Begging the questions... Is CBC going to die by eating its own tail? Or, is the CBC already dead, and this is just what decomposition looks like when you get too close? Or should CBC just keep doing what it's doing and simply re-brand its entire operation as 'comedy'? The Comedy By Comedians channel where nobody laughs! Get it? Straighten yer face! Nobody laughs! That's the one and only joke... Nobody Laughs! Perfecting Perfection! The PP channel! Scratching the itch for which there be no relief! The channel so committed to politically correct, no one is allowed to work there! Must be a better way to blow a billion bucks! Where you smoke yer brains out til your higher than that high horse you trot around on! And on and on and on...
Clearly the revenge of an angry planet? Tumbling through space, roiling with laughter!
Those who want to push back on the "War on Christmas" should read Tom Holland's Dominion. Christianity is in everything, and a silly Hollywood production isn't going to stop that.
Thanks, Jen for watching the show so we don't have to.
Ground News is for those who are genuinely interested in hearing both sides of a story and are tired of the blatant bias (both left and right) in today's mainstream media. You're obviously enjoying your time in your echo chamber, Lyle.
Yes, agreed. The only complaint I have is I've read stories that are from center based news outlets, like the AP, but they have an extremely left wing bias. The particular one I'm thinking about is the AP story in which it celebrated trans-women being in women's sports. There was absolutely no nuance to it. I wish there was a 'disagree' button or some other flag to show that there is some bias there. But maybe that will come in time. They are still new.
So....are you saying that people who don't think that biological men have an unfair advantage over women in sports is a centrist???? Sorry to break it to you, Lyle, but if that is the case then you are surrounded by a bunch of right wingers. When you talk to people in real life, that is the opinion you will get. It's a different world on Twitter.
"Interesting...looks like more far right journals, and NO far left." You appeared to not be aware of how far left some of the media has gone, or at least some of their articles. The CBC can put out a great story exposing the fraud of Carrie Bourassa while also publishing woke BS articles about what words Canadians should not be using. I'm just tired of it.
Jezus, hadn't heard of Santa Inc. Trailer was plenty enough. If it were created by GPT-3, I would say "wow, hats off! Its amazing what machine learning can do now!". Otherwise, it feels like a paint by numbers comedy which was really boring. Maybe it could have been a funny 2min sketch like "KLOPS" was years ago on Mad TV. But even the trailer was too long... And they made... EIGHT episodes?!?!? But yes, I can see how this would piss off a lot of people and others who will convince themselves to love it just because it pisses off the people they despise.
I’m having trouble understanding this piece as one coherent message. If the point of Christmas is simply to gather yourself good food, beauty, light and the people you love through the darkest stretch of the year, then why would Jews or anyone seek to poke fun at it? Not saying that you couldn’t poke fun at these things, but no one on Santa Inc. is having any fun. Not the people making it, and certainly not the people watching it. There is nothing fun or funny about this show because it isn’t intended to be humour. Santa Inc. is retributive deconstruction at its purest. It is the joyless and hateful tearing down of something good and something religious. The creators of this show on some subconscious level know that Christmas is entirely and absolutely a Christian tradition that cannot be divorced from its religious roots. This is why they can stir up their tireless and malevolent effort in its tearing down.
Who would giddily try to tear down the ‘collecting of good food, beauty, light and the people you love’ and think that this would be entertaining or even that it would be funny? The creators of Santa Inc do not. It is precisely the Christ in Christmas that irks them. They are not striking down Saturnalia, or whatever other winter festival people wrongly conflate and synonymize with Christmas. They are tearing down Christian traditions only and specifically.
"Christmas" has a lot of origins - many of them extremely pre-Christian. It's always been a hodge podge of traditions and celebrations reflecting the beliefs of the broader society. It became a Christian holiday as people adopted Christianity and grafted a celebration of the birth of Christ onto what were once winter festivals and solstice holidays etc. etc. There is NOTHING at all wrong with that -- most holidays go through some sort of cultural syncretism over time, and if you regard the holiday as a true Holy Day, that's great! But Christmas in the west is *also* a cultural holiday that non-Christians can and do participate in, and that's also fine!
