Filmsane

So… I watched Bombshell last night. It was a pretty decent movie to be honest. Amazing acting and fantastic hair and makeup too. And yes, although the main theme of the movie was the sexual harassment that reporters and anchors suffered at Fox News (allowed and perpetrated mainly by its creator Roger Ailes) I want to touch a different topic here in this post.

Let me be clear at front that I have never been subjected to any form of sexual harassment at any work environment that I’ve even been part of. Ever. I’m one of the lucky ones I must admit. However, as I watched the movie, I found myself relating more and more to the story-line of Jess Carr (played by the wonderful Kate McKinnon).

Why? Because we have so much in common. Yes, I know that the character of Jess is a fictional one (among the many real life characters in Bombshell), but Jess was a compelling character nonetheless.

You see, I was her (some 10 years ago). I was a very closeted democrat. Now I’m not a lesbian, but I was and still am a liberal. And much like her I worked at a conservative news outlet that promoted very conservative values. Very similar to Fox. I was Jess and let me tell you… It sucked to be in my shoes. You’re indoctrinated by the conservatives for some 8-10 hours a day, and you have to be really careful about expressing your opinions in that environment. Reaaaaly careful.

You have to tread lightly in that kind of environment and I learned that the hard way. Believe me.

But the thing is… I had the best training growing up for exactly that. Treading lightly. You see… I grew up in a very politically divided household. My mother is to this day, a staunch democrat (social democrat) and my father to this day is highly conservative. And things are not much different between me and my husband.

I’m extremely liberal and a democrat in my convictions, while my husband is on the conservative side. How to put the divide in perspective? I read Buzzfeed and he reads Breitbart. I supported Bernie and he supported Trump. I watch Vice and he watches Alex Jones. You get the picture right?

And although very small and seemingly miniscule subject in Bombshell, the mindset of a conservative person is really explained beautifully and eloquently. And that’s all thanks to Miss McKinnon. You get the understanding of what conservatives really believe in and how they operate.

„You have to adopt the mentality of an Irish street cop,”. “The world is a bad place, people are lazy morons, minorities are criminals, sex is sick but interesting. Ask yourself, ‘What would scare my grandmother or piss off my grandfather?’ — and that’s a Fox story.”

I couldn’t think of a better description really. You see, in the core of the word Conservative is CONSERVE. To conserve. To protect a way of life that they think is a dying way of life. They think themselves as the Don Quixote’s of today. Warriors that go against the windmills and conserve the values of their ancestors. Which is all fine and dandy but when the world is changing, you should be changing as well, don’t you think? Nope. The mankind is going straight to hell thanks to the gay agenda, the terrorists and the immigrants are just here to take our jobs, our women, our everything.

And maybe this is coming from a Millennial liberal snowflake like myself, but I’ve always found that way of thinking very fear based and not that healthy. Which is why I never converted to the dark side. And it is in my humble opinion a dark side. I’ve seen the hours and hours of yelling that my dad did in front of the TV whenever my country’s equivalent of Bill O’Riley said something bigoted, mean, uneducated and hurtful about the gay people, or the migrants or the (GASP) atheists. They make it sound like the literal end of the world is coming just because a liberal and (GASP) a woman was elected for a Prime minister of Finland. Watching my father for the past 30 something years made me realize that it must be a real torture to be in the mind of a conservative person. For instance, 90% of my parent’s fights were politically based. And it also made family meals and family gatherings a real pain in the ass. Because they just have to express their bigoted opinions anywhere that they can. Everyone is against you, and you just have to hate just about anyone that’s not like you. And those are a lot of people. A loooot. Minorities in just about any bracket are the first targets. They’re actually easy targets. Sexual, political, ethic, religious based minorities are first on the hate-filled agenda of a conservative, and then the list just goes on and on. The hate is just tremendous, and it’s truly a dark and lonely place in the mind of a conservative. You’re always in paranoid mode!

I had to hide my political convictions for a looong long time, much like Jess, and yes i wasn’t able to find a job anywhere else for a long looooong time after I left the news outlet. You feel marginalized, sidelined and somewhat marked as a conservative journalist just because you worked at a conservative outlet. You’re labeled and there’s a long and hard struggle to get out of that blacklist, even in a small country like mine.

I just wished that this particular topic was a bit more explored in Bombshell. The hate-filled mindset of a conservative person, and the dark place that a conservative mind must be. But what do I know? I’m just a liberal Millennial snowflake.