Eddington- Your Being Manipulated
Ari Aster’s forth major film Eddington takes place in a small town in New Mexico in May of 2020 during the Covid outbreak. It’s a dark comedy with horror and Western elements that attempts to show the perspectives of the various online political factions that clashed with each other during the time. The BLM George Floyd protestors, self hating woke liberals, hypocritical elite liberals, anti vax right wing conspiracy theorists, anti tyranny libertarian gun nuts, clout hungry political E gifters, and self serving tech oligarchs are all featured in this film. We see the perspectives of characters scrolling through Facebook and TikTok feeds, reinforcing their worst delusions and hysteria. Several of the memes will be familiar to anyone who was on the internet during that time- like the boomer AI Greta Thunberg meme or the meme of the Milky Way galaxy with the caption “You live here-paying taxes to pedophiles”.
Aster is politically liberal but he doesn’t moralize about the right in his films. Some claim this film to be “showing both sides”, which is true but also an over simplification. The funniest moments in the film were making fun of BLM, woke college kids, and hypocritical Covid tyrants. His attacks on the right are equally devastating. A lot of the references are things that only online right wing people can fully appreciate.
The main character is Joe Cross, a likable small town Sheiff struggling to keep his community together. His feelings of alienation from the political system are exacerbated by the Covid lockdown causing his desperate run for mayor. He drives around the empty town covered in misspelled populist slogans like “YOUR BEING MANIPULATED” and “This isn’t about Health- it’s about control”. He takes on real issues like the takeover of the tech giant Solidgoldmagikarp (Palantir) but he’s mostly motivated by resentment toward the current liberal mayor who used to date his wife. Joe has a black deputy named Michael who wants to become captain like his father and is obsessed with bitcoin.
Joe’s wife Louise is a disturbed women who spends all her time sewing creepy Lovecraftian dolls as a way of processing past trauma. Louise’s “very online” conspiracy theorist mom lives with them and constantly fear mongers about vaccines, the federal reserve, Obama, etc. We hear conspiracy podcasters rambling about “gematria” and “Tom Hanks” playing in the background. A picture of Louise’s deceased father- an ex cop who mentored Joe- hangs like a shrine in the center of the house.
A seperate story unfolds among a group of high school kids. Brian is a young white man from a very conservative household who has a major crush on Sarah- a pretty, blonde Tik Tok star that’s obsessed with social justice. Brian begins to pose as a woke activist to get Sarah to like him.
The situation dramatically heats up after the news of the death of George Floyd. BLM activists take the streets and hilariously screech incoherent slogans about social justice. “WE ARE ON STOLEN LAND!” Sarah tries to guilt Michael into joining. People start posting the infamous black squares in protest of police racism. As everyone regresses into their internet echo chamber, things take a dark turn in populist conspiracy circles.
Vernon Jefferson Peak, played by Austin Butler, is a manipulative snake oil self help guru that could be described as a combination of Alex Jones. Andrew Tate, and Stew Peters. He runs a propaganda website pumping out endless stories on children being kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Washington elites. Louise and her mother consume his content and begin attending his conferences. He tells Joe and the others a convoluted story of his childhood where he was sold off as a sex slave to elites. Louise completely buys into the story, expressing deep concern and fear over the potential millions of victims who are afraid to come forward, hinting at possible abuse in her own past. She believes she is in a fight with “evil” and “demons” which is too extreme even for her mother.
The film ends in a frenzy of action and violence. Joe literally goes to war with waves of militant ANTIFA soldiers but is finally defeated and paralyzed. Brian goes from a fake leftist activists that wants to get laid to a fake right wing activist that gets a girlfriend. Michael is a lone ranger shooting targets in the desert.
Paralysis
Despite all of his efforts in his populist mayoral run, all his fighting of the culture war online, and shooting every last bullet from his machine gun, Joe Cross was left paralyzed and completely subverted by the political interests of big tech. Throughout the entire movie the real threat of Solidgoldmagikarp looms overhead and gains more ground while the townspeople engage in their meaningless culture war. It’s possible that Aster is making a direct reference to Peter Thiel and Palantir subverting the MAGA movement.
