Alternative Art is Hitting its Stride
People in our sphere always bend towards pessimism. This is both a logical reaction to the flow of history in the last hundred years as well as a defense mechanism to avoid getting hopes dashed yet again. Even on our own side, we almost pine to see the absolute cringe of the people who are supposed to our allies, the bitter disappointment being a comfort blanket for our cynical hearts.
A positive development of the current year is the general antipathy towards politics as usual. The Trump trial verdict has already become an amusing joke, the Secret Service incompetence (or malice) so outlandish that it has created a sense of helplessness of any improvement through the ballot box, and fewer people think that listening to the latest outrage on conservative media is going to solve anything. There’s the slow, general consensus that such media is just another form of entertainment, and it’s always been that way. As the formula of your average pundit blathering for three hours about the latest Biden executive order has lost its thrill, Con Inc. media companies are beginning to realize that they will need to expand their horizons to other content, and have the war chest to make it happen. The results have been, less than stellar.
If anything showed the creative hellscape that conservative media has become, it’s not only the fact that they greenlighted something like Mr. Birchum, trying to be a right-wing version of Family Guy in a format that was dated ten years ago, but that they were so convinced they had a hit on their hands. The Daily Wire people all changed their Twitter avatars to mimic the cartoon style of the show and, after it was universally panned on Twitter, decided not to bring it up anymore.
Before this fiasco, they had Ladyballers, which played on tropes that were also very old, but at least giving a couple chuckles. It was also low-grade slop, but at least it was self-aware slop.
This is a shame, as before they funded a move starring cancelled actress Gina Carano with “Terror on the Prairie” and also funded “Shut In”. None of these were groundbreaking works, but as movies they were competently done. They were going the right general course only to change their direction towards the same lousy social messaging as Hollywood, only slightly right-wing.
Other conservative pundits, not wanting to let a bad idea go to waste, have gone all in, funding another animated series (with a laugh track) whose sole purpose seems to be making Mr. Birchum look good in comparison.
With conservative outlets with multi-million dollar budgets spewing out this garbage, it’s no wonder the average doom-scrollers on Twitter see only ruin on the horizon, and wonder if the right-wing really can’t make new culture. But alternative media is not only these people, but there are talented creators that are making content that may be tame by dissident standards, but are moving alternative entertainment in the right direction.
Angel Studios
My son is a massive bookworm, and his most recent obsession was The Wingfeather Saga, a fantasy epic by Andrew Peterson. While not overtly Christian, it has strong religious themes permeating through a fictional land of high adventure. While enormously popular, it’s the type of series that will not be greenlit by Hollywood without updates that would neuter the story. Luckily, enough fans put their money where their mouth is and pledged millions of dollars through Angel’s crowdfunding platform to get the first two seasons made, with a third on the way.
This isn’t really the shocking part, as crowdfunding has been around a long time with mixed results. The shocking part is it was actually very good, with the creators going gung-ho on creating a unique art style that matched the foreign world and literary tone world perfectly. Not only was it fully funded, but the producers involved were more than competent, creating a product that challenged the best in old media.
This was the same studio that scored a massive hit with The Sound of Freedom and The Chosen. What’s interesting about the model is their ability to create content that is apolitical as well as media with light political messaging such as The Tuttle Twins.
Recently, they also scored reasonable success with mid-budget Cabrini, scoring 20 million. this also brings to light some of the issues, as Cabrini on the surface was a story of a devout Catholic nun who is justifiably praised for her work in poor immigrant communities, but the show writers still felt a need to make the script blatantly pro-immigrant and feminist, with several characters filling the role of evil Anglo man who just wanted to keep the poor immigrants down. There was no real sense this was a unique culture in a different time, dealing with a people who had very disparate world views to modern time. Cabrini, though being an Italian, acts like a modern American, with the exact sort of ham-fisted messaging that people accuse modern Hollywood of facilitating.
