittingly included on the Twin Peaks revival of 2017, two full cycles after Blue Velvet):

Alvvays, "In Undertow" (2017)



Chromatics, "Shadow" (2015)



From the last phase that was sad and numb for the mainstream, but upbeat for the indie world, here's one from the actual Lost in Translation soundtrack, and one inspired by the Jesus and Mary Chain sound of the previous instance of this phase in the late '80s:

Death in Vegas, "Girls" (2002)



The Raveonettes, "Remember" (2003)



Now one from the actual Blue Velvet soundtrack, and one that's close enough to the late '80s, which just so happens to be a cover of a song from the previous instance of this phase in the early '70s (by Slapp Happy):

Julee Cruise, "Mysteries of Love" (1986)



Mazzy Star, "Blue Flower" (1990)



Finding counterparts from the previous instance during the early '70s is a little harder, since the sound is so associated with female vocals, and there weren't many rock bands with female singers back then. The androgynous glam rock is about as close as there is, along with the birth of Krautrock and "cosmic" music in Germany:

T. Rex, "Cosmic Dancer" (1971)



Kraftwerk, "Autobahn" (1974)

Unlike Thomas, Kavanaugh's nom taking place in social mood of vulnerability rather than normalcy

One difference between the attacks against Thomas and Kavanaugh is the social-cultural mood at the time. By the early 1990s, the mass hysteria over sexual predation was beginning to enter a skeptical phase -- after the unqualified panic of the second half of the 1980s, which included the date rape panic, the Satanic ritual abuse panic, and the daycare abuse panic.

In 2018, we are not quite yet into that skeptical phase, and in fact are in the unqualified panic phase, where people are open to believing the substantiated charges (Harvey Weinstein) as well as the unsubstantiated charges (Christine Ford).

An earlier post charted the phases of this cycle, showing how they map onto the phases of the cultural excitement cycle. There are three distinct phases -- manic, vulnerable, normalcy -- that last about 5 years each, for a cycle that repeats about every 15 years. This draws on "excitable system" models in biology, such as the activity level of a neuron.

During the manic, invincible phase, there is neither panic nor skepticism -- people are feeling invulnerable during a manic high. This is the late '60s, early '80s, late '90s, and early 2010s.

When the manic phase crashes into a refractory phase, people feel over-sensitive and therefore vulnerable. They're more likely to feel like predators are everywhere -- hence willing to believe any claim of predation -- and wanting to avoid them at all costs, but finding nowhere to hide. This is the early '70s, late '80s, early '00s, and late 2010s.

As the over-sensitivity wears off and the nervous system returns to a normal baseline of neither over-stimulated nor under-stimulated, people start to become skeptical about how vulnerable they truly were during the previous phase. Sure, we felt vulnerable, but we felt too vulnerable -- so much so that we believed all sorts of bogus charges. We let ourselves become gullible, and now that our emotional state has returned to baseline, we won't get suckered by far-out charges. This is the late '70s, early '90s, late 2000s, and by projection the early 2020s.

Thomas dodged a bullet by being nominated in the early '90s, once the backlash had begun against the sexual abuse hysteria of the late '80s. Roberts and Alito also dodged a bullet by being nominated in 2005, after the subsiding of the early 2000s outrage over sexual abuse (Catholic church revelations). All three were nominated during the return-to-normalcy, healthy dose of skepticism phase.

Gorsuch got nominated during the vulnerable phase, but before a widespread panic had exploded. He was nominated in January 2017 (and confirmed in April), whereas the Me Too movement broke out in October. His nomination did come after the constant accusations against Trump during the 2016 campaign season, but that was not a widespread zeitgeist -- just targeting one individual for clearly partisan reasons.

Kavanaugh's nomination falls not only during the vulnerable phase, but once the mass panic had clearly broken out. This heightening of the social mood is the main difference between his nomination and Gorsuch's, not any qualities about the individuals themselves.

