No institution was left farther behind by the warp-speed cultural turnaround than Hollywood. One moment Apple Studios is “cutting edge” with a new series starring a falling but not quite fallen former A-list It Girl as a girlboss in a mixed marriage infiltrating militant white supremacist groups online. The next moment Apple is desperately pulling the show — officially “postponing” it — amid a wave of leftwing violence that culminated in the assassination of the most influential and beloved conservative in the world.
Because white Christians aren’t the threat. They’re the target.
That The Savant yanking came within three days of its premiere date and getting booed off the screen demonstrates how long it took for reality and common sense to burst the mainstream entertainment bubble. Even the murder of Charlie Kirk two weeks prior couldn’t do it. What finally did was the universal outpour — to Hollywoke incomprehensible — of grief and grit at his memorial tribute two days earlier — the image of a predominantly Caucasian multitude not rioting nor assaulting but mourning yet celebrating their martyr in speech and prayer.
The contrast with the laughably insidious white male plotters in The Savant trailer couldn’t be more stark. You can hear it in their Filmmaking 101-level creepy tone and dialogue — “It’s going to be a coordinated mass attack (thanks for the warning).” “Blood will be shed.” “We’re locked and loaded.” “The hunt has begun.” While star Jessica Chastain stares at her laptop screen wearing cliché glasses that she doesn’t need to look acceptably unglamorous, promising the latest excitement in the sedentary internet hero subgenre — see Ice Cube in War of the Worlds. The evolution and devolution of The Savant will mark one more gravestone in the Hollywood cemetery.
It began in 2019 with a laughably overdramatic article in Cosmopolitan magazine, Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens? The author, Andrea Stanley, was clearly writing the screenplay in her head with a Twilight Zone-style intro absent Rod Serling’s talent:
Michael Finton was living in Decatur, Illinois … working as a part-time cook at a cheap take-out joint. He was 29 and unmarried, with red hair and white skin, described as polite by his coworkers, as the mild-mannered guy next door by his neighbors. He liked to hang out and play cards and watch soccer. He also wanted to kill as many people as he could. But no one knew that yet — except for her. An elite investigator who tracks angry men online, she’s known to some in her field as the Savant …
To a Hollywood producer in 2023, bad writing was no obstacle compared to the irresistible feminist hook: An elite (female) investigator who tracks angry men online. The industry had gone full anti-white male, pro-girlboss, as seen in the utter humiliation of legendary masculine hero Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) by his nagging superior goddaughter (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Rachel Ziegler’s insufferable dismissal of a love story and Prince Charming in her promotion of Disney’s Snow White (both projects greenlit by one-woman franchise wrecking crew Kathleen Kennedy).
The political stars were aligned. “Sharp as a tack” Joe Biden was President, social media under total censorious leftist control, and Black Lives Matter and DEI were seemingly unassailable. And the only potential nemesis to these forces was under unprecedented lawfare attack, with prison and bankruptcy highly probable outcomes for Donald Trump. In these conditions, producer Kelly Carmichael leapt at the chance to develop The Savant into the latest white male-bashing feminist fantasy. All she needed was the right star.
Enter Jessica Chastain, the central casting girlboss model of modern screen feminism. Pretty but not beautiful so as not to reward the Male Gaze, she played basically the same sexless female authority figure in three movies of the 2010s: Zero Dark Thirty, Interstellar, and The Martian. When Chastain elevated none of the films, Hollywood knew just what to do with her. Make her a romantic lead? That’s funny. Of course not. Turn her into an action starlet. So, audiences in the 2020s had two chances to see the 5’4’’, 125-pound, 40-something actress beating up burly men in Ava and The 355. They had the chances but turned them down. Both movies were stupendous bombs.
Which made Chastain very available to headline the new television series playing the laptop white-male huntress. You would think, if you’re producing a show about evil white men planning deadly strikes, you might depict a member of that dangerous species as maybe the heroine’s wimpy husband, indicating we’re not all prone to what General Mark Milley described as White Rage. But that’s why you’re reading this piece instead of my script. Hollywood won’t throw you a white bone. The Savant’s wimpy husband is portrayed by black actor Nnamdi Asomugha, definitely not on his way to being a household name a la Sidney Poitier or Denzel Washington.
But it’s a bad time for The Savant. So bad that even Hollywood realizes it, enough to pull the plug on the show. Donald Trump is now the President of the United States. And last week, FBI Director Kash Patel fired every FBI agent pictured kneeling in solidarity with Black Lives Matter in 2020, most of them women like the Savant. Which means both the real and fictional versions of her will probably be out of a job. As is Jessica Chastain.
Because white Christians aren’t the threat. They’re the target. As I write this piece, a monster has just shot up and ignited a Mormon church in Michigan, killing two and wounding eight. I’ll pray for his victims.
READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:
The Loneliness of the Conservative Screenwriter
It’s Charlie Kirk’s America Now
Trump Embodies the Great Truths of an Old Book
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