I think that Santa Inc is a really terrible movie for a lot of different reasons -- some of which you've aptly laid out, here. If you're going to go traipsing on holidays you don't celebrate, you should do it with a degree of respect and cultural literacy, certainly. Contempt is not a good look. Santa Inc. fails on a lot of different levels.
But imagining Christmas as a sacrosanct religious holiday that we must treat with detached reverence is engaging in some serious post hoc historical revisionism. We have a long tradition of raunchy and irreverent Christmas movies (from Bad Santa to Krampus, to satirical claymation) and it's never really been an issue before. Nor should it be. Santa Inc is bad, and it's ok to make fun of Christmas. These two thoughts are not mutually contradictory. JG
I think the coherent message you are missing is that the article isn't saying what you are suggesting it is saying. It is saying the creators of Santa Inc. seem to be making the same mistake you are, that Christmas is a Christian holiday and it is trying to be mean ("retributive deconstructionist") to Christians.
The point that Christmas means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, including "good food, beauty, light and the people you love" is that the creators of Santa Inc. missed all of that and instead attacked it as if it were just a "white" Christian holiday.
I'm not clear if you are making the same mistake when you say "on some subconscious level know that Christmas is entirely and absolutely a Christian tradition that cannot be divorced from its religious roots". Of course it isn't and can be. The history of Christmas originates in pagan festivals and traditions. "Yuletide" and the "yule log" are from the Germanic pagan Yule that was later Christianized. The evergreen ("Christmas") tree and wreaths long pre-exist Christianity to even ancient Egypt and Rome (e.g., https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees). Gift-giving, family, decorations, ... all have nothing to do with the Christian religion. The mistletoe could have several sources, but thought to be from the Greek winter celebration Kronia, where kissing under it was a myth about fertility.
Even contemporary Christmas lore are non-religious. While Santa Claus is based on stories of the Christian St. Nicholas, the contemporary mythical creature was largely a result an evolution from the poem, "A Visit from from St. Nicholas" (aka, The Night Before Christmas) in 1837 which normalized him as a secular magical creature with reindeer and sleigh. (In the poem he is an elf with 8 tiny reindeer, not quite the same as modern version, so evolved since then.) Even more modern are new secular pieces like Frosty the Snowman.
It doesn't have Christian roots, but more like a grafted on branch halfway up. The traditions were Christianized as the religion spread throughout Europe and slapped its name on everything. The celebration of Christ's birth was added, the nativity components, and of course the name itself was slapped on with a sharpie. But, the pre-existing traditions continued as they were and the evolution of even the Christian components to secular versions (like Santa Claus) followed.
The "meaning" has evolved and changed and varies almost person to person. For some it is truly religious. For some it is a seasonal or celestial celebration of the reversal of maximum darkness. For some it is about bringing love and warmth at a cold and dark time of year. For some it is about family and fond memories, and a reminder to give to people. For some it is consumerist about shopping and getting free stuff.
It isn't that Santa Inc. was making fun of that. That's largely the criticism here, that it's just cheap potshots without ever considering what Christmas really is to people. They aren't tearing down Christian traditions only. Santa, the elves, reindeer, tree, and whatnot are not Christian traditions. Where are elves and reindeer in the Bible, or part of Sunday mass? Did Jesus have a shiny red nose, perhaps from all that wine in his blood?
That's one of the main points of the criticism here; they didn't tear down Christian traditions. If they wanted to do that they should have mocked the nativity scene then. Make it claymation about the Three Wise Men traveling to give gifts to the baby Jesus in a manger.
But, even then, that would still a terribly mean thing to do, even if focused on only the Christian "slap-on sticker" parts of the traditions. For season 2 are they going to slap on brown face (Sarah can help Seth with that), wrap a towel around their heads, and create a claymation Mohammed sneaking a ham sandwich through the fast and farting through Ramadan?
Do you remember that kid in your hometown when you were 10 years old, the one that was rude, called people nasty names, and thought it was funny to take a dump on the baby Jesus in the town's nativity display? I always thought of him as an asshole and a bully. Turns out he was just a Hollywood Progressive doing "retributive deconstruction", but he was just ahead of his time.