Does anyone believe that if Gorsuch had been nominated after the Me Too phenomenon took off, he would face no accusations like the ones Kavanaugh is facing? Gorsuch does seem to be gay (white hair before age 50, silver before age 40, owing to homosexual degeneracy accelerating the physical deterioration process). So maybe the accusations would have been in the mold of those against Catholic priests or Bryan Singer. But still, something that resonated with the sex abuse panic that took off by fall 2017.

None of this means that Kavanaugh's confirmation will get blocked, although it does explain why it has been rockier than those of Thomas or Gorsuch, the two most comparable cases. And it explains why the majority of Americans came around to believing Thomas over Hill in 1991, but may (or may not) come to believe Ford over Kavanaugh in 2018.

Major political choices by the dominant coalition of a historical period do not reflexively respond to the short-term cycling of the social mood. Even if a majority of Americans currently believe the charges against Kavanaugh, will they still feel the same in a few years? No -- the mood will have shifted into the skeptical phase, after Me Too goes too far.

Is the dominant coalition going to give up a lifetime appointment to the highest court, based on the fleeting social mood? Don't count on it.

"But the GOP can nominate any other tool of the Reaganite orthodoxy, and still secure that lifetime appointment!"

Not as long as the social mood is vulnerable and overly credulous about predators being everywhere. The opposition would mount similar charges until the mood changes in a few years -- and the dominant coalition is not going to wait through years of constant obstruction. They will have to nip that in the bud, and confirm Kavanaugh despite it leaving a temporary bad taste in half of the country's mouths, based on the transitory social mood.

The counter-revolutionary distraction of character assassination -- against Thomas, Kavanaugh, or other Reaganites

At first it was mainly delusional liberals who were leading the charge against Kavanaugh, wielding their same ol' ineffective weapons from the arsenal of identity politics. But now that a good number of class-oriented realigners on the Left are joining the pile-on, all while the accusations have become increasingly risible, it's time to look at how pointless and self-defeating these strategies always are -- not only for their short-term failures, but their sapping of energy that could have been devoted to long-term and big-picture changes.

First, how about a quick reality check on the last time that liberals tried to derail a conservative Supreme Court nominee using flimsy allegations of sexual harassment? They failed abysmally when they came for Clarence Thomas in 1991, who has been safely implementing the Reaganite agenda ever since. And because their attacks were personal rather than collective, they resulted in no broader understanding, and no further escalation of goals.

In their framing, only this one individual was the problem, not the entire Reaganite judicial army -- and his disqualifications were said to be of a character nature, rather than stemming from the powerful and wealthy interests whose agenda he would be implementing. So, once his appointment was fait accompli, that was the end of that campaign by the opposition.

The dominant coalition of a historical era rarely has major problems in re-shaping society, across all branches of government, at all levels of government. That's what makes them the dominant coalition. The opposition struggles to achieve even small-scale victories, let alone to defend them against the incessant reactions by the relatively stronger dominant coalition. So, it was a no-brainer that GOP-appointed Thomas would get seated on the Supreme Court in the Reaganite era.

But that doesn't mean the opposition had no chance for advancing their goals -- provided that their attacks were of a collective and political nature, so that even if they failed to derail this particular appointment, they would have built support for blocking similar appointments who would enact a similar agenda, making victories possible in the medium or long term.

While the outcome of the character assassination against Thomas may have been uncertain back in 1991, when they first deployed the strategy, by 2018 it is no longer hypothetical -- it will fail just as spectacularly against Kavanaugh. At least with Thomas, the allegation was that he used his institutional role to get away with harassment of a structural underling. With Kavanaugh, he had no institutional role giving him leverage over the accusers -- just a high schooler or college kid of similar social standing as them. There's no institutional or structural critique behind the allegations against him, and therefore nothing political to be made of them.

Indeed, the liberals and Leftists who are chasing the short-term endorphin rush of piling on have already admitted that they are not seeking a broader change in the make-up of the Supreme Court, the agenda it would enact, the structural changes in society it would pursue, or anything like that.

