Why Good Reads (And Movies) Are Hard to Find
Parker Hunt is a great detective. Hell, he caught a coven of Commies in Vegas and made himself a wad of money in the real estate business while saving the lives of three children and an abandoned wife of a counterfeiting traitor. How’s that for a super-hero? Now, his story continues…or does it?
Mystery/Detective writers face a daunting challenge these days: who to kill? Magazine and university journal guidelines are predictably adamant. No violence towards women, children, animals, or any protected group ⸺blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, the old, other-abled, “migrants” legal or otherwise, and an alphabet soup of genders are off limits. And no stereotypes, please! But also, no “cultural appropriation.” The Italian can’t own a pizzeria (stereotype), but he can’t own a taqueria either (cultural appropriation). And neither the Italian or the Mexican can play sports. Too competitive. Neither heroes, nor villains (and that includes the military especially) should smoke (except pot), utter unkind epithets, or dine on red meat.
Most importantly, sex must always be consensual, and men can’t be lured into lust by the seductive curve of a woman’s ass. (Good-bye noir) To suggest that Rhett Butler carry Scarlet to their bedroom for marital! sex will have the Me Too crowd wailing in the streets and demanding that Congress should investigate.
Weapons pose another conundrum. Guns are verboten, but no character can like Twinkies because junk food is a killer. As for capital punishment? Nope. Cruel and unusual.
Phew! Guess every murder victim from here on out has to be a white, middle-aged castrated priest who worked for big pharma and played football in high-school. Oh, and he has to revel in his white privilege. (Kind of begs the question as to why anyone would want to find his killer, right?) The same goes for suspects. A story that suggests any victim in the social sense (i.e. someone from a protected category) would rape, plunder, or simply be a meanie-pants because of anything other than growing up disadvantaged in a racist oppressive society, merits automatic rejection.
Did I say merit? I’m sure it’s a ‘code’ word for a ‘phobe’ of some sort. Probably straight, white, capitalist hegemony. As if ex-Marine sniper Parker Hunt would have heard the word hegemony in the 1950’s. He’s not a sensitive kind’a guy. He’s deplorable. In fact, he kills a pregnant spy. That’s okay, Planned Parenthood won’t complain. Only five-thousand more outraged groups and causes to please.
Here goes. I’ll start by changing his name to Parker Sweet, bi-racial, multi-sexual/gender, tofu loving, National Anthem hating, detective-turned-social-justice-warrior-investigative-journalist who owns a turkey rescue and spends his week-ends volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. He’s not out to kill the victims of corporate chemical spills that turned them into zombies. He’s helping the zombies organize road-blocking protests, and donates a quarter of every dollar he raises by selling ribbons and tee-shirts to politicians who support the rights of the half-dead to a Mercy Ship for zombies who can’t swim.
Yeah, that’s it, the profile of my next no-noir protagonist. Now to write the story what editors say they’re looking for: cutting-edge, gripping, gut-wrenching, cross-genres that send their readers to undreamed of universes and leave them breathless for more. It won’t be that difficult. I read one of those stories just yesterday. (It was posted next to the four millionth cute kitty meme.) You know the word-salad of schizophrenics? Well, this was sentence salad and it was, oxymoronically, pure shit. Why? Because there was no story. Just ideology on parade —without the 76 Trombones.
Does Hollywood want to sell movie tickets or just turn out “message” films that bore the undead and anger the breathing? I’m not arguing for a remake of Birth of a Nation, but making every movie a progressive mission is crazy, not to mention unprofitable. If Hollywood is going to survive, it must stop being a social engineering conglomerate and go back to entertaining people. (Like a South Korean film that won the Oscar!) I’ve tired of being hit with a right-think sledge-hammer every time I see a Disney movie, and I guarantee you, ticket sales reflect I’m not the only one.