All Episodes
Previous Next
March 8, 2015 - Davis Aurini
25:46
Aurini's Insight: A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)

Before anyone asks: this was recorded before any of the recent drama. Confused Matthew's Website: http://confusedmatthew.com/ My blog: http://www.staresattheworld.com/ My Twitter: http://twitter.com/Aurini Download in MP3 Format: http://www.clipconverter.cc/ Credits: I Feel You by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This episode of Arini's Insight is brought to you by Jorge, who requested that I review the Seth McFarlane film, A Million Ways to Die in the West.
And, Jorge, I don't know if I should be thanking you or cursing you right now, because after watching it, I know exactly why you wanted me to review it.
And yet that was a painful two hours to sit through.
Now, one of my favorite internet reviewers, Confused Matthew.
He once started off one of his reviews by saying that he was always taught, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
And I think that is a very good policy to work off of.
And yet, by me saying these nice things, in certain respects, that's the most damning statement I could make.
Because the thing about Seth McFarlane is that he is absolutely hilarious.
The guy has a comedic talent that is just astronomical.
It is absolutely amazing.
Quite frankly, Family Guy is not a very good show.
It has incredibly flat, boring characters, terrible animation.
There's really only two characters to speak of, Stewie and Brian.
But it's absolutely hilarious.
You know, compare that to something like The Simpsons, which has very complex characters, developed plots, and yet Family Guy is just stunningly hilarious.
Which is why I'm so disappointed in him as a man.
You see, if I were reviewing... I'm not going to name anything specific because maybe there's some artistic angle I'm missing on it.
But there's a lot of garbage on Adult Swim.
Okay, there's some real gold, like Archer or Rick and Morty.
You know, there's some stuff with really good plots and really good comedy.
But there's a lot of garbage, too.
And if you gave me, if you asked me to review one of these garbage shows, and it's like, oh, look, they're going for the standard joke about, look, cops are racist, or whatever, you know, look, it's a stupid dad.
You know, I just, I cannot get offended by that stuff because it's not like it's good comedy to begin with.
You know, it's really, it's schlock, it's derivative, it's garbage.
Whereas Seth McFarlane is a true talent.
The man is absolutely brilliant, and yet his own worst enemy is himself, as I think we'll see as I get into the film.
And, you know, on the off chance that he sees this, Seth McFarlane was supposed to be on one of the flights on September 11th.
He was supposed to be on one of the flights, I believe it was flight 11 or 111.
And he missed the flight by five minutes.
And you know, like, listen, I don't know if you believe in God or not, Seth, but even if you don't, even if it's completely atheistic mechanical universe, you know, you win the lottery, that comes with a huge moral burden.
You know, it's yeah, you win the lottery, you go and you buy a fancy car and you have fun for about a week.
After that, you have to start thinking about how am I going to invest this into a business?
How am I going to improve my community?
How am I, I'm not just going to blow all this money, but you know, how am I going to do something good with this?
When you're given this incredible bounty in life, whether it's by luck or if it's an act of God, that comes with a heavy moral obligation.
And the fact that you almost died on September 11th, that's something you should be carrying with yourself.
That's something you should really be dedicating yourself to.
And from what I've seen, he's rather flippant about the matter.
But, you know, maybe that's just his public position.
The point is that I think Seth McFarlane has an amazing talent as a comedy writer and even as a writer in general.
He actually is a very good writer.
Why do you have to waste it on this ugliness?
All right, so A Million Ways to Die in the West.
If you didn't see the trailers or if you simply forgot about them, it's a series set in the Old West with basically a sarcastic millennial being stuck in this nitty, gritty, you know, true grit type era, complaining about everything, complaining how dangerous things are, and I laughed.
It was very funny.
It overstayed its welcome by about an hour, but it was very, very funny at times.
And yet, I think the entire film really sums up this deficit of masculinity that we have.
Like this, this film perfectly encaptures everything that is wrong with the modern man.
So the first question I'd like to explore: why do we love the Western genre?
Why do we love cowboys?
The core of it, it's the romanticism of the male soul.
