In my previous essay on Beauty & The Beast, I talked about how true beauty—being a combination of aesthetic perfection and virtue—has a kind of “purging” and “salvific” effect on people (especially creatives) who are devoted to becoming the best version of themselves. I also delved into another lesson of Beauty & The Beast, which is that the ultimate expression of human beauty is the family; and thus, just as beauty requires a person to burn away the vices and flaws that sabotage them in order to become a high achiever or make great art, so beauty also requires men and women to burn away their selfishness in order to build great families. But if Beauty & The Beast teaches us about beauty’s saving power—both in terms of individuals sacrificing for their own development and in terms of partners sacrificing themselves for one another—then The Iliad teaches us about beauty’s destructive power.

In reading Beaumont’s adaptation of Villeneuve, a central theme emerges that you won’t find in modern storytelling: Beauty saves the beast because beauty is the transcendent piercing into the ordinary. Beauty is not a construct. Beauty is not conjured by personal judgement. Beauty is not a human invention. It comes from an Elsewhere. Another realm. A world of forms. And it appears like an invisible spirit to those whom it wishes to appear to; those individuals then channelling that beauty into works of art, powerful music, great literature, budding relationships, athletic performances, and so on. As such, when beauty comes into a person’s life, it often entails disruption. A process of creative destruction wherein beauty prods its host to eliminate all about themselves that stand in the way of its objective, and leaves intact only things about the host which assist beauty in its goal. In exchange, beauty revives that which is dead inside us. It turns the brown grass green and the barren meadow full. Hence, the tale of Beauty & The Beast resonates because we are all the beast. We are all the beast in search of that beauty which ultimately will lead us beside the still water and restore our souls.

Song of Solomon is not just a love story. It’s a kidnapping story.

The world does not like defiant Jews. It does not like Jews who talk back. Jews who call attention to false narratives and tell tyrants and bureaucrats to fuck off. The world likes its Jews docile, groveling, or dead. The world likes its Jews docile, groveling, or dead, because docile, groveling, and dead Jews don’t challenge whatever narrative agenda-driven actors concoct about them. Whereas living, vocal, opinionated Jews insist on being the ones to tell their own story. Stories that a world who hates Jews don’t want to hear.

There’s a distinctly American quality of believing—or at least wanting to believe—that the best is yet to come. And as a result, there’s almost an instant dislike for the cynic. In fact, when we call someone a cynic, we don’t even think of its dictionary definition—“the belief that most people lack sincerity and operate out of self-interest”—(much less the philosophers of cynicism like Diogenes or Metrocles). When we call someone a cynic, we’re calling them bitter. A “content cynic” or “happy cynic”, most Americans would tell you, is an oxymoron. Cynics are grouchy. Cynics are not personable. Nobody likes a naysayer (a word, by the way, that originated in the American colonies in 1721). In American culture, if somebody tells you they have dreams, the only socially acceptable response is to validate them. You don’t ask questions and you certainly don’t suggest that somebody’s dream is a bad idea. We are a dream culture. We traffic in dreams. When Martin Luther King marched on Washington, his immortal words were “I have a dream.” And in a dream society, realism—especially if it leans toward the negative—is considered rude. Instead we are optimistic. We believe in anti-aging cream, fad diets, and New Year’s Resolutions. But worse, we still believe politicians and parties can be our saviors.

Yes, yes… I know that even a specific legal definition of pornography has vexed anti-porn campaigners in the past. But surely a nation which invented scotch tape and sent a guy to the moon can come up with a happy medium definition of “visual pornography” that allows us to watch Bridgerton but prevents us from watching Gag Me Harder Stepbrother 2.