Thanks to you and the author for responding. I remain unconvinced however that the creators were just being bullies and not attacking specifically Christianity. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying people are not allowed to ridicule and dismiss Christianity nor that this couldn’t be funny. My disagreement is about the creators’ intentions which are admittedly impossible to prove and ultimately speculative.
Positing that Christmas isn’t Christian because similar (or identical) traditions existed in the past is like saying France isn’t French because other nations have existed there before. It’s a non sequitur.
To Rogen and Silverman, Christianity means Western, white, European capitalist patriarchy and so they attack Christianity because that is what it represents to them. Now we can evade and say Christianity isn’t only the above, and that’s true, but it doesn’t mean the creators aren’t actually attacking Christianity. Their intent matters. Just because they have a hollow understanding of what Christianity is doesn’t mean they are in fact attacking something else.
"Rogen & Silverman are attacking Christianity" is a pretty prevalent opinion on Santa Inc. and I can see how people get there. You are definitely not alone with that critique.
Because I have a different take on Christmas, I can't really connect those dots, personally. I don't see Santa Inc. as any more an attack on *Christianity* than Bad Santa, or Krampus, or those terrible, raunchy Claymation satires that MadTV used to do. Santa Inc. is genuinely awful for a long list of reasons, but I'm not sure people would see it as an attack on Christianity specifically if it weren't for the religious backgrounds of the creators (and that's where the critique gets very ugly, IMO.)
In demeanour, I can see it. I think our version of that kid couldn't make a buck selling life jackets to a drowning man, and is in jail for aggravated assault.
Make a movie like this about Ramadan...see what happens. If they really wanted to trigger a discussion about the irrationality of religion they should know what hand presently feeds those machines.
Why does anyone have to be pitted against anyone else? What a silly thing to say Lyle. I am merely pointing out how inappropriate it is for Rogan et al. to go after Christianity when we have at this very moment a worldwide organized religion which sanctions violence against women and homosexuals as well as against anyone who opposes trivial facets of their faith such as the imagery of the leader and the percieved holiness of particular events. It seems to have become all too easy to focus on Christianity to the exclusion of other faiths. This is kind of why I have respect for guys like Dawkins who go after religions writ large in their commentary, but I wouldn't expect Rogan to rise to the level of someone like Dawkins.
I don't think Christians insinuated Christmas into a secular society. Western countries developed as almost exclusively christian enterprises and the synchretic nature of christmas is know to them. If anything the secularists insinuated themselves. As a secularist myself, I don't mind it...but the way you frame it is almost insulting. Like those dumb Christians just showed up one day and forced everyone to participate in soltice-fest by another name. As opposed to the fact that almost everyone used to be christian.
Christmas aside, these progressive leftists, like Rogen and Silverman, are ruining comedy. SNL mocking Winsome Sears was disgusting and, for me, the last straw. It's off my PVR. The last season of Brooklyn 99 is unwatchable. The more extreme and blatant their views get though, the more people are waking up and saying, "Fuck off". Working class people do not want to be lectured by rich Hollywood phonies.
As someone who found Santa Inc. very funny - I even dared my geriatric parents to try an episode, possibly as a scheme to gain early access to my inheritance - I think you went a little deep on the “opinion as fact: it sucks” element.
Well your link to the CBC 'bad words' page made me think of that Great American Philosopher's commentary on such things...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0
Begging the questions... Is CBC going to die by eating its own tail? Or, is the CBC already dead, and this is just what decomposition looks like when you get too close? Or should CBC just keep doing what it's doing and simply re-brand its entire operation as 'comedy'? The Comedy By Comedians channel where nobody laughs! Get it? Straighten yer face! Nobody laughs! That's the one and only joke... Nobody Laughs! Perfecting Perfection! The PP channel! Scratching the itch for which there be no relief! The channel so committed to politically correct, no one is allowed to work there! Must be a better way to blow a billion bucks! Where you smoke yer brains out til your higher than that high horse you trot around on! And on and on and on...
Clearly the revenge of an angry planet? Tumbling through space, roiling with laughter!