They're saying, "Look, you Republicans could shit-can Kavanaugh and replace him with any one of a million other Reaganite clones, and it won't make a lick of difference to the outcome of upcoming Supreme Court cases. So please, just give us this one particular scalp, let us orgasm, and then we'll fall into a deep refractory-period slumber, while you appoint Kavanaugh's clone in his place. Deal?"

These are the pleas of a defeated, and defeatist, opposition. When we lose yet again, please just give us a consolation prize rather than total humiliation, and we'll go back to impotently whining instead of collectively organizing against your agenda. This is politics as therapeutic medication of individuals, not politics as wielding coalitional power to shape society.

And that's assuming they even get their scalp! When they do not, they will suffer greater depression from the cognitive dissonance of getting totally humiliated by the dominant coalition, without the innocuous consolation prize that they had so non-threateningly requested.

And yet, the outlook for the realignment of the Democrats -- or whatever party replaces them -- is not hopeless. The reactions to the allegations against Kavanaugh have been far less indulgent among the up-and-coming Congressional realigners like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, or DSA fellow traveler Julia Salazar who is headed to the NY State Senate. Refreshingly, Tulsi Gabbard's Twitter account has not issued a single response piling on against Kavanaugh, which she must see as largely a distraction from her big-picture efforts against corporate oligarchy and globalist militarism.

Sure, they don't approve of him being appointed, and they may have a few token responses against him on Twitter, but they're not singling him out for a scalp while saying go ahead and put any other Reaganite in his place. And they're not droning on and on about the identity politics issue of sexual misconduct among drunken teenagers -- but universal healthcare, ending the Pentagon's failed occupation of the whole world, and other issues relating to class and empire.

I don't read too many Leftist commentators on Twitter, but Briahna Joy Gray and Rania Khalek have also been relatively bored by the Kavanaugh pile-on, and have continued their long-term big-picture focus on class-and-empire issues.

It's hard not to notice that they're women of color, while the Leftists who are hooking MSNBC's Kavanaugh coverage straight into their veins are more likely white and male. (Sex seems more important than race here.) Will Menaker from Chapo Trap House, John Iadarola from The Young Turks, and sadly the Bernmeister himself. It's not a perfect correlation, but the difference is still pretty striking.

We understand why liberals of both sexes and all races are piling on -- libs don't care about fundamental change, and just want a small concession to make them feel less pathetic in their defeat.

But the Left should be rising above that. The fact that guys on the Left are still so drawn into the pile-on suggests a personal rather than collective motive -- they see Kavanaugh as the womanizing jerk from Hollywood movies who has monopolized the means of reproduction, leaving them sexually frustrated. Or if it turns out he was a virgin during his youth, he's still the smug preppy frat boy type who they have to engage with for male-male status competition, and they'd rather not have to compete on "stereotypically masculine" dimensions that frat boys are into.

They've been good at ignoring the distractions of Mueller-gate, having learned their lessons from the pointlessness of the Valerie Plame Affair. But now there's a more personal appeal to joining the powerless Centrist hysteria du jour -- venting about those fucking frat boys!

Whatever it is, Leftist guys need to get over it and help out their women with the big-picture work of realignment, instead of retreating into their comfy man-caves where they feed their personal spite addiction all day long.

Related posts:

Fight SCOTUS pick on populist grounds, not abortion or other liberal identity politics issues, especially since the Reaganite Supreme Court has enshrined abortion, flag-burning, pornography, and gay marriage -- all things that the Founding Fathers had intended to flourish, and that were originally sanctified in the Constitution. The Reaganites are libertarian experimentalists, not conservative traditionalists, so fear-mongering about them using the state to regulate personal choices has always been crying wolf, and normies tune it out by now.

Kavanaugh ruled in favor of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in union-busting campaign by management. There was a way to tie the individual record of Kavanaugh into the broader Reaganite agenda, and Trump's personal benefits from Kavanaugh's rulings, in a way that would call the president's bluff on being a working-class friendly Republican realigner.