You know, it was who was it?
I forget.
A writer I follow.
I'll remember him by the time the video's down.
There's a link down below.
He wrote an excellent piece about how, like, men are the true romantics and how the idea of going off into the range with nothing but a horse, a hound, and a rifle is something that every man lusts after.
That opportunity to truly test ourselves, you know, to not be so protected and safe, to not be so comfortable, but to prove our metal, to prove that we deserve to exist.
That is what we are so attracted to by the genre.
Now, in actual fact, the cowboy era was not that violent.
Ironically, it was the places where the federal government was administering law, from what I understand anyway.
Places like Texas actually had more violence because you were getting companies, corporations were exploiting the federal government to get monopoly and screw other people out of business, leading to violence.
In actual frontier times, there was very little violence, actually.
There was a lot of work.
There was a lot of hard work setting up your homestead.
But this idea of bandits wandering around and shootouts at high noon, grossly overstated.
Which one was it?
The shootout at the OK Corral?
I think there were only like three or four people that died.
Like, it's really small.
When you do a movie reenactment, there's like 20 people that die.
It's this huge drawn-out gunfight.
The actual gunfight that happened was much smaller.
Essentially, it would be like nowadays we have occasional shootouts.
We have the occasional bank robbers, you know, mostly in LA.
We have the occasional, you know, convenience door robbery.
But it would be like comparing the levels of violence that we actually have to Grand Theft Auto.
Cowboy Times really weren't that violent.
And yet, in our media, in our video games, even stuff like Cowboy Beep, for example, is heavily inspired by the Western genre, which is why I absolutely love it.
And it's way more violent, ridiculously more violent than things actually were.
And that's because in narratives, there's a certain catharsis to the violence, because realistically, real-world violence.
Like, let's talk about gun control.
Let's talk about guns and how they stop violence.
You know, because the gun grabbers love to point out that you're more likely to accidentally shoot yourself with a gun than you are likely to shoot a criminal.
And the reason that's a thing is because guns don't stop crime by shooting bad guys.
Guns stop crime merely by being there on your hip.
See, in a video game, like imagine, you know, Fallout New Vegas.
I've been playing that recently, so it's on my mind.
In that game, imagine in that game, every time the bandits showed up to attack you, you just showed the pistol on your hip and they said, whoa, Haas, we're going to back down.
Not a very fun game.
That'd be quite tedious, quite frankly.
In real life, however, in real life, if you're about to be assaulted by a number of people and you brandished your peacemaker and they back down, you might need to sit down and have a cigarette after that.
It'd be pretty high stress.
That'd be a pretty exciting thing.
That'd be a story that you'd tell people about at the bar for the next 20 years.
So it's, again, men want to, real men want to challenge themselves.
You know, they own guns not because they want to kill people, but because they're well aware that a situation like that could develop.
And so the romantic notion of the West, it isn't that we were shooting people left, right, and center.
It's that it was a true challenge.
It required true grit to survive in the West.
And any man worth his assault, any red-blooded man, wants to test himself, wants to push himself, wants to know that, because growing up, there's always this question, in that scenario, would I choke?
You know, and you can't really know yourself until you have faced death, until you've faced danger.
And that doesn't necessarily mean a gunfight.
It could mean as simple as protecting your cattle from some coyotes.
But see, that's why we love it.
It's because we want to be tested.
Now, a million ways to die in the West.
Let me explain what it isn't.
Okay, now, maybe you just saw the trailers, and it's obviously an exaggeration of how dangerous things were back then, because yeah, there were lots of ways to die in the West.
Rattlesnakes, bulls, cholera, surgery, etc.
And to, and so the idea of transposing a modern modern, millennial who's used to, you know, antibiotics and painkillers and etc.
To transpose that person into the West, like that, that's comedy gold right there, and the really good comedy portions involve that.
But see, there's more going on this, that right there, that.
If that had been what the movie was, I probably would have loved it.
You know, it would have been very tongue-in-cheek, would have been very silly, but it would have also been bloody hilarious and certain moments were hilarious.
But there's a little bit more going on in the story.