Poor Seth. He doesn't even get dog shampoo jokes anymore. :)
Gad Saad's 'trolling' of Seth over that was epic, lol
Those who want to push back on the "War on Christmas" should read Tom Holland's Dominion. Christianity is in everything, and a silly Hollywood production isn't going to stop that.
Thanks, Jen for watching the show so we don't have to.
Jen check out https://ground.news/blindspot they do something similar tracking who (right left) reports on what super interesting
Rob
Ground News is for those who are genuinely interested in hearing both sides of a story and are tired of the blatant bias (both left and right) in today's mainstream media. You're obviously enjoying your time in your echo chamber, Lyle.
I like it because the trucks who was following what story.
Yes, agreed. The only complaint I have is I've read stories that are from center based news outlets, like the AP, but they have an extremely left wing bias. The particular one I'm thinking about is the AP story in which it celebrated trans-women being in women's sports. There was absolutely no nuance to it. I wish there was a 'disagree' button or some other flag to show that there is some bias there. But maybe that will come in time. They are still new.
So....are you saying that people who don't think that biological men have an unfair advantage over women in sports is a centrist???? Sorry to break it to you, Lyle, but if that is the case then you are surrounded by a bunch of right wingers. When you talk to people in real life, that is the opinion you will get. It's a different world on Twitter.
And, If you are the centrist you so claim to be, then you should be aware of how the Steele Dossier has fallen apart. And it can all be tracked back to Hillary. And, for the record, I don't like her or Trump or Biden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gedPlmmBGGg&list=PLuGGLs2Z6d2MkmNSdRGREzq7Ni2PyuKy-&index=25&t=107s
I agree that it is a very center based article. Why would you assume I would think differently?
"Interesting...looks like more far right journals, and NO far left." You appeared to not be aware of how far left some of the media has gone, or at least some of their articles. The CBC can put out a great story exposing the fraud of Carrie Bourassa while also publishing woke BS articles about what words Canadians should not be using. I'm just tired of it.
Jezus, hadn't heard of Santa Inc. Trailer was plenty enough. If it were created by GPT-3, I would say "wow, hats off! Its amazing what machine learning can do now!". Otherwise, it feels like a paint by numbers comedy which was really boring. Maybe it could have been a funny 2min sketch like "KLOPS" was years ago on Mad TV. But even the trailer was too long... And they made... EIGHT episodes?!?!? But yes, I can see how this would piss off a lot of people and others who will convince themselves to love it just because it pisses off the people they despise.
Sorry, it was Raging Rudolf I was thinking about. 3min long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icjh6wGUUfE
I’m having trouble understanding this piece as one coherent message. If the point of Christmas is simply to gather yourself good food, beauty, light and the people you love through the darkest stretch of the year, then why would Jews or anyone seek to poke fun at it? Not saying that you couldn’t poke fun at these things, but no one on Santa Inc. is having any fun. Not the people making it, and certainly not the people watching it. There is nothing fun or funny about this show because it isn’t intended to be humour. Santa Inc. is retributive deconstruction at its purest. It is the joyless and hateful tearing down of something good and something religious. The creators of this show on some subconscious level know that Christmas is entirely and absolutely a Christian tradition that cannot be divorced from its religious roots. This is why they can stir up their tireless and malevolent effort in its tearing down.
Who would giddily try to tear down the ‘collecting of good food, beauty, light and the people you love’ and think that this would be entertaining or even that it would be funny? The creators of Santa Inc do not. It is precisely the Christ in Christmas that irks them. They are not striking down Saturnalia, or whatever other winter festival people wrongly conflate and synonymize with Christmas. They are tearing down Christian traditions only and specifically.
Couple of points.
"Christmas" has a lot of origins - many of them extremely pre-Christian. It's always been a hodge podge of traditions and celebrations reflecting the beliefs of the broader society. It became a Christian holiday as people adopted Christianity and grafted a celebration of the birth of Christ onto what were once winter festivals and solstice holidays etc. etc. There is NOTHING at all wrong with that -- most holidays go through some sort of cultural syncretism over time, and if you regard the holiday as a true Holy Day, that's great! But Christmas in the west is *also* a cultural holiday that non-Christians can and do participate in, and that's also fine!
