In my sordid past, I was a Hollywood-based screenwriter. This was from the mid-90s to the mid-00s when people bought or rented movies rather than stream videos on their cellphones. Although I wrote good “A” scripts that didn’t sell, I made a decent living on direct-to-video sci-fi and horror features with erotic content that stopped well short of obscenity. All featured extremely beautiful, alluring actresses in easy-to-follow plots that they drove. Because up to 15 years ago, young men still watched movies to get a dose of innocent sexual fantasy, as they had done since the beginning of time. And they would grow up to buy their wives and girlfriends apparel from stores like Victoria’s Secret, which last week discarded its woke policy of reimagining sexiness to reembrace the classical — read normal — kind after a precipitous sales drop.
The lingerie company went totally woke a few years back, insulting men’s concept of beauty.
Hollywood and corporate America once understood the appeal of true beauty and logically made a profit from it. The straight-to-video film market sustained an entire sub-industry where inexpensive productions could earn three or four times their production cost. At its 2004 peak, Blockbuster had over 9,000 stores across the nation, employing over 84,000 people. None of their movies was rated more than “R”. They couldn’t provide multiple car chases, fantastic worlds, or spectacular battles, but they could offer a perpetual lure — beauty. Much of their weekend traffic consisted of boys looking for pretty women either in peril or enticing male saps to their doom. And the biggest video-movie star of the 90s was Amazonian blonde bombshell Shannon Tweed. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Conservatives Turning the Tide … With Liberal Help)
Legendary producer Roger Corman certainly understood her universal and commercial appeal. While personally liberal, even feminist, Corman had an inflexible rule for all his filmmakers — whatever the story, include a scene containing tasteful female nudity. This rule applied to the famous directors he launched, like Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13), Peter Bogdanovich (Targets), Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha), Ron Howard (Grand Theft Auto), and Joe Dante (Piranha). So, I was thrilled when Corman’s producing partner gave me my big break by hiring me to write a picture for them starring Shannon Tweed.
My initial brainstorm was to avoid the standard, boring Body Heat rip-offs Shannon had been making. As a comic book fan, I knew the medium gave boys our first taste of sexual enticement with female characters such as Lois Lane, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy. Compelled by the Corman people to highlight Shannon’s sensuality, I made her into the young superhero’s stepmother, whose illicit desire for him transforms her into a powerful supervillainess herself (which was as feminist as I get) in an appropriately provocative costume.
The final movie, Electra, stunk (like all screenwriters, I blame the hack director) but it earned a small fortune for Corman and company. Young men and comic-book geeks like I used to be made the picture a big hit. Electra became a Cinemax staple and the favorite title on the premium channel’s New Year’s Eve Shannon Tweed marathon. And Maxim magazine placed it at number 33 of The 50 Best ‘B’ Movies list. Yet today, 17 years later, you can’t find the film on any cable channel. Did someone discover a racist or homophobic slur like the n-word in The French Connection? Of course not.
What makes Electra verboten is precisely its very appeal to men — the concept of a gorgeous vixen’s sexual rather than physical power over them. Ironically, Shannon as supervillainess Electra does beat up her super stepson, but she looks hot doing it in a black-leather thong outfit, which breaks the woke restriction. Men would pay to watch a (better made) sequel to the movie today, and their money is still good. But they won’t get the chance because Hollywoke and even corporations totally dependent on them — Gillette, Harry’s Razors, Budweiser, and others — think men suck. And their enjoyment of the beautiful female face and form is patriarchal sexism. (READ MORE: Feminist Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)
The corporate hit list now includes the formerly Electra-celebrating Maxim magazine. Last week the Australian edition put a “transgender woman” — in saner words, a man — on its 100 Hottest Women list. That former Australian Football League player and coach Danielle Laidley makes Whoopi Goldberg look like Marilyn Monroe by comparison was irrelevant. The virtue signal is the point. And the feminists making it really believe they can reorient men’s timeless appreciation of female beauty and their own sexuality.
They would pit an ugly — or even attractive — man posing as a woman against the 30-thousand-year-old Venus of Willendorf. But then they would have no knowledge of the Venus of Willendorf because their misandrous higher education erased her. Men haven’t changed a bit in 30 millennia. They’ve only become vilified in this one. But as John Keats poeticized and Victoria’s Secret learned the hard way, “Beauty is truth and truth beauty.”
The lingerie company went totally woke a few years back, insulting men’s concept of beauty. It discarded the sexy Angels models and made ugly male-bashing soccer star Megan Rapinoe and a “transgender” man spokesmodels. As a result, Victoria’s Secret revenue fell 5 percent from last year and much lower than 2020, before the new campaign began. CEO Cathaleen Chen admitted that promoting inclusivity earned “favorable reviews [no surprise there] … but never translated into sales [definitely no surprise there].” So it’s back to male-appealing sexiness for them.
As for me, I’m waiting on Roger Corman to call me with an offer for Electra 2. I’m strictly “A” scripts now, and great American novels, but then Shannon Tweed is still looking pretty good. And we men are still suckers for a pretty woman and — Hollywoke fare to the contrary — always will be.