Eddington has several parallels to Aster’s other major films: Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau is Afraid. In Midsommar, the character “Christian” is also left paralyzed and subject to a horrible fate outside of his control. Both Christian and Joe Cross have a girlfriend/ wife dealing with major intergenerational trauma. The families in Aster’s films face overwhelming experiences of grief, abuse, family breakdown, horror over the lack of masculinity in the family, horror over the lack of fertility in the family, etc. There is a hereditary sickness that exists within families and this is the true source of our societal ills and the evil around us.
There are cycles and forces of life and death that we fail to resist. Christian and Joe Cross could represent the modern Christian man’s inability to deal with intergenerational sickness, or likewise the greater societal sickness. For Dani in Midsommar, Christian was apathy, lack of understanding, and dismissal compared to the catharsis of the robust Paganism she was being seduced into. Joe Cross also failed to resolve his wife’s trauma because of his insecurity and lack of masculinity. He chooses to get into fights with his wife’s ex boyfriend rather than confront the uncomfortable truth about Louise’s father, who he also saw as a father figure. It doesn’t seem like Aster is criticizing Christianity, but rather the average Christian man’s ability to confront overwhelming fatalistic forces in both nature and the world of power.
Both Vernon and the cult in Midsommar symbolize the horror of the forces of inevitability. There is a certain uncanny horror in the cycle of life and death that the Harga cult choose to embrace. Dani finds catharsis in losing her sense of self and embracing the cycle. Vernon could represent a more disturbing, Ligottian death cycle like in True Detective (read New Hollywood: A Ligottian Nightmare). The chaotic Lovecraftian images in Louise’s head also exemplify this. The forces of inevitability can only continue the spiral of self destruction and death. The same is happening at the social-political level and the modern Christian man is unequipped to deal with it.
Spiritual Homelessness
Aster addresses a major problem on the right when it comes to conspiracy theories revolving around the pedophile elite (read Pedophile Hunters- Anatomy of Punishment). It’s evident that many people who are attracted to these kinds of narratives suffer from some kind of mental illness. Mentally ill people often feel overwhelmed by predation in their personal lives and they project that onto the world. They can’t help but see all of power as being deeply sinister and predatory. They try to imagine the worst possible evils being perpetuated by the elite and stew on these thoughts. Politics then becomes a spiritual plane of good vs evil.
When it came to Covid, it’s likely that some level of malicious tyranny was at work. Perhaps this fueled the increase of other conspiracies among populists, but the phenomenon always existed and is common outside of right wing political circles. Another important character in Eddington is the wandering homeless man who represents the feeling of political and spiritual homelessness in society at large. The homeless man is mentally ill and seems to constantly be battling with imaginary predators- something commonly seen among the homeless. His lashing out causes even the BLM protestors to be afraid of him. This neurotic behavior is exemplified in right wing internet political circles. The constant fear of predators and political homelessness leads to a vague fear of “tyranny”, a feeling of being left behind by society, and feeling like the world is full of predators who are after you and your children.
Louise’s mother self indulgently rants about politics from a place of resentment, but she doesn’t actually take it seriously. Her fear mongering does cause her daughter to take it seriously and she genuinely becomes mired in a cult of the depression and fear of predation. Like in Beau is Afraid and Hereditary– the hysteria of the mother implants a self destructive fear in the mind of her kid, causing them to continue the cycle of trauma. Louise’s mother completely exhausts and casts a dark shadow on everyone around her- conditioning her daughter to be afraid and on edge.
This kind of thing often happens on the political right. The everyday complaining about the world can be unserious and self indulgent but for many, these stories create genuine fear and anger to the point where it exhausts and sickens the mind and exacerbates the feeling of powerlessness.
