"Could it be that the world of Barbie is sheer hell,
and for a movie ticket as an audience you can
witness sheer hell, as close as it gets?"
Werner Herzog

I have a theory about movies.  It isn't ironclad, and if it was a scene in a movie, my theory wouldn't be a close-up.  It would be a wide, panning shot in which the film trots across the bleak, nihilistic landscape of an ungrateful culture like a camel in Lawrence of Arabia, observed from afar. 

It's intentionally overgeneralized, but my theory is that the comfort and prosperity of a civilization can be judged by whatever levels of horror and nihilism resonate (or presume to resonate) with any given audience.  In short, traumatized people aren't entertained by trauma.  Unless they are serial killers, war refugees and people with severe PTSD don't go to the movies to see brutal depictions of violence.  Unless they are themselves aspiring abusers, victims of abuse aren't entertained by depictions of abuse.  The only people who are entertained by dystopian sci-fi, torture-porn like the Saw and Hostel films, gratuitous depictions of murder such as exist in The Crazies and parts of the otherwise-watchable Zodiac, anything with Freddy Kreuger in it, whatever those Rob Zombie movies were called, and any other number of humorless funhouse horrors posing as entertainment for ANYONE,

Are soft, spoiled children of a world in which peace & harmony are so prevalent that they can be utterly ignored, maligned, and perhaps most unbelievable of all, actually relied upon to provide the audience with a secure, comfortable location to which they can retreat, after indulging in the otherworldly horrors of the nightmare they actually believe to be fictional, but which is in fact lurking under their beds like a python, or an obscenely-long content warning.

Which is longer, the suffocating spirit of everlasting death, or the content warning for "The Crazies," an unwatchable remake of what I assume can only be an overbaked psychic turd of which I happened to catch one scene, a long time ago, in which some psychotic scumbag was dragging a pitchfork across a hospital floor, murdering people who were strapped to their beds in a gruesome, graphic fashion?  Apparently, this is something that is so resonant with some members of our soft, spoiled culture that a film containing such an impassioned plea to the heavens by the filmmakers to be eternally destroyed apparently had to be REMADE.  But the "pitchfork killer scene" was all I needed to see.  If I could wear sunglasses and earplugs, I would watch "The Crazies" again for 10 million dollars, and controlling interest in the company that distributed it.

Nothing less.

So which is longer?  The patience of God toward people who revel in such spiritual abominations, or the content warning of "The Crazies," which is so severe it doesn't even fit on the screen?  As hard as it is to believe, the patience of God is actually longer.  But if you are entertained by "multiple bodies" being "stabbed with a pitchfork," this is your warning.  Like all movies, like all interminable hikes across the desert of unbelieving nihilism, the patience of God eventually comes to an end.  Let me encourage you to stop finding entertainment value in this kind of thing before it does.

Unless, of course, you're training to be a paramedic in Barbie World.

I got about 30 minutes through Asphalt City and had to turn it off.  It was too gratuitously-brutal (realistic?) for my state of mind at the time.  A couple days later, for no other reason than that the file is huge and I want to get it off my computer, I finished it.  It isn't garbage.  The subject matter doesn't lend itself to greatness, but Asphalt City is far from unwatchable.  The bleakness of it seems to want to be gratuitous, but the lead performances keep the nihilism grounded to the floor of the sea where it belongs.  The darkness wants to float to the surface, but it can't.  Or, perhaps, the surface is only as deep as the nihilism is allowed to go.  Whatever the case, it isn't entertaining.  But it isn't pointless either.

"I don't know if I believe in Heaven,
but I believe in Hell."
Asphalt City

But even if it isn't pure nihilism porn, Asphalt City isn't anything anyone who isn't entirely secure in their own circumstance should watch for a single second, either.  If it wasn't for the gratuitous, numerous scenes depicting the vacuous lust affair between Tye Sheridan's character and the empty cardboard chick he's sleeping with, Asphalt City would contain no light at all.  That's a joke, because of course you have to skip those scenes the way you skip moldy chunks of arsenic in your microwave hamburger from the gas station, so, spoiler alert:  You need to watch Asphalt City with your fast-forward button at the ready.  You also have to skip the obligatory postmodern, disconsolate wife-interaction scenes, which have almost all been the same since Heat literally told us how dysfunctional our society was in 1995.  The societal dysfunction is literally in the script.  I can't watch wife-interaction scenes anymore, and since Heat is about 400 hours long, and I've seen it so many times, I can literally get through the entire film in half an hour.  Maybe 45 minutes.  Hit all the key moments, skip the unbelievable romance between DeNiro and the hippie girl, skip all the wife stuff, appreciate the hardcore criminal cool of Jon Voight and the natural character charisma of William Fichtner, hate on "Waingro" for his name as much as his scumbag rat behavior, and you're done.  That shootout scene in the streets, after the bank heist, is like the Bullitt car-chase scene of shootout scenes.