Economic collapse, a catalyst for realignment that forges a new dominant coalition

To continue the series on parallels between now and just before the First Civil War, it's worth looking at the role played by the state of the economy in the transition from one political era to another.

Recall that the only time when there have been two -- rather than only one -- disjunctive, end-of-an-era terms before realignment was right before the Civil War. Pierce and Buchanan hailed from the dominant Jacksonian Democrats, before the Lincoln Republicans ushered in a whole new political era in 1861. Usually these frustrating, impotent, do-nothing phases of the cycle last only one term -- how much stagnation can the people, or more relevantly the elites, tolerate before a new dominant coalition is formed to shut down the crumbling old way and inaugurate a new way?

My hunch is that these realignments take twice as long to work out when the climate is so polarized on partisan lines, since realignment requires the old opposition party to steal away a large chunk of the old dominant party's electoral base, and more relevantly elite power sectors. If it's only temporarily winning them over, it's just a win for the opposition party -- not a realignment that makes them the ones who set the framework and dictate terms. It has to be a medium-to-long-term shift in allegiances.

That process is far more difficult on both sides when they are so polarized -- the chunk of the old dominant coalition that wants to break away hesitates because they'd be joining those scum from the other party, and the old opposition party cringes at accepting so large a chunk of those scum from the other party, giving them something big that they want, and sticking by them for the next several decades. Icky, disgusting defilement of our party's purity!

However, we have to be somewhat cautious since we only have one other period of intense polarization that we're comparing to the present. There could have been some other reason that the pre-Civil War disjunctive phase lasted two terms rather than just one, and that this cause will not happen in the current disjunctive phase, meaning the Reagan coalition will get kicked out for good in 2020 instead of 2024.

Since political coalitions form in order to advance the material interests of the sectors of society that use the party as their vehicle, we have to make economic factors central in the model of the rise and fall of political regimes. A widespread and severe economic collapse would shock the various elite sectors into re-evaluating their choice of coalition members, and the broad goals pushed by their parties.

Recessions and downturns happen more frequently than realignments of political coalitions, so they are not sufficient. Otherwise, we'd see major shake-ups every decade, when they only happen every 30 to 50 years. But looking over the history of economic collapses in America, it is a necessary condition for there to be a major economic panic, depression, or crisis to serve as a catalyst for realignment of coalitions.

I'm not going to go in-depth on the nature of each of these collapses, how they reflected and revealed the weaknesses of the dominant coalition's major goals, and how the elites (and people) felt as though only a major realignment of coalitions could end the crisis and usher in a whole new era of stability and prosperity. Right now I'm just going to list them, to establish their central role in breaking down the dominant coalition and inviting a new coalition to become dominant, before returning to the parallels between the First Civil War and today.

At the end of the Federalist era, there was the Panic of 1796-97 under Washington and Adams. In 1800, the Jeffersonian coalition took their place as the dominant party.

At the end of the Jeffersonian era, there was the Panic of 1825 under John Quincy Adams. In 1828, the Jacksonian coalition took their place.

At the end of the Jacksonian era, there was the Panic of 1857 under Buchanan. In 1860, the Lincoln coalition took their place.

At the end of the Lincoln era, there was the Panic of 1893 under Cleveland. He was an opposition Democrat president, so he didn't discredit the dominant Republican coalition, but it did discredit the laissez-faire framework of the Lincoln era, and forced the Republicans to realign under McKinley in 1896 toward the Progressive era.

At the end of the McKinley era, there was the Great Depression under Hoover. In 1932, the FDR coalition took their place.

At the end of the FDR era, there was the 1979 oil crisis and Early 1980s recession under Carter, as well as stagflation left over from the 1973 oil crisis and 1973-75 recession. In 1980, the Reagan coalition took their place.

So, perhaps the reason that the disjunctive phase of the Jacksonian era lasted two terms instead of one was because the first term, under Pierce, was not subjected to a major economic collapse that catalyzed a new coalition to replace Jacksonianism.

