Used to really like Sam Elliott, now?? Not so much
No one tell Sam Elliott about “Brokeback Mountain” because he already has his cowboy chaps in a twist about Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” over its “allusions of homosexuality,” among other concerns.
The veteran actor, who is currently starring in Paramount+’s “Yellowstone” prequel “1883,” raged against Netflix’s Western, which is a frontrunner to win the Best Picture trophy at the Oscars later this month, during an appearance on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast on Monday.
You want to talk about that piece of shit?” Elliott told the host before launching into a tirade about why the film centered around Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), a hardened and sexually repressed ranch owner in 1920s Montana, is a major misstep for the genre.
“There was a fucking full-page ad out in the LA Times and there was a review, not a review, but a clip, and it talked about the ‘evisceration of the American myth,’” he said. “And I thought, ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sam-elliott-the-power-of-the-dog_n_621e5c4ee4b0a7784bafe79c
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I'm wondering whether and how you would factor in race / ethnicity and religion to the paradigm you describe?
On another level, WHITE CHRISTIAN PATRIARCHY is responsible not only for what is going on in Ukraine (Putin cloaks his aggression in religious terms), and what went on in Iraq and Afghanistan (since the dominant culture in America doesn't "look like them," i.e., skin tone, we were able to distance ourselves more from the violence we committed against them.)
Maybe this is a different conversation.
Thank you!!
...It is the "original sin" to use religious terms.
It is Eve, the feminine, who incurs God's wrath by seeking knowledge.
God, the ultimate patriarch, then punishes the feminine by throwing them out of the garden (paradise.)
Almost immediately Cain kills Abel.
What do we learn here. Satan is in the form of a snake that tempts Eve. The snake represents the the divine feminine (Mother Earth) because it slithers on the ground. So the Mother God challenges the Father God and is immediately punished. As soon as this happens one brother must kill the other to establish power and dominance.
It's all right there in the foundational myth. Everything you need to know about how "God" views power and wisdom.
Man>Woman
Myth>Knowledge
Big Man>Little Man
Humans respond to stories/symbolism more easily than data and science. Symbolism works on a deeply unconscious level which makes it very powerful. So even though we have a massive amount of evidence that most of the ways we view the universe in our myths/religions are provably wrong (science) we still choose to behave as if they are right. Even to the point of destroying countless lives and our very ecosphere in the process.
We are dying for fairy tales.
We literally see this every day and in every way in the modern world. Even though we have the capability of tremendous progress, we choose almost unspeakable horror.
And it is all to feed a figment of our imagination.
There is nothing kind in Mankind...
though no less bizarre. I'm just going to file Elliott's outburst under "Grumpy Old Man Yells at Clouds".
I liked Power of the Dog because I thought it was nicely put together film with really solid performances from the cast.
The friend I saw it with, until the last act, confessed his thoughts were more akin to "why is she sitting me through this?" 