One of the best.

But once you've skipped the dark, unholy anti-light emanating from the gratuitous lust scenes in Asphalt City, the only light that remains is in the heart of the secular Christian-ish Tye Sheridan character, who is named "Cross," and who wears a ridiculous jacket with angel wings spread across the upper shoulders.  It's a ridiculous, unbelievable fashion choice, but since it's intended to stand both out and together with his symbolic Christian name, the wings worn by "Cross" indicate someone who hasn't yet been consumed by the darkest depths of Barbie World, and the hell that lies within.

His coworkers, portrayed with believable gravitas by Sean Penn, and mad, impish fury by the criminally-underutilized Michael Pitt, have both become full-fledged citizens of their infernal environment.  Both have lost their souls, and are now a vital part of the dark underworld in which they exist, even if it's their job to "save" the citizens of Barbie World, and prevent them from sinking below the streets of the ninth circle, which they currently patrol.

In spite of his fake wings, "Cross" comes close to losing his soul himself, and sits on the edge of a rooftop with his middle fingers extended to the Heavens, apparently displeased with the director of the film, an apparent sadist who must have a cushy life indeed, to have imagined such an existential nightmare and felt the need to actually depict it both in reality and on film.  Is there a God in Barbie World?  Who created this dilemma?  Have we overdosed on freedom, and found ourselves strapped to the gurney of societal collapse, attended to by demons?  Shall we throw ourselves over the edge?  Will we retract our middle fingers, if we finally choose forgiveness?

I don't want to judge Asphalt City, and I don't want to judge Cross.  His anger and frustration weren't manufactured in a vacuum.  He was driven to this place by external circumstantial nonsense.  I have flipped the bird to the Heavens myself.  The question isn't, "do you feel like giving God the finger."  The question is,

Will you retract your finger, once you realize that Barbie World was not corrupted by God (as fallen man is inclined to think),

But rather, that

Barbie World was corrupted by us.  All denizens of the ninth circle of Barbie World have participated in its decay, even the first responders.  Cops and paramedics alike are the flies, the carrion garbagemen that feast upon the corpse of our own moribund culture.  No less than the people they attend to.  Unless... You somehow think.... The culture is alive?  Where is the true singing, then?  The painting?  The thinking?  The reason?  The liddachur?  Are libraries not graveyards, visited by no one?  Are dead people and ideas not encased in caskets and writing, for nobody to read?  Does Barbie not have an apartment next to the elevated subway tracks in which to write her epitaph in lipstick, and teach her fatherless children how to back themselves into a corner with mirthless ennui?  Hasn't "Cross" believed himself to be innocent while living in unwatchable, soulless, sexual sin?  Do the angel wings emblazoned on his jacket indicate self-righteousness?  Or are they a sign of something better?

Is there something better?  If there is, can it be found in Barbie World?

Or is the world of Barbie sheer hell, as Werner Herzog has hypothesized?

One hypothesize fits all.

Is Barbie World an illusion?

Does hell truly await the wearer of the secular wings?

Where do "good" people go when they die?

Do they descend unto Barbie World?

The ninth circle of jaded and glamorous torments?

To melt into the world, or become paramedics?

Or do the house lights come on for everybody, indicating that the feature-length torture epic is finally over, and it's safe to go home?  Please bring your empty popcorn caskets with you as you exit, for easy disposal.  Don't forget your personal belongings, or your true heart of moral courage.  Bring your soul to the counter, The Church of The Lost & Found, where your parking can be eternally redeemed.  Thank you for visiting our theater of comfortable torture.  Please drive safely.  And do lose the wing jacket.  It isn't your own wings that will get you into Heaven.  Your wings are made of leather, and fire.  They're embroidered with lead, and will lead you to the lowest hell of Barbie World, beyond imagination.

Thanks for listening.