In the mid-20th c., the major literary concern of young American men became science fiction & fantasy, & that has never really changed. The two are connected by imagination, which has been the major way out of a reality that young men have found increasingly disappointing—that is, without breaking the law. I wrote for Law & Liberty a series of eight essays on four works, three films & a TV series, that bring up interesting possibilities for young men today, & the works of fiction they’re based on, which were once very popular.
First, Tolkien, who has become something close to an authority on art & morality on the American right, especially, but not exclusively among Catholics. I wrote about the most impressive achievement of the Global War on Terror-era trilogy of films & also about Tolkien’s seriousness about civilization, since these seem to me to be very neglected matters.
Next, I reviewed the Green Knight movie that made a strong, if perhaps momentary impression on the artistic & the sensitive types on the right. Then I wrote an introduction to the reading of the anonymous medieval poem on which the movie is based, Sir Gawain & The Green Knight, something on which Tolkien worked with some care & about which he had much to say. I also did a podcast with my friend Justin Lee on the new movie:
So with the fantasy, then there’s the science fiction: In the 1940s, Isaac Asimov created a vision of the technocratic future in the Foundation series of short stories, which eventually became novels, & which he eventually revised in a New Age frame of mind. That series is now the basis of David S. Goyer’s series Foundation, on AppleTV+, the most compelling vision of a Progressive future on TV. (I also reviewed the second season of the show for the Washington Free Beacon.)
Finally, I wrote down some thoughts on Frank Herbert’s Dune, one of the most popular series of novels since the mid-century, & the first to try to reconcile modern science with religion. I also reviewed the two movies by David Lynch & Denis Villeneuve.
In the new Green Knight & Dune movies, one sees the crisis of young men today, who cannot really be considered men. In Foundation, the men have been replaced by women. These are interesting works of art, but none have really appealed to young men.
Have you seen Lowery's 3 page intro he did for that new translation of "The Green Knight"? I came across it in a bookstore last week; worth reading
https://www.amazon.com/Green-Knight-Movie-Tie/dp/0143136232