The Apology of a Yakubian Ape

In the words of dear Uncle Walt - to all who come to this happy place, I apologize in advance.

Hello.

If you're reading this, I assume you were either one of the handful of people who stumbled on this publication by chance, or you were one of the crowd that were brought here by John Carter of Postcards of Barsoom. There's a lot more people looking at this publication a whole lot quicker than I anticipated. Frankly, I'd have been happy if I had, like, twelve hits in a year. So, I feel compelled to say, again - hello.

I also want you to imagine me on the stage at the Oscar's, dressed in a natty suit, teary eyed, and clutching a golden statuette of Yakub close to my chest for this next part.

I could have never done it without you, my father.

That being said, I would actually, sincerely like to thank John Carter - to be mentioned as a worthy read is an immense compliment in itself, but to also be listed alongside so many excellent and intelligent writers that make this little corner of the internet an island refuge amidst a dark sea of tedium… well, let's just say that's not bad for a simian with a dream. A dream of what? I can't say. But it sounds nice, so we’re going with it.

Anyways, I mean it when I say I deeply appreciate the shout out and kind words.

And to everyone else… yeah, thanks for being here, or whatever. I guess.

Now, before I go backstage and start downing kamikaze shots with my agent and my editor, I also want to address a question that I'm fairly certain that no one is currently asking, but as this publication continues to grow¹, I'm sure that it will occur to at least one person. Someone may even ask it. I expect it to happen because it's a question I've been asked many, many times, as have most of us who bear the overwhelming burden of possessing great intellect, eloquent tongues, sparkling wits, and immaculate taste.

It goes something like this:

Wow, YakubianApe, for someone who says they dislike [INSERT PIECE OF POP CULTURE EPHEMERA HERE], you sure seem to talk about it a lot. If you hate it so much, why do you spend so much time thinking about it?

Sometimes, this is asked earnestly, as a legitimate question. Most of the time, though, it’s pitched as some sort of snarky gotcha from some pissant with an annoying voice who got personally offended because I said something disagreeable about one of the four most lucrative intellectual properties on planet earth, most often the one they collect the most Funko Pops of. And they usually look like this.

Well, to whoever may have that question, depending on how you ask it, I respectfully or condescendingly provide for you an answer in three parts.

1. Sometimes, it's just fun to clown on things that are bad. There’s a reason that the Angry Video Game Nerd spawned an army of imitators and not the Cheery Video Game Geek. It's cathartic. It helps you realize what you don’t like, what you want to avoid, so you can better appreciate what you do like. But, as I already mentioned, it’s mostly fun.

   

2. In a perfect world, I wouldn't have to talk about these things, because I wouldn't see them, thus, I wouldn't think about them, and, thankfully, I wouldn't have anything to say about them.

   See, here’s the thing. I’ll let you in on a little Yakubian secret - I don’t actually want to think about these intellectual properties. Ever. If I never had to hear anything about Jedi or Hogwarts or whatever MacGuffin the Dollar Store Avengers they have running around now are after, I’d be a happy man.
   This may come as something of a shock, but, believe it or not, I prefer to invest my time, energy, effort, and conscious thought towards things I actually care about. In fact, as a responsible adult and a (reluctant) functioning member of society, there's already a litany of things I’d rather not spend my precious mental bandwidth with that, sadly, I must. Taxes. Bills. Work. Gas and grocery prices. You know - stuff the Reddit crowd calls adulting. I have plenty of shit that comes and slaps me in the face every day that I want nothing to do with, and it would be just super if I also didn't have to have Baby Yoda staring back at me from the plastic wrap of a baked potato at the store to forcibly remind me, oh, yeah - that’s a thing. For a minute, there, I was so lost in the fact that ground beef is ten bucks a pound that I almost forgot that the new season of Glup Shitto’s Big Day Out was dropping. Of course, I could always just jump for delicious name-brand ZOG Chow (fortified with seed oil for your health), which usually has both the name of a big corporation and some Star Wars iconography slapped on it. Now, I’m usually opposed to consuming most of what these companies load their so-called “food” with, but put Baby Yoda’s glassy-eyed, vacant stare on it, and, well, I guess a little heavy metal poisoning is tolerable.