Economic downturns happen about once a decade, but not necessarily once every four years -- so Pierce dodged a bullet, and although the people and the elites were getting really fed up with the Jacksonians' extension of slavery (the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act), they didn't feel enough acute pain to get them angry enough to form a revolutionary coalition. The inevitable struck Buchanan, though, limiting him to be the last of the Jacksonians. If it had struck Pierce's term first, maybe the anti-slavery Republicans would have assumed dominant party status in 1856 instead of 1860.

We will soon be able to tell which of these two factors is more important, since there is a major collapse coming under Trump's term. It will not be a minor downturn that receives party-neutral blame -- during this end of the Reagan era, it will be seen as the culmination of their fundamental framework.

To wit: deregulation mania has allowed speculative bubbles to form time after time, "greed is good" has led to off-shoring our manufacturing sector to cheap labor colonies and left us with precious little productive capacity back home (and fewer taxes to collect from it), slashing taxes across the board has deprived the government of a way to pay for its programs, and the soaring military budget on behalf of permanent global occupation has sent the cost of those programs into the stratosphere.

We are not just facing the end of yet another speculative bubble (Tech Bubble 2.0), but a sovereign debt crisis. That's going to leave so ugly of a stain on the Reagan coalition that the power sectors of society will shake up their alliances, and suddenly a Bernie-style coalition will take the place of the Reaganites.

Perhaps agriculture will desert the GOP over tariffs / trade war, not to mention the colossal waste on the military occupation of the whole world that works wonders for the military and energy sectors of the Reagan coalition but leaves agribusiness out in the cold. (The farm-state Kochs are fairly anti-war, for being such powerful Reaganite players, and are also not in lockstep over the law-and-order authoritarianism that benefits the armed force sector of their coalition.)

Regardless of how it unfolds, we'll get to see how strong the role of economic collapse is, relative to hyper-polarization. If economic collapse is stronger, then the realignment will sweep in the Bernie revolution in 2020, after the widespread and severe recession coming under Trump. If it's secondary to the obstinacy of realignment per se, during a climate of intense partisan polarization, then not even a major economic collapse will shake up the coalitions by 2020, and it'll have to wait until 2024.

I wish we had more cases to examine, so we could resolve the ambiguity and make a clear prediction for the current era -- will the disjunctive phase last the usual one or the unusual two terms? Unfortunately, we are going to be the guinea pigs in this historical experiment.

Bernie band babe interviewed Ocasio-Cortez before it was cool

Intrigued by a recent Chapo Trap House interview with a member of indie rock group Parquet Courts, I decided to check up on what alternative music sounds like for the first time in awhile. One group that resonated with me is Sunflower Bean, and when I looked them up on Wikipedia, there's a picture of the lead singer interviewing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "way back" in December 2017, before anyone in the corporate media even knew her name.

Here's a clip from Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter account, back before it got so popular:

Corporations own our political process. This is a problem for our entire democracy - not one party.

It’s time to organize and get our democracy back.

Check out this clip where I discuss money in politics last weekend with rockstar Julia Cumming of @Sunflower_Bean: pic.twitter.com/o9Ays5sk9D

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 16, 2017

Here is the full video. I detect a lot of near-footsie tension in that interview, after half-way through. Perhaps the title of this post could score an extra alliteration point with "bi-curious" Bernie band babe.

At any rate, below are two music videos by the band that came out around the time of the Ocasio-Cortez interview. Compared to their first album from a few years ago, this one is more normie-friendly, and broke into the top 40 on the UK albums chart.

Regarding one of the topics in the Chapo Trap House discussion, I appreciate the first song's blend of mainstream musical sensibilities and an overt Bernie-style political message. Re-alignment requires normalization of supposedly fringe positions -- only it turns out, they're not so fringe when people talk about them and discover how widely held they are.

I'd like to see bands like this play at Bernie rallies, especially if, like Sunflower Bean, they can draw in the Boomers as well as the Millennials, by sounding familiar to people raised on glam rock and Fleetwood Mac. Bernie's best campaign ad featured a timeless Simon and Garfunkel song, not some obscure dubstep song from 2009.