And the best way to sum it up is to talk about the gamma male.
The sexual loser.
The guy that does not know how to be manly, how to attract women.
And is just a little boy that's afraid of growing up.
Because that is the character Seth MacFarlane wrote.
And that is the character he played.
he played.
So Mcfarlane's character is a sheep farmer and a coward and the main arc of the story involves him meeting this woman who teaches him to be a real gunslinger, because some poof stole his ex-girlfriend and they're going to have a gunfight or whatever.
But it's this narrative that i've seen cropping up in a lot of places, the uh, the mummy character where this chick comes in and she's all badass, super lawyer, ninja cop.
You know she is the the the best shot.
She's Calamity Jane with her pistol.
You know hot blonde too.
But for some strange reason she goes after Seth Mcfarlane, who is a whiny loser who doesn't know how to shoot a gun, who's afraid of rattlesnakes, who's afraid of being a man, who complains constantly, whines constantly about living in the west and has absolutely no masculine virtue.
He's not the sort of man that could protect his family.
He's not the sort of man that inspires other men to follow him.
He's pathetic.
You might overlook this in the film because Seth Mcfarlane's a very good-looking guy.
But replace Seth Mcfarlane in your mind.
Replace him with some cheeto eating, Cheeto-eating, cowardly, sniveling rat man.
And you'll get a more accurate view.
See, the gamma male fantasizes.
Like, the gamma male, for him, sexuality is not winning a woman's heart.
It's not being such an excellent man, being of such good caliber and courage and virtue that a woman willingly follows you.
This is absolutely absent from his understanding of reality.
Instead, for the gamma male, the gamma male tries to be a good little boy for mummy.
He can only understand romantic relationships as he understands his relationship to his mother.
He has no relationship to masculinity, to fatherhood, to leadership, nobility.
His only God in life is the feminine, is his mother.
And so he tries to be a good little boy.
He tries not to stir up problems.
When he does have a complaint, when he does want something, he whines.
He cries like an infant so that mummy will come fix it.
And in his fantasy world, his fantasy lover is mummy, who teaches him how to tie his shoelaces and how to shoot a gun.
And when his ex-girlfriend leaves him because he's a loser, she's the one that comes and says, here, here, cry on my chest.
She doesn't know what a great guy you are.
When the reality is she left him because he's a freaking coward.
Now there's a second element to this gamma male fantasy that plays out in this movie.
Because Calamity Jane, whatever the character name was, Calamity Jane is originally introduced as the wife of this evil bandito, this evil guy that's just a bully and he kills a prospector at the very beginning of the movie for no reason whatsoever, just to prove how bad he is.
And in the movie, it's an absolutely flat character.
Now all the other characters are very well developed.
As I said, McFarlane is an excellent writer.
He knows how to write good characters when he bothers.
But these characters, or this character rather, the bandito, the bad guy, the ultimate antagonist, is completely flat.
So his love interest, McFarlane's love interest, is Calamity Jane, who is originally married to the evil Alpha.
This is never explained.
Why is it that this woman that apparently has a heart and morality and does not like murdering prospectors for no particular reason, why is she married to this incredibly evil guy that is just a bully and pushes people around?
This makes no sense in the film's narrative, but it makes perfect sense through the eyes of the gamma male.
See, the gamma male, they see the alpha male as a threat.
You know, when men, and I don't want to obsess too much with these alpha beta terms, because if you obsess too much, listen, it's just a heuristic, it's a rule of thumb, okay?
It's not the truth from Jesus.
Jesus didn't write about this.
But it is a useful heuristic.
And so, men, alpha beta, like real men, We talk smack to each other all the time.
The way that you can tell that a guy loves and respects you is he'll insult you.
Because men, if we insult somebody, it's fighting words, so we seldom insult other people.
If we insult somebody, nine times out of ten, it's one of our really good friends.
And what we're saying to each other is: I love you and I respect you.
I know that you can take shit from me without crying like a little girl.
Men punch each other in the shoulder.
Now, the gamma male sees this happening.