   

   “Consume copious amounts of Red Dye 40 and Titanium Dioxide, you must.”

   I have a dear friend who is a sommelier who says, “Everyone is a wine fan. They just don't know it.” And, as a convert to red wine, I can agree, this is probably true. The soulless ghouls who run Warner Brothers and Disney think the same thing - “Everyone is a fan of my [Insert Dogwater Intellectual Property Here]. They just don't know it.” Unlike my sommelier friend, they are categorically, irrefutably, and profoundly incorrect. Here's the rub - if I don't like pinot noir by and large (and I don't), there's always a nice cab sauv or red blend or tempranillo for me to try that I will like. But there's only one Harry Potter. There's only one Star Wars. I will not like them, no matter how hard Disney or Warner Brothers try to force them upon me. They may try to shove The Mandalorian or Fantastic Beasts on me as some sort of palatable alternative - Oh, you don’t like the main entries? Well, have this spin-off that has different actors in it but is totally not different in any meaningful way! - but that seems akin to when I try to get my dog to take a pill by wrapping it in a piece of deli meat. Now, my dog has wised up to this trick over time, and has developed a distrust of deli meat to the point that, when she has medication, I basically have to brute force it down her throat. Likewise, I have developed an aversion to these properties and their iconography, so, not satisfied with letting one of the serfs off the farm to live in peace, unconcerned and unbothered by them, Disney, Warner Brothers, and whoever else have to find ways to blast their bullshit directly into my eyeballs through whatever means necessary and make me think about it.

   

   This is basically what it feels like to turn on the television or the radio anymore.

   
   I’ve touched on the fact that the iconography from Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel, D.C., so on and so forth is injected into every form of advertising to the point that even the most absurdist of the post-modernists would find it comically ridiculous. That’s bad enough, but it’s worse when these things saturate into almost every corner of public life. I’ve been on more than one date where the first words out of the girl’s mouth after we’ve sat down was, “Um, well, I’m a Hufflepuff!”²

   I'm pretty sure that if I managed to get to Bhutan and find my way into Shangri-la, I'd probably discover that the Harry Potter books have been translated into Agarthan and that the God-King collects Funko Pops. And don’t think it’s just for movies that this nonsense exists - I guarantee you that there were Swifties beaming STREAM MIDNIGHTS ON OCTOBER 23RD out to Zeta Reticuli so the reptilians of bog planet Gorp knew that Taylor Swift had a new album out.
   You can’t escape it. And that’s not a good thing. It’s not harmless. It’s not just annoying, it guarantees that fresh, new ideas and stories will be eschewed in favor of turning out another lukewarm mediocrity from some pre-established franchise, because, hey - why put the effort into trying to convince someone that this new product is worth their time when they’ll shell out a couple bucks for a new Spiderman movie?³
   This is to say nothing of pop music, which at this point is so pervasive, repetitive, and mind-numbing that I’m convinced that individuals (I hesitate to call them people) like Ed Sheeran were developed in a lab by DARPA or some such organization to create the most efficient form of slow-acting torture, specifically to be deployed on retail and service employees, but that’s a can of worms best opened another day.
   This whole system we have where monolithic properties so thoroughly dominate the culture fosters creative stagnation that is the hallmark of any sick and declining society. This is important - vitally so - because -