I think that Santa Inc is a really terrible movie for a lot of different reasons -- some of which you've aptly laid out, here. If you're going to go traipsing on holidays you don't celebrate, you should do it with a degree of respect and cultural literacy, certainly. Contempt is not a good look. Santa Inc. fails on a lot of different levels.
But imagining Christmas as a sacrosanct religious holiday that we must treat with detached reverence is engaging in some serious post hoc historical revisionism. We have a long tradition of raunchy and irreverent Christmas movies (from Bad Santa to Krampus, to satirical claymation) and it's never really been an issue before. Nor should it be. Santa Inc is bad, and it's ok to make fun of Christmas. These two thoughts are not mutually contradictory. JG
I think the coherent message you are missing is that the article isn't saying what you are suggesting it is saying. It is saying the creators of Santa Inc. seem to be making the same mistake you are, that Christmas is a Christian holiday and it is trying to be mean ("retributive deconstructionist") to Christians.
The point that Christmas means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, including "good food, beauty, light and the people you love" is that the creators of Santa Inc. missed all of that and instead attacked it as if it were just a "white" Christian holiday.
I'm not clear if you are making the same mistake when you say "on some subconscious level know that Christmas is entirely and absolutely a Christian tradition that cannot be divorced from its religious roots". Of course it isn't and can be. The history of Christmas originates in pagan festivals and traditions. "Yuletide" and the "yule log" are from the Germanic pagan Yule that was later Christianized. The evergreen ("Christmas") tree and wreaths long pre-exist Christianity to even ancient Egypt and Rome (e.g., https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees). Gift-giving, family, decorations, ... all have nothing to do with the Christian religion. The mistletoe could have several sources, but thought to be from the Greek winter celebration Kronia, where kissing under it was a myth about fertility.
Even contemporary Christmas lore are non-religious. While Santa Claus is based on stories of the Christian St. Nicholas, the contemporary mythical creature was largely a result an evolution from the poem, "A Visit from from St. Nicholas" (aka, The Night Before Christmas) in 1837 which normalized him as a secular magical creature with reindeer and sleigh. (In the poem he is an elf with 8 tiny reindeer, not quite the same as modern version, so evolved since then.) Even more modern are new secular pieces like Frosty the Snowman.
It doesn't have Christian roots, but more like a grafted on branch halfway up. The traditions were Christianized as the religion spread throughout Europe and slapped its name on everything. The celebration of Christ's birth was added, the nativity components, and of course the name itself was slapped on with a sharpie. But, the pre-existing traditions continued as they were and the evolution of even the Christian components to secular versions (like Santa Claus) followed.
The "meaning" has evolved and changed and varies almost person to person. For some it is truly religious. For some it is a seasonal or celestial celebration of the reversal of maximum darkness. For some it is about bringing love and warmth at a cold and dark time of year. For some it is about family and fond memories, and a reminder to give to people. For some it is consumerist about shopping and getting free stuff.
It isn't that Santa Inc. was making fun of that. That's largely the criticism here, that it's just cheap potshots without ever considering what Christmas really is to people. They aren't tearing down Christian traditions only. Santa, the elves, reindeer, tree, and whatnot are not Christian traditions. Where are elves and reindeer in the Bible, or part of Sunday mass? Did Jesus have a shiny red nose, perhaps from all that wine in his blood?
That's one of the main points of the criticism here; they didn't tear down Christian traditions. If they wanted to do that they should have mocked the nativity scene then. Make it claymation about the Three Wise Men traveling to give gifts to the baby Jesus in a manger.
But, even then, that would still a terribly mean thing to do, even if focused on only the Christian "slap-on sticker" parts of the traditions. For season 2 are they going to slap on brown face (Sarah can help Seth with that), wrap a towel around their heads, and create a claymation Mohammed sneaking a ham sandwich through the fast and farting through Ramadan?
Do you remember that kid in your hometown when you were 10 years old, the one that was rude, called people nasty names, and thought it was funny to take a dump on the baby Jesus in the town's nativity display? I always thought of him as an asshole and a bully. Turns out he was just a Hollywood Progressive doing "retributive deconstruction", but he was just ahead of his time.