Largely, this sort of content still works within the window of conventional discourse. Wingfeather is apolitical, and Cabrini definitely pushed the “Immigrants made America” and feminism very hard, even if organized religion was shown in a more positive light. It would be valid to ask where the media is that acts as more than a comfort blanket, but actually pushes a boundary and overton-window shaking message in a tactful way.
Still, the burgeoning and scalable decentralization model has a good track record, even when budgets hit the millions. It also shows excellent competency with many artists and writers who didn’t have the right connections to make it in Hollywood, and gives an alternative for their vision. As flaccid and hard-left the institutional art scene is, there are a multitude of talented artists waiting for their chance to show their vision while also putting food on the table.
From Standard Media to Alternative Media
While the lower millions doesn’t quite compete financially with big Hollywood blockbusters, it doesn’t have to. Media is moving more and more to niche markets, and AAA blockbusters are slowly receding into the sunset. Even in gaming, AAA games are beginning to be too cumbersome and expensive for all but the most beloved franchises.
This is more in its infancy, but we’re already seeing the sprouts. Just like The Wingfeather Saga and The Sound of Freedom started off as books that became far more, alternative media has taken advantage of the slow decline of Tradpub by using savvy social media advertising and a solid understanding of the self-pub ecosystem to generate an enormous amount of solid and successful writing.
Self-pub and small-pub has been around for a while, but what is adding excitement is dissidents reading and critiquing the same books and magazines, creating its own sub-culture around it and creating feedback loops that seep out of strict dissident circles into the realm of normal people. And these are books that are recent, and not another round of talking about Dostoevsky or Raspail. As anyone who writes knows, you don’t have to just write well, but be able to create a movement and ecosystem that can ensures longevity. It’s not just in books either, as new artists in other crafts are becoming more comfortable being openly dissident, and there were clients willing to fund them.
The Air We Breathe
Throughout most of history, one’s culture was determined by the people a twenty-mile radius around one’s house. While this made it impossible for many to reach their full intellectual potential as youths, especially those in the countryside, it did a fantastic job of keeping out social contagions. That world is gone and never coming back, and modern people are inundated with the full index of human knowledge at their fingertips, but most just want to be entertained.
Contrary to being primitive, stories stemming from oral traditions were masterfully executed, with genres spanning from drama, to adventure yarn, to comedies. They also had the benefit of having a strong cultural backbone to rely upon they could teach as well as entertain. It’s why the Norse myths are still read today, and will likely be read as long as mankind exists. The tales are interwoven, complex, and full of deep imagery. They resonated with the most intelligent chief to the stupidest brute. Even as no one believes in Thor the same way the Norse do in modern times (and it would be impossible to do so, even if one tried), he still is beloved by those willing to read the Eddas.
Note that none of the old oral tales are outrage bait. None of them are long, whiny treatises on how wrong the theology of the Roman gods or Christian God was. They didn’t depend on a foil outside their culture to have an impact. They didn’t spend their time pontificating on three-hour long sermons on what the Hellenists were up to. Mind you, there was plenty of that even in that time, but their core culture wasn’t based on negative identity. The stories they told each other, the customs they enforced, and the heritage they shared wasn’t something they questioned, it just was.
This is why urban progressives can keep contradictory thoughts in their minds. They are the plucky underdogs while also having all the power. They hate book banning but celebrate Amazon removing books they don’t like. They promote maximum freedom while wanting to micromanage everyone’s life. Few of these people ever question their priors, it’s simply the air they breathe.
Our job is to create a new, healthier cultural atmosphere. Our job is to create fresh air.
The Big Tent
Note that any attempt to create an separate artistic sphere needs to eschew any political labels. As the urban monoculture spreads its poison through every medium, there becomes a great need for Rewilding, throwing away the constraining shackles of modern media to explore somewhere new again. There’s no need to make an explicit statement at all, but simply create art outside the stifling and contracting lines of current discourse.
We’re a long way from having a separated culture that can exist independently of the mass propaganda of the current zeitgeist. What is encouraging though is outrage culture is dying out. largely because the old franchises and mythologies of previous generations have been so thoroughly desiccated that everyone is getting over their death and is ready to move on.
