Movie Review: "The Terror."

I got segued into a series on Prime called, "The terror."

I like to do 90% psychological turns from time to time, by which I mean, sometimes I get an itch to just drop everything I'm doing and head out in a different direction. That's how I ended up working on oil rigs. It's getting harder though.

And that's how I ended watching this horror flick,

The Terror.

It's very good despite its lack racial and gender balance, though there is some hanky-panky going on which, given the circumstances, (or not,) seems entirely plausible, at least in my, now deviant way of thinking..

It's about British explorers looking for a North-West passage to reduce the cost of global trade. Makes sense.

So far, other than the all-white, male crew, two other human characters participate in the main drama on the ice who are not British. They are Eskimos.

Oh, and there is also some mysterious bear-like creature that is central to the plot. So far, I know very little about him(?) other than he(?) rips people's heads off and slices them in two with very sharp teeth and claws.

Okay, so it's a horror flick. I don't much go for horror flicks. These days, that which passes for comedy is marginally better than that which tries to pass itself off as horror. Or maybe I'm just watching the wrong horror flicks and that's why I think most are sub-80 puke.

The Eskimo girl builds a wonderful igloo. I was thinking, "The British explorers should learn to do that too. It could come in real handy, given the environment." And the "environment."

Next, it occurred to me that one reason some cultures accomplish more than others is simply because they have so much more raw material to work with. The Eskimos are very good at what they have to work with, which is ice, and not much else. And they can live on next to nothing. (with the caveat: what do I really know about Eskimo knowledge? Exactly nothing. Other than they know how to build igloos.)

The Europeans are, on the other hand, accustomed to so much more than just ice. Notwithstanding the fact a knowledge of ice could really come in handy for them in this show.

I think Thomas Sowell was thinking along similar lines while pondering the cultural stasis that seems to have engulfed most of Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans. I remember him mentioning, for example, the paucity of rivers, and the comparatively smooth African coastline as being early impediments to the distribution of goods, services, and information.

In fact, who am I kidding? I wouldn't even be thinking along these lines if I hadn't read some of Dr. Sowell's books in the first place. Nothing parallel about it.

I was loving the political purity of this series, "The Terror," until I got down to about the last minute or so of episode 4, where the good doctor, Goodsir, apologetically explains to the Eskimo lady that the reason the British had invaded this almost entirely vacant patch of transitioning ice was to facilitate trade.

(and whether it was their conscious plan or not, to facilitate the distribution of goods, services, and information which would end up making the people of the world, what? Better off? Or worse off?)

Yuck! "Trade?" Where's my Antifa sign?

And you could tell that he believed that the misfortunes that had thus enveloped his crew were attributable more to the unknowable, to them, offense they had committed against the polar bear monster, or some conspiracy between the polar bear(s) and the indigenous people. (some kind of cultural genocide. Metaphorical smallpox. (the politically incorrect form of Black Death.)

And there it was. That one sour note, like the one piano key in Enoch Light's second "Roaring Twenties" album.

"Trade," he confesses. You can see the self loathing. The ethno-masochism. The shame.

Such a dirty word.

"Trade."

Along with "goods, services, and information at a constantly reducing price." You can see the utter, self-abnigating shame the doctor feels for the regime he is, nevertheless, serving. And was born into.

These white interlopers came up here, into this vast expanse of cold, and ice, and zeroness, not seeking to conquer, but simply to find a pathway through to a different destination.

And STILL the congenitally evil capitalist white man has to apologize to the fictional Greta Thunberg character.

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Century Manor