3. Art matters. Stories matter. Culture matters. This is something that the American right has struggled with for a long time, now. It’s something that the left, on the other hand, seems to intuitively understand, and something that even more unsavory forces still have managed to capitalize on and monopolize. So many complain about the woke agenda⁴ being inserted into everything from beer commercials to children’s cartoons to greeting cards and everything in between - well, why is that? Because the arena of culture and art was overwhelmingly left open for those people to take. Now, the arts, regardless of the style, fashion, or form, have historically attracted figures of left-leaning sympathies. Anything can be hedonistically indulgent seems to do so. Yet, some of the greatest artists of all time were, if nothing else, right-leaning in their sympathies. With how far the Overton Window has shifted, I’d say that many left-leaning artists from decades gone by would probably be identified as right-leaning by modern progressives, if not actively do so themselves. So, yes, right-leaning creatives were always outnumbered. You can see this plainly during the Blacklist-era of Hollywood, best exemplified today in how Dalton Trumbo is seen as something of an unfairly maligned martyr to the cause, while Elia Kazan’s name is still considered something of a dirty word. While there are significant outliers in today’s Hollywood - Clint Eastwood, James Woods, and Jon Voight come to mind⁵ - but they are old men who’s influence is waning and remaining time is, to be perfectly frank, not abundant. Who will take up their place as voices of dissent amidst the industry?
   Mel Gibson? Mark Wahlberg? Kirk Cameron? Production outfits like Affirm Films or LionsGate’s one or two attempts to dip into outright, unabashed Christian film?
   Unlikely. The phenomenon of worship music, Christian films, and the inability of that media to penetrate markets and audiences out of it’s target demographic is an article unto itself, but suffice to say, these people and studios are tolerated for now, but there will rapidly come a time where they will not be, and when that time comes, they will be swept out the door without any regard for their marketability or potential profit.
   Those of lukewarm or nonexistent political convictions - at least, those who keep their political affiliations to themselves - are only one wrong comment away from being depersoned from the industry.

   

   As if the abyssmal performance of the second Shazam movie wasn’t enough of a blow, Levi’s comment here probably ended his prospects as a big hitter in the industry.

   Hell, if Harry Potter has done anything for us, it’s shown us just how quick even a staunch liberal will be cast aside by their peers if they deviate from the marching orders.

   

   Remember how Daily Wire “conservatives” were buying Hogwarts Legacy to “own the libs”? Yeah - that’s a problem.

   
   Rowling may look like she’s sitting pretty now, and she’ll probably be set financially for the rest of her life, but if things continue at pace, she will be effectively erased from the history her own creation. Just like another certain someone…

   

   Now, I don’t mean to diminish anyone’s contributions to a movie - film is, inherently, a collaborative art form - but the powers that be would love nothing more than to divorce Rowling and Lucas from their own creations and fashion a new Hidden Figures-esque narrative behind them that would not only downplay the original creators and their less than agreeable traits, but, conveniently, offer a ready-made concept for a Hidden Figures-esque biopic that can be cheaply made and put on Disney+ for a quick buck. You didn’t know it, but behind JK Rowling was a strong, independent woman of color who served as the basis of Hermoine Granger. Oh, and she also edited the books, too, and translated Rowling’s illegible chickenscratch into the literary masterwork of modern fantasy we have today.
   Just wait. It’s coming.
   But I’m deviating from my original point.
   Malicious actors in all corners of the artistic world, whether it be in publishing, music, film, and even more traditional forms of art from sculpture to basket weaving, have done a superb job at gatekeeping their respective fiefdoms and have routinely bullied and beat out dissenting voices. They were allowed to. Part of this falls upon the usual suspects - the dreaded Boomer cohort - was, even more so than their predecessors, dismissive and ignorant to the power of art and the importance of culture.
   Oh, it’s just a movie. Who cares?
   Oh, it’s just a stupid song. Just turn it off if you don’t like it.
   Oh, it’s just a book. Who even reads anymore?
   Well, I’d argue that the chickens born from this particularly nihilistic and myopic world view are what are currently home to roost.
   It is just a movie, but it was one that made snorting coke at a party look fun and cool and harmless. Your son saw it, thought it looked like a good time, and, oops - now he has a crippling heroin addiction.
   It’s just a stupid song, but it was one about a girl kissing another girl at a party. Now your daughter heard it, decided, hey, let’s give this thing a try, and now she’s changing her gender and looking into having a voluntary double mastectomy at nineteen.⁶
   It’s just a book, and maybe it had a small audience, but they were dedicated and loyal enough to secure it a television adaptation on HBO your kids are going to be watching.
   These are, I admit, quite hyperbolic, but you must understand that art does not exist in a vacuum. Nothing does. Art is not simply made to entertain - it is made to influence. Even if there are no pernicious intentions behind a piece of art, art inherently seeks to instill within you an emotion. Bluey may not be trying to indoctrinate your child with Marxist ideology⁷, but when Bluey’s parents teach her - I think Bluey is a girl - to share her toys with her sister or whatever, it is trying to influence them to not act like a selfish brat and let their younger sister play with their crap.