Brilliant. Thank you!
Thanks to you and the author for responding. I remain unconvinced however that the creators were just being bullies and not attacking specifically Christianity. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying people are not allowed to ridicule and dismiss Christianity nor that this couldn’t be funny. My disagreement is about the creators’ intentions which are admittedly impossible to prove and ultimately speculative.
Positing that Christmas isn’t Christian because similar (or identical) traditions existed in the past is like saying France isn’t French because other nations have existed there before. It’s a non sequitur.
To Rogen and Silverman, Christianity means Western, white, European capitalist patriarchy and so they attack Christianity because that is what it represents to them. Now we can evade and say Christianity isn’t only the above, and that’s true, but it doesn’t mean the creators aren’t actually attacking Christianity. Their intent matters. Just because they have a hollow understanding of what Christianity is doesn’t mean they are in fact attacking something else.
"Rogen & Silverman are attacking Christianity" is a pretty prevalent opinion on Santa Inc. and I can see how people get there. You are definitely not alone with that critique.
Because I have a different take on Christmas, I can't really connect those dots, personally. I don't see Santa Inc. as any more an attack on *Christianity* than Bad Santa, or Krampus, or those terrible, raunchy Claymation satires that MadTV used to do. Santa Inc. is genuinely awful for a long list of reasons, but I'm not sure people would see it as an attack on Christianity specifically if it weren't for the religious backgrounds of the creators (and that's where the critique gets very ugly, IMO.)
In demeanour, I can see it. I think our version of that kid couldn't make a buck selling life jackets to a drowning man, and is in jail for aggravated assault.
Make a movie like this about Ramadan...see what happens. If they really wanted to trigger a discussion about the irrationality of religion they should know what hand presently feeds those machines.
Why does anyone have to be pitted against anyone else? What a silly thing to say Lyle. I am merely pointing out how inappropriate it is for Rogan et al. to go after Christianity when we have at this very moment a worldwide organized religion which sanctions violence against women and homosexuals as well as against anyone who opposes trivial facets of their faith such as the imagery of the leader and the percieved holiness of particular events. It seems to have become all too easy to focus on Christianity to the exclusion of other faiths. This is kind of why I have respect for guys like Dawkins who go after religions writ large in their commentary, but I wouldn't expect Rogan to rise to the level of someone like Dawkins.
I don't think Christians insinuated Christmas into a secular society. Western countries developed as almost exclusively christian enterprises and the synchretic nature of christmas is know to them. If anything the secularists insinuated themselves. As a secularist myself, I don't mind it...but the way you frame it is almost insulting. Like those dumb Christians just showed up one day and forced everyone to participate in soltice-fest by another name. As opposed to the fact that almost everyone used to be christian.
TBH Santa Inc. looked like it could be a ridiculous parady of today's culture from the 2 minutes
Christmas aside, these progressive leftists, like Rogen and Silverman, are ruining comedy. SNL mocking Winsome Sears was disgusting and, for me, the last straw. It's off my PVR. The last season of Brooklyn 99 is unwatchable. The more extreme and blatant their views get though, the more people are waking up and saying, "Fuck off". Working class people do not want to be lectured by rich Hollywood phonies.
And to show how much of an echo chamber Seth Rogen is in, in regards to his comments about white supremacy, Joe Rogan just called out the Patriot Front for looking like a bunch of Fed's. Kim Iversen did some great reporting on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTXhtyfTjdE&list=PLuGGLs2Z6d2MkmNSdRGREzq7Ni2PyuKy-&index=1&t=14s
When the demand for white supremacy outweighs the supply, what's a Fed to do???
As someone who found Santa Inc. very funny - I even dared my geriatric parents to try an episode, possibly as a scheme to gain early access to my inheritance - I think you went a little deep on the “opinion as fact: it sucks” element.
Facts aren't opinions, friend. Taste is subjective. However, the "Santa Inc. is good actually" take is an extreme minority position. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/santa_inc/s01/reviews?type=user