Media literacy

The art of not being inspired

Eric Gustaf Ehrström lived in the early 19th century Finland, having fought in the 1808-09 war against Russia where Finland was annexed by Russia. He harboured no great resentment against Russia after peace as this was a time of rapid social and political change where the birth of the fennoman movement provided exciting avenues for young scholars such as him to debate and learn what it meant to be finnish now that the identity had been let loose from its previously secure moorings in the Swedish realm. His father had studied at Uppsala in Sweden becoming a man of the enlightenment, his fathers before him had been priests and to continue the tradition of learning young Eric is sent to study in Moscow on behalf of the archbishop of Finland to procure learning materials for learning the Russian language in finnish and swedish.

Here in this new and alien world Eric finds his newfangled beloved identity as a finn puts him more at odds with the strange natives and a feels a longing for his old swedish homeland thats now gone. A feeling of nostalgia, of old differences disappearing washes over him. Like two white men of different creeds who first encounter africans, suddenly realizing how little the differences between them mean.

The year is 1812. Napoleon is invading Russia with his Grand army. Eric is caught in the rush of russian patriotism as the nation is rallied around the cry to defend the motherland from the invading enemy, seeing the play he is so familiar with of war with Russia from the opposite side must have intrigued him. Here he sits through a russian drama portraying Napoleon as Charles XII of Sweden, the moral of the play is straightforward. Foreign armies may threaten mother Russia but they are always undone and the victorious heroes are vindicated in the end for their perseverence. Eric writes of his impressions as he saw the play:
”Never have I so passionately felt swedish blood pumping through my heart as then. The feelings with which I in my childhood beheld Carl XII as my hero and ideal, I relived then with double the intensity. Impatiently I awaited the moment, when the actor playing him would come on stage, and my heart leapt as I finally beheld him - and when he in the final act urged his brave Swedes on to fight, put on his hat, unsheathed his sword and charged and when he finally returned in captivity - I can not tell you what I felt or what I thought, I wept, and hid my face in my handkerchief to not draw the attention of the surrounding russians. Oh Sweden! Sweden!”

Now Eric suffers from what we know as lack of media literacy, any good gay communist redditor will tell you that the play was actually making fun of him and if he wasnt such an illiterate uneducated right-wing Trump supporter he’d realize that he drew all the wrong conclusions from it. You see, meaning comes from whatever the mob of human refuse decides would form the best narrative for demoralization, even when it doesnt fit the frame. It does. Because art is in the eye of the beholder, youre just looking at it wrong. Im looking at it the right way.

One such gay communist redditor is the producer of the movie Starship Troopers Paul Verhoeven, who still in his 80s speaks about the germans brutal occupation of the Netherlands, which was the most bloodless and sanguine of the German occupations, where german soldiers terrorized little gay boys like Verhoeven by waving to him while in uniform saying “Hallo da kleines Kerl, wie gehts?” and presumably giving his mother flowers. This traumatizing event scarred him to his core and he went on to have a seething hatred for everything authoritarian or military for the rest of his life (he admits to as much in the commentary track for the movie), so little Paul had an idea to own the chuds epicly. He was going to take one of their favourite book titles from known fascist hyper nazi author Heinlein and simply portray its ideas in their fullest so that the contradictions and frankly embarassing (lol!) nature inherent in fascist ideas would be made manifest on the big screen.

Everyone applauded as the credit rolled and registered for the draft, voted for George Bush and heiled Hitler on their way home from the cinema. When I saw it as a kid I was blown away and just wished I could one day be a starship trooper that could shoot stuff. We all failed the media literacy test and as an entire generation got one more drop of red blooded patriotism infused into their soul to power them for the rest of their lives as they strapped into their F-16s to fly out over Iraq and incinerate a village of brown people for the glory of democracy with 920kg of munitions, the smug reddit trannies looked on, pushing their glasses up their noses and folded their arms and sighed quite smugly at the dumb chuds who didnt understand how ironic they were being right now.

One day I will be at the screening of a new movie called, “This is just like in the 1930s, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The dangers of not funding schools”. Thats the short version of the title, it goes on for six more pages. I’ve been pre-prepped by a sociology student who held a contextualizaiton event accompanied by a minority sign-language interpreter to make sure I knew the fascists were the bad guys and that this is to showcase the evil and hurt they inflict on marginalized communities. After her 45 minute lecture and scolding is over she walks off stage and the trailers begin, Im already out of popcorn.

Opening scene has a column of Leopard 2a5 tanks rolling down Mannerheim avenue followed by columns of SS-uniformed soldiers goose-stepping under the finnish flag to the triumphant orchestral score from the 1995 movie Judge Dredd playing in the background. Women clad in sundresses cheer and throw flower garlands as old men with canes raise their hats and heil with joy. Soldiers fan out into the streets, boys from Salo, Kokkola and the backwaters of Pirkanmaa that all now inexplicably bark out orders in fluent german. Explosives are wired to known communist SJW snowflake headquarters such as the university of Helsinki, Sanomatalo and Parliament. You see soldiers trampling a pride flag under their boots as the proud swastika banner is raised over Senatstorget. A troop of soldiers run jumping behind a hastly erected wall of sandbags the last carrying a spool of wire on his back connected to the payload. “Sprengladung bereit, herr Oberfeldwebel!” he radios in.

At operational command on the heights overlooking the city at Linnunlaulu by Töölö bay the radio operator has recieved OK’s from all Sonderkommandogruppen and looks up over his shoulder. “Mein General?” And there enters none other than the lion of Finland made flesh, an Aslan of national pride existing as the physical embodyment of the will of the Volk. He steps up to the top of the height and lets out a bellowing roar as the music reaches its crescendo and a giant swastika flag unfurls behind him as three F-18s fly over him streaming out smoke colored white blue and white. The camera pans to Parliament exploding in an orgy of fire like in a Michael Bay movie, the entire population of the city has come out like in V for Vendetta but wearing klansman robes, taking off their caps and raising their arms in a roman salute as young couples kiss and children cheer and the university of helsinki is consumed in an expanding fireball. Cut to all the the leftists with colored hair and septum piercings, one normal looking guy wearing a white t-shirt with the text “I am Gay” (this is known as environmental storytelling) running away, some on all fours like animals, grunting and crying while the ground cracks opening up under their feet as the flames of hell itself pour out and hundreds of them fall in. Cut to black. Roll credits.

All the responsible adults in the room stand up and cheer and clap with a serious expression to show they didnt enjoy a moment of what they just beheld but are very concerned about the dangers of fascism. I could not describe to you what I felt, what I thought. I hid my face in my handkerchief and I wept as to not draw attention of the surrounding redditors, because I had no media literacy. Saying to myself: Oh Finland! Finland!