Evil is Sentimental
When Joe pushes back against Vernon’s wild stories he says “Your question is to make me feel shame. I didn’t escape on my own- I couldn’t have. Joe, you want things simple and neat. You think that because something’s evil, there can’t be love… when there is love. That’s the slavery. And evil is sentimental. And a predator can fall in love and help his victim escape.” Vernon then accuses Louise’s father of being “sentimental”. This is a very dark and cynical statement by Vernon but also truthful.
This concept is illustrated throughout Beau Is Afraid– sick, scared, needy people that abuse and exploit others will often disguise their “evil” action in love and sentiment. The abusive mother desperately wants the love of her son and is a slave to him but her insecurity and fear unleashes an entire universe of evil for her son.
In Eddington, Joe and his mother-in-law become a source of nightmare and predation for Louise as they make excuses for her father’s past abuse. Early in the film we see one of the sculptures of a man in a cowboy hat with a woman’s head in his mouth and his eyes blinded- foreshadowing Joe becoming a mouthpiece for his mother-in-law. Vernon seems like a savior to Louise for being honest about her past abuse but ironically becomes a predator who helps his victim escape a different predator.
You Are Not a Coincidence
When Louise is first listening to Vernon we hear him say “The image is true- language is evil. Now, your physical body might have been assaulted, as mine was, but we are evolving right now, and this now is not natural. We are being invaded. Human thought is being phased out. It is against god what is happening there is a new god arriving.” Vernon seems to be preparing his followers for some kind of mental/ spiritual transcendence beyond their bodies.
Louise’s ending is profoundly disturbing. She become impregnated by Vernon and her body is covered in creepy markings like she’s part of some kind of demonic sacrifice. When Louise is first listening to Vernon he is saying “How many coincidences need to occur before we call this pattern a design…We are here on this plane somehow.” He preaches “Your pain is not a coincidence! You are not a coincidence! WE are not a coincidence!” which Louise repeats in her video.
If someone’s life is a “coincidence” it is arbitrary and meaningless. It is something that happened “just because”. Aster’s characters are often overwhelmed by fates they can’t control. All of the culture war mayhem simply becomes information for the new Palantir data farm. The borg of technology, business interests, and power marches onward indifferent to any of the hopes and dreams of the townspeople. In reality they are “just a coincidence”. Vernon completely inverts this reality by insisting that we have meaning in the struggle against evil on a different plane of being. He creates a Platonic “true world” reality for his cult followers as an escape for their “coincidental” meaningless reality where they have no power. In his last scene he declares that he will fight for the future of the children- their physical bodies and their “digital bodies”. It’s possible that Vernon was a pawn of Solidgoldmagikarp the whole time- ushering his flock through different levels of “being”. From real reality, to the reality of their internet bubble, to the conspiracy reality, to some kind of spiritual reality, and at last- a new state of being in a digital reality. Your being manipulated.
Free Each Other’s Hearts
In his mayoral campaign, Joe Cross says “we need to free each other’s hearts”. Here he’s communicating his true problem. The first shot of the film is him watching a YouTube video about partners who don’t want to have a baby. He feels overwhelmed by all the things he doesn’t have power over in his life. He scapegoats his problems onto the culture war.
Joe ultimately became paralyzed by shame. His resentment toward the mayor prevented him from seeing the problem in his own home. He failed to stand up to his fear mongering mother-in-law and break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Joe required some kind of Dionysian egoism- he needed to free his heart. His lack of humility caused him to be paralyzed by shame and resist the forces of reality. He required a “down going”- a confrontation with his own values and assumptions, especially regarding his sense of masculinity, rather than posture and moralize. “I am a much better human being than you.”
Whom dost thou call Bad?—Him who always wants to put others to shame.
What dost thou think most humane?—To spare a person shame.
What is the Seal of Liberty Attained?—To be no longer ashamed of oneself.