   

   Given that Bluey seems to be a show primarily about a stable and functional nuclear family, I’m surprised there aren’t thinkpieces about how it’s fascist propaganda, even is said family consists of talking dogs.

   Now, your child may be learning to share from Bluey today, but how long until they’re watching HBO’s Euphoria and seeing how epic and cool it is to do mind-melting amounts of illicit substances and sleep around with strangers? It sounds humorous, but believe me when I say the gap is probably not as long as you’d expect, what with the power of the internet and social media.
   Even this painting is trying to instill within the viewer an emotion.

   

   It’s like, how much more blue could it be? And the answer is none. None more blue.

   Do you know what that emotion is? I do, but only because I took a class on art history once and this painting came up. It’s more interesting than you’d probably suspect (and if you’re curious, the painting in question is Yves Klein’s Monochrome Blue, without title), but, regardless, the point is that the average layperson on the right would scoff and say, Tch. What a joke. It’s just blue canvas. I could do that!
   And, to be fair, they probably could, and I’m not even saying that Yves Klein was some extraordinary talent or trying to say anything of particular importance - all I’m saying is that, even with an all blue canvas, he was trying to say something. Whether you know it or not, all art is trying to say something, whether it be it’s nice to share your toys or kill the kulak.
   And that’s why it’s important - influence.
   It’s all about influence.
   And, to put it as simply as I can - bad behavior that begets negative consequences can be encouraged, just as easily as good behavior with positive consequences can. Of course, bad behavior tends to be easy, and fun, and beneficial in the short-term, which is why it’s of paramount importance that good behavior is promoted over it. Why do you think that Bluey, Barney, and Bozo the Clown all have to beat it into a two-year old’s malleable brain, Don’t be a selfish brat? Being a selfish brat is easy. It’s pretty much a human’s default setting.
   Thus, influence - it’s kind of a big deal.

   

   I genuinely know next to nothing about this show other than my friends who have children talk about how much they hate it. One even told me his two year old is now speaking with an Australian accent because she watches so much of the little blue bitch, as he calls her, so keep that in mind next time you think about sitting your toddler down to just watch a cartoon.

Now, let’s talk a little bit more about influence, now that I think the why has been addressed.
All around you, every day, you are being influenced every second of every minute of every hour on a subconscious level by external stimuli that's placed around you by people who want to influence you to do a certain thing. Think about a speed limit sign on the highway. Is that sign going to put a gun to your head and force you to abide by the number printed on it? No. But it was put there by an authority - in this case, the government - who want to influence you to think a certain way. Whether there's a cop lurking around the corner to enforce that number is irrelevant. That sign is there to convince you that should your speedometer breach a certain number, you will be punished.

Let's extrapolate it further.

Do you know how many brands you are exposed to a day via advertising? A quick google search says anywhere between 4,000 to a staggering 10,000. A day.

Each and every one of these boxes is the end result of market research, careful studying, and number crunching that all comes to a price tag that could probably sustain a small Caribbean nation for an entire year.

I'm honestly surprised it isn't more. But, all those brands were put there by people who paid more money than you will likely see in your life to convince you of one thing - buy this. These people sink eye-watering sums of cold hard cash into ensuring that there product is put in front of you, not even on the promise that you'll buy it, but just that you'll see it, and, maybe, one day, when you need dish soap, you'll remember that time you saw a stormtrooper on a bottle of Dawn dish soap, and reach for that brand over Ma and Pa's Ol’ Fashioned Detergent.
The thing is, if these stupid, silly “woke” products were just a song or just a movie or just a painting… why are the “woke” values the only ones being propagated? If the dictum of “go woke, go broke” were as true as well-meaning but myopic people like Tim Pool believed them to be, why did Miller release a “woke” ad not even a month after Anhueser-Busch's disasterous stunt with Dylan Mulvaney? Why will you still see Bud Light on store shelves? Why do you still see Gilette, Hershey's, and so many other brands that “went woke” still present, if they supposedly “went broke?” It’s all about influence. The whole way down. It's all about getting you to think a certain way. It's about implanting thoughts in your head. Even if you don't cooperate, even if, like me, you see a Minion on the sticker of a bunch of bananas and feel immediate and intense revulsion instead of some inexplicable compunction to see the new Minions movie, that's what they want - they want you to think about it.