The gamma male sees this brouhaha that the real men are up to, and he is terrified by it.
Because again, he only understands the feminine.
He was raised by the feminine and to be a good little boy and not upset mummy, always obey mummy.
And masculinity, true masculinity, is inherently disruptive.
It's inherently disruptive to what women want.
Now, real women, well, depending on the date, sometimes they absolutely love the disruptive nature.
Hey, what?
The nonsense that guys do.
It's hilarious, they love it.
Sometimes it's too much and they bitch about it.
But that is normal, healthy masculinity.
The gamma male who is raised with his mummy's apron strings around him, you know, he's been taught he's been slapped down every time he acted remotely masculine.
And so he sees that as a threat.
He sees these guys lobbing friendly insults at each other, and he sees vicious nastiness.
He sees the alpha male passing a shit test from his girlfriend, and he sees an abusive man, a controlling, abusive, cruel man.
So the antagonist in this film is what a gamma male thinks an alpha male looks like.
And what he then does, he tries to be the nice guy.
And this is how the gamma males try and get laid in real life.
Is they sidle up to a taken woman, they sidle up to your girlfriend, or they sidle up to your wife, and they start being a whiny little baby, but being a good little boy and encouraging her nurturing instinct, her mothering instincts.
You know, this is what a nice guy does.
They're nice.
The nice guy hangs out with the girl that keeps getting her heart broken by the bad boys because he wants to sleep with her.
He won't admit it, he won't be upfront about it, he won't be direct, but he wants to sleep with her.
Doesn't care about her at all, just wants to have sex with her.
Wants her to be responsible for him, to take care of him, because he can't take care of himself.
And so he views the alpha as evil, as the enemy.
He's just a nasty piece of work.
And in the movie, this ultimately culminates with Seth McFarlane having a shootout with the alpha, but poisoning his bullets with rattlesnake venom.
He resorts to poison, which has long been recognized as a woman's weapon.
He does something sneaky.
He is a sneaky male.
And he's not even aware of this, as far as I can tell.
A Million Ways to Die in the West is the gamma male narrative writ large.
It is the whiny, obsequious, feminized castrato male.
And this is really everything wrong with our culture.
And the saddest part, and this is really what breaks my heart, that the fact that Seth McFarlane wrote this.
You know, I'm sure he understood that his character was a bit of a dweeb, that his character wasn't really a badass cowboy, but I don't think he understands the depth of the pathology he displayed with this character.
Just how sick, how ill this character is.
That his bad guy, in reality, is one of the good guys, is one of the leaders of men that build society.
And that his protagonist is one of the most destructive and pathetic forces in our civilization.
The movie was absolutely disgusting.
It's absolutely pathetic.
And you've got this guy, you've got Seth McFarlane, who is so incredibly talented and good-looking and well-off financially.
And yet this movie would suggest that he is still a little boy inside.
Yeah, I mean, it's pathetic.
This guy manages to get laid because he has money, but he is an absolute simp.
He is an absolute little weeness of a man.
And, you know, the fact that he's a Democrat seems to support that.
You know, you can't really say that much about his character just based upon the movie that he wrote and acted in.
But it really does seem like that's the case, that we've got this generation of simps, men that don't know how to take responsibility for themselves, men that don't know how to attract women, that don't even want a wife.
Okay, you need to be a man before you can have a wife.
These guys want a mummy.
They want somebody to change their diapers for them.
Somebody to pay the bills for them.
And quite frankly, all these feminist career girls, these people deserve each other.
It's absolutely disgusting.
It is utterly pathetic.
And yeah, civilization's falling apart.
But, you know, let these people have each other.
Folks, be thankful that you are not one of these people.
One of these utterly destroyed, these feminized men or these masculinized women.
You know, be thankful.
You know, this guy has so many gifts in life.
And yet, he's a pathetic simp.
You know, quite frankly, you folks out there, the poorest amongst you, the ugliest amongst you, are at least 10 times the man that Seth McFarlane is.
And how sad is that?
Oh, and if you enjoyed the movie, I hope I just ruined it for you.
▲
Export Selection