-The Gay Science
Hereditary Exhaustion
The greatest evil in Aster’s horror movies is the longhouse. Aster illustrates how masculine egoism is eroded, paralyzed, and destroyed by the guilt, fear, and shame of women, leading to broken people, dysfunctional families, and lives full of regret. Perhaps Aster is pointing out the problem of the longhouse for the average Christian man.
And finally, woman! One-half of mankind is weak, chronically sick, changeable, shifty woman requires strength in order to cleave to it; she also requires a religion of the weak which glorifies weakness, love, and modesty as divine: or, better still, she makes the strong weak—she rules when she succeeds in overcoming the strong. Woman has always conspired with decadent types,—the priests, for instance, against the mighty, against the “strong,” against men.
-Will to Power
Louise’s mother-in-law became a demon of torment and exhaustion for her daughter. She makes excuses for her abusive husband and guilts her daughter for talking about it. When Joe wants to kick her out, brainwashed Louise pushes back and Joe folds- keeping the two locked in the house all day together. There are moments where Louise transforms into her mother. Her voice changes and she starts talking in third person. Toward the end of the movie Joe begins to buy into the delusion of the two women, asking he if he one of the “chosen”. He allows his mother-in-law to fill his wife’s head with fear and make her vulnerable to predators who were even worse than the man she married. This results in an absolutely hellish fate of becoming the longhoused husband of an old infertile crazy woman.
Joe Cross required a return to reality, not the fabricated political internet reality. He neglected the material “Pagan” world of power and regressed into a Platonic moral world where he could feel power. He struggles with his lack of will to power- his ability to exercise power in any domain. When he slightly crosses the border into an Indian reservation he is told by the police to put his mask on. When he refuses, the native American cop step out of his car threateningly and Joe was forced to comply. Throughout the film, Joe fails to control the unruly homeless man and can’t even restrain him. When Joe walks into the mayors party and demands he turns down the music, he gets slapped in the face twice. This leads Joe to start committing barbaric acts of violence outside of the political system. He shoots the unarmed bum like a cowboy in a Western and assassinates the mayor and his annoying son.
The Church and morality say: “A race, a people perish through vice and luxury.” My reinstated reason says: when a people are going to the dogs, when they are degenerating physiologically, vice and luxury (that is to say, the need of ever stronger and more frequent stimuli such as all exhausted natures are acquainted with) are bound to result. Such and such a young man grows pale and withered prematurely. His friends say this or that illness is the cause of it I say: the fact that he became ill, the fact that he did not resist illness, was in itself already the outcome of impoverished life, of hereditary exhaustion.
-Twilight of the Idols
Hereditary exhaustion- the lack of masculinity, energy, egoism, and life is the real source of social degeneration in the West. This is the big Nietzschean red pill in all of Aster’s work.
Mood of Irony
When discussing Eddington at the Cannes film festival, Aster said “One thing that that was really on my mind was history- American history- and the way that I think we’re all haunted by that, and the way that we use history to kind of shore up whatever our personal beliefs are… It made me think of what Nietzsche said about an age oversaturated with history and how that leads to this dangerous mood of irony in regard to itself and how this leads to detached spectatorialism rather than real engagement.”
This detached spectatorialism and mood of irony is a consistent problem in the world of online politics. Rather than approaching the world with earnestness and authenticity, people become caricatures that their enemies create for them (read Great Earnestness). They repeat talking points and play a certain role with seemingly no genuine self interest or personal investment in those problems. Political conversations are forced into the public by people with ulterior motives and it becomes a partisan controversy. Tech oligarchs, Zionists, or any number or outside influences can transform their agenda into a populist political issue. War for Israel is about “the West”, replacement migration is about “individualism”, talking about Epstein is a plan by “the Democrats”.
The film ends with a shot of the Solidgoldmagikarp data center sitting ominously in the New Mexico desert. “Courtyard” by Bobbie Gentry leaves the film on a note of haunting western romance. Michael- the bitcoin obsessed black cop that refused to give in to any narrative about intergenerational trauma- remains as the lone ranger hardened by his experiences. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger- the American individual soldiers on.