Negative attention is always better than no attention.

And, believe me, I am under no delusions that, in some small way, I'm not playing into their sick game of psycho-terrorism just by talking about it.

The opposite of love and affection, in spite of what so many stories will tell you (for a reason, I might add), is not hate or disgust - it's apathy.

Look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's failing not because the average person who would have doled out fifteen bucks to see a CGI superhero smack around a CGI baddie suddenly decided that they hate these movies, it’s because they don’t fucking care. Maybe because the movies suck. Maybe because they’re tired of the message. Maybe they just got bored. But it all leads to the same point - apathy.

When the time comes, it will be apathy, not hatred, that slays the Hydra that has our culture locked in this sickening, stagnant, stinking mire of filth. It will wither away, shrieking, shouting, and screeching for attention, ignored, overlooked, and most importantly of all, unloved.

But we are not yet to the point where we can strike that final blow. We are currently wrestling with the many heads of this vicious beast - Warner Brothers, Disney, and so many more - lopping off head after head, with more spawning in their wake. Yet, entropy is a callous thing. It favors no side in this struggle. It picks no favorites. It is, if anything in this universe is, truly impartial. It shows no mercy. Eventually, it, too, will turn it's cold, unfeeling gaze unto the Hydra, and even such a monstrous creature, a vehement force of nature, will struggle to sprout new heads against the harsh grip of entropic decay. Given the staggering and stumbling of the Marvel movies and the new Indiana Jones film, which appears to be shaping up to be a catastrophe, I think the process is well under way. But we still have a long way to go before the last gnashing head is sliced from the spasming neck and sinks into the murk of the lake from whence it slunk out of. As I said - so many of our elders on both the right and left left ignored the Hydra when it first slithered out from the foam and grime. The right dismissed it out of hand as a passing fad. The left saw it as a tool to be quietly deployed against their adversaries for their own gain, only for the beast they believed they tamed to turn its fangs upon them. Both parties, however, said nothing of the Hydra for decades, at their own ultimate peril. Thus, now, we cannot afford not to discuss it. We must now speak if it to reveal its presence to those who are ignorant to its existence, even as it chokes the very life from their society and country, for it is a tricky beast that is adept at subterfuge and camouflage, if nothing else. It has a way of hiding its identity, even as it sinks its fangs into your side.

Unfortunately, the hot babe is not included as part of this package - just the hideous, serpentine monster.

It is a difficult game the enemies of the Hydra play. It thrives off our attention, yet we cannot afford to leave it unnamed. It needs our eyes to watch it work, yet, it shirks away when keen eyes spot its malicious work that belies the kabuki theater of the “culture war” it play-acts on stage through various heads. It is a creature of paradoxes and contradictions, which is not a thing easily described or quantified, and even less so, slain.

There is a word for such a thing, though I won't name it here or now. If you are of like mind, you most likely know what word I am thinking of, and you must also know that it is but one of several that currently suck the very marrow from what remains of our civilization. If there's any comfort to be had, it is that this vile parasite and it's brothers will wither and die once we, as a whole, are gone - parasites, usually, are cunning, but not intelligent. But, I would prefer it if we took the proper steps to detox our cultural system and flush this grotesque leech from our societal bowels before we succumb to its predation. All of these wretched parasites were fashioned, perhaps unwittingly, by our own hands, and, as my father would always tell me when I chose to act out of pocket -

How do we do this, exactly? How do we delouse ourselves if this archonic spirit we've allowed to fester within our civilizational bowels?

I'll level with you, chief - I ain't got a fuckin’ clue.

Reading this article, you may think I'm in favor of some sort of strict censorship of art. Socrates, if Plato is to be believed from his writings in the Republic, certainly was - especially music.⁸ And, frankly, I don't think that's a bad idea. Fundamentally flawed, yes, but go onto Spotify and listen to the trash that routinely befouls the top of the charts and tell me we would not benefit as a society if what was and wasn't allowed to broadcast to the general public was not more tightly controlled. Of course, under the current regime, any good, civil, and decent would be promptly outlawed, and only the most spiritually ruinous poison would be allowed to see the light of day; trust me, I understand that, but I'm speaking strictly in hypotheticals here, where we have some government that is, y'know, actually by the people, for the people, and wants them to be happy, healthy, and prosperous, instead of the exact opposite of those things.

