Conspiracy theorists who unmask media fakery, or the “autohoaxers” as they are derisively known by the mainstream, take the approach of film critics when it comes to analyzing the big news events of the day. We’re critics of the world stage—the “theatre of psywar”. However, we also scrutinize entertainment programming as we do news programming. This is because there isn’t a meaningful distinction between these—from a meta-script perspective.
Additionally, our ability to read the metascript requires a full-spectrum view of the media landscape, specifically popular movies.
The timing of theatrical releases coincides with “real world” events by design and with regularity. We call this “concurrent programming”. Therefore, I find it imperative to watch what the targets of psychological warfare are watching.
In the case of “Asteroid City”, its existence and popularity say more about the audience than the film, which was mind-junk, (the mental counterpart to space junk). Imagine a succession of some family’s vacation as a TikTok playlist. The disjointedness was amplified by the constantly shifting filters and pointless cameos.
Bryan Cranston kept butting in and breaking the fourth wall decreasing the sense that any of it was really happening, the weird cowboy character looked like a deep-faked Norm MacDonald, and Tom Hanks played a typical Tom Hanks character saying cliche Tom Hanks profundities.
It was quirky and forgettable, probably designed to compete in the attention economy. The fact it was annoying and cringe to me didn’t stop the moon-landing believers in the audience from non-stop peals of laughter.
I had to leave before it was over and I’m sure I missed something terrible, perhaps a finale which would tie it all together. Maybe I’ll find out later but I lost trust in the filmmaker’s intentions. Perhaps this was influenced by the experience I had earlier today where I watched a Tiktok of a man swinging a propane tank over a triangular formation of Corona bottles. This continues for about forty-five seconds and then it ends. The video is viral because people don’t want to spare others the pain of wasting forty-five seconds, but rather pass it on and allow others to get sucked into the trap.
Sensible people have acquired a tendency to be on guard for the theft of even one minute as a result of the hyper-competitive attention economy. This may explain why Wes Anderson made Asteroid City into a nonstop succession of cameo-like roles from instantly recognizable once-cool actors, overly-clever stage lighting transitions, and utter cartoonishness interspersed with actual cartoons. It all makes sense with the understanding that this Tiktokified cringefest of a film is a reflection of the mental landscape of the viewing public.
That being said, it does contain the requisite occult-Satanic-mystery-school symbolism and predictive programming:
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