When you have a suffocating monoculture with a Soviet level of necessary signaling to ensure the correct values are coming through, it reaches a point where only party hacks and shameless hucksters are able to get the budget and prestige to do anything worthwhile. As this happens, the less talented get elevated and talented members of society, even ones sympathetic to the regime’s morality, realize they need to enter an alternative space to allow their work to thrive.
By necessity, this means escaping the dominant morality, and suddenly they are inundated with ideas and worldview of fellow disagreeable and disgruntled artists. The same mechanism that made Elon Musk an unlikely ally of the right and Zuckerberg to dip his toes in the new political landscape will happen. As much as artists want to think their value system is immutable, they are just as malleable as the rest of the population, maybe more, and will quickly change their views when they see a new, more resilient institution rise in parallel to the dominant culture.
This is why the worst thing we can do is start ideological purity tests in a small movement with little power. Even if the artist is a little bit of a commie, the question to ask is if he is capable of creating something unique, something capable of emotionally captivating an audience. Hollywood, but with modern right wing tropes, will be just as hollow and vapid as what we have, if a little less degenerate. if we want to create an open atmosphere, we have to mean it.
The Taste Makers
Just as mass man is malleable to changing political opinions based on the winds of expediency, they can also be directed at what is worth seeing in the new space. Your average guy is not going to be willing to read through a three foot pile of slop to read the one gem in the pile. He’s not going to have the time to watch a few dozen lousy movies to get to the director that knows what he’s doing.
A large portion of the crisis in Hollywood is the dearth if honest critics. Rotten Tomatoes started bending the knee to corporate interests a decade ago, and most film reviewers are now in a pay-to-play model where they get access in return for good reviews. The nepotism is off the charts, and it’s made the general audience leery of any new production. When everything gets rave reviews if enough money is spent, we’re not dealing with a renaissance, but the destruction of the critic, a necessary element of any community.
There’s a need for producers in alternative media to be able to give honest input to alternative media, and these same tastemakers will be responsible for giving the new media a solid enough footprint to become a cultural phenomenon. While it’s a long time until we can reach the levels of the summer of Barbieheimer, the network effects of ones friends watching a show that makes someone else more likely to watch the show is uncontroversial. Culture is, by definition, communal, and gets transmitted through having the same experiences. For a book to have an impact, many people have to read the book, and many more have to have a passing familiarity with it.
We have some in the sphere, with
, , and others doing excellent work. It’s important to remember it’s not just the artists working in a vacuum, but the artists, his fans, and the critics all communicating and creating a full ecosystem where creativity can flourish, all the while putting food on people’s table for their efforts.The Price of Victory
However, a bittersweet reality of being a “first-mover” in this sphere is, once everything takes off, very few of us will be remembered. Just think of all the people in the dissident sphere in the 2016 election, and ponder how many still exist anywhere on the web. A lot got burned out or spooked, a lot got blown off the internet, and many became their own worst enemy once popularity came to them. Likely once the seeds of the movement have grown, it will attract more and more people, who will likely co-opt kernels of a good idea from this sphere, refine it, and become famous. This is, unfortunately, all too common throughout history, and will involve many people never getting the attention they deserve.
The truth is, being a first mover is not enough, and it’s doubtful many in this sphere will ever be successful enough to quit his day job. There is pride though, and the memories and honor in being on the cutting room floor of a new movement can’t be put into a price tag. We are the new vanguard, running from the suffocating village to the jungle outside to forge a new path. Whatever happens, it’s going to be a rush.
Everyone is welcome to shill whatever they like in the comments.
Thank you for the shout out, Arthur Powell of Rifts in Stone who also features a lot of great reviews. For anyone interested you can find our review content on the YouTube rather than Substack (https://www.youtube.com/@tookysmag/pod)
And I completely agree with your claim that culture requires a living/ongoing conversation! What motivates people to even engage with media is often the ability to participate/understand their "tribe's" internal conversations, so definitely we are planting trees whose shade we may never fully know - but it's a heck of a lot of fun since the creators are still active.