There is something to be said for freedom of expression, yet I'd argue in one of my spiciest hot takes that there are just some people who simply should not be allowed to express themselves to anyone, under any circumstances, in any fashion, ever.

You look at some of the quote-unquote rappers polluting the airwaves today and you tell me I’m wrong.

In saying this, am I akin to Socrates, or am I more aligned with Tipper Gore? Both advocates careful and strict management of the arts. The line between world-class philosopher and moralist busybody is a thin one, apparently.

It pains me, as someone with naturally libertarian inclinations, to say that maybe, possibly, there is some argument to be made that Tipper Gore may have been right. Maybe not in her direct accusations against a bunch of coked-out hair metal burnouts, but in theory. If my inner libertarian is cringing as I type this out, my inner artisté is sitting in a corner, sobbing and retching, as I say that perhaps there are themes, elements, ideas, and so forth that should simply not be touched, and instead locked away in a veritable Pandora's Box.

Speaking of things that should be locked away in a box…

Now, to be clear - I don't think this would succeed in doing much of anything but emboldening agents of evil that seek to exploit man's curiosity and naiveté and make those forbidden topics all the more enticing to the easily beguiled. Personally, I think if God had just not mentioned the apples from the tree of wisdom, Adam and Eve would have been too busy eating everything else to even care much about apples, and the serpent would have had a much more difficult time getting them to eat it. I don't even think censorship is really a solution so much as a temporary and severe stop-gap measure that will, in the long term, only exacerbate the issue.

But, it is a solution.

It's something to think about.

And, ultimately, that's what I'm here to do. Think. Explore. Discuss. Present ideas. Ruminate. Postulate. Crack wise and make fun. If not for your sake, than for mine, to help me sort my own thoughts and help me keep some shred of sanity as an army of Baby Yodas and Baby Groots chip away at it as they leer at me from every bag of potato chips and oven-bake pizza I pass in the grocery store. Maybe, in the process, we may inadvertently find the silver bullet that will put down the Hydra, once and for all. But I make no such guarantee.

You see, by the dim and dismal lakeside of the Lernean hinterlands, where the moss-choked bogs give way to the preternaturally still and glass-like mist-shrouded water, and terrible monsters borne of fevered, anxious dreams swim in the shadows cast by weathered ruins of a finer civilization rotting in thick and viscous mud, the royal we lie in the coarse sand and overgrown reeds, trapped in a fitful and restless sleep. Here, we stand apart from ourselves, watching our body twitch and writhe as nightmares beyond description torment us within our own minds, our slumbering body kept sedated by the haunting melody of siren songs that flow from the throat of siren-like parasites that are every bit as beautiful as they are monstrous and malicious, whom snicker and giggle and trade evil smiles with one another as they take turns siphoning the lifeblood from our veins.

How do we rouse ourselves from this existential nightmare? How do we slay these vampiric nightmares that engorge themselves on our misery? Why, why, oh God, why are Funko Pops successful?

These are questions that puzzle me as much as you. Perhaps one day, we will find the answers, and they will be as plain as the sun in the sky or the ground beneath your feet, and it will be some great wonder how it was we never noticed them. But, until then -

1. And it will. I'm speaking it into existence. We're manifesting this.

2. To which the proper response should have been, “Um, well, this date is over.”

3. And even if something even somewhat original is allowed by the powers that be to make a grab at the spotlight, it either must toe the party line politically (see; James Cameron’s Avatar) or come from a pre-existing IP outside (see; Marvel, pre-MCU, or more recently, Illumination’s Super Mario film and what will doubtlessly be a Nintendo Cinematic Universe)

4. Whatever the definition du jour of that word means, since it seems to change daily.

5. Rumor has it Robert Downey Jr. has sympathies towards the right, though I’ve yet to see concrete evidence. Interesting theories abound, though.

6. Also, Boomers will say, Oh, it’s just a song, and then tear up when they hear November Rain.

7. Or maybe it is - I’ve never seen an episode of it.

8. The nature of music and it’s disproportionate influence is a fascinating topic that has always intrigued me, and really deserves and article unto itself.