Yeah, I don't like him at all. Not one little bit. Yes, that same Victor Orban that is the current leader of Hungary, I have a rather low opinion of this man. I've never met his guts, but if I did I'm sure I'd hate them too.
And yet, there is a faction of people in the USA that laud this guy as a "saviour of the west" of some sort. Last year, Tucker Carlson himself actually traveled to Budapest to have a sit down interview with this guy.
Ok. That was a nice little ego stroking session there.
By the way, my beef with Victor is not simply because he's "right wing". His politics are his politics and he's entitled to them. My big problem with him has to do with how he treats the play/movie Billy Elliot.
He's actually banned this work from the entire country of Hungary because................... get this............ he's afraid it might inspire people to become gay. He seriously thinks that.
When I first heard about Mr. Orban's objection, I had only heard of Billy Elliot. I hadn't actually seen it at all. So, I couldn't fully comment on what Victor was going on about. But, I recently saw it so now I can make a much more informed statement about the whole thing. For those who haven't seen it, I'll give a brief synopsis here:
Billy Elliot starts off the movie doing his boxing lessons. But, quickly realizes that he's not so good at it.
However, he notices that in another part of the gymnasium there's a ballet class going on. Billy can't quite explain, but something draws him toward that class and inspires him to get into dancing.....
...much to the red-faced disappointment of his gruff coal-mining father.
But don't fret because... SPOILER... his father does come around to supporting Billy and his desire to dance. It's quite a well executed transformation on the father's part in my opinion.
But, Billy "dancing like a pouf (as many characters in the show call it)" is not the LBGTQ element that Victor Orban and his ilk are concerned about.
A small side story is Billy's friend who's gotten into cross-dressing. He raids his sister's closet and tries on all the dresses of hers that he likes. Billy's immediate reaction is to be taken aback and say "what are you doing?". But, Billy's supportive nature quickly kicks in and he's very happy with his friend discovering himself.
Billy's so supportive that he even gives his friend a kiss. That's his way of telling his friend that he'd make a very lovely woman someday. Only the very best of friends would do that for each other.
Anyway, that little bit is too much for Victor. Because of just that little element of the story, he wants to ban the entire show from his country. All of the feel good "work around the obstacles and the stigmas dogging you to follow your dreams" story elements are tossed to the wayside just because of one little bit of gay acceptance. That's just as bad as banning every episode of The Flintstones simply because that one character in that one episode was transgender.
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| The civil rights leader "Harvey Mammoth Milk" might have made a short appearance in this episode. |
Rather than go into a lengthy diatribe about all the ways Victor Orban is wrong in this instance, I'll just very quickly list all of the Censor Monkeys he is being:
...and, for straight up banning the whole production outright, he is....
Wow! A whopping four Censor Monkeys. It's time to dial back the tyranny there Victor.
Of course, I certainly do sympathize with Victor's and even Tucker's objection to "wokeness". Yeah! Fuck wokeness. Fuck wokeness back up the devil's asshole where it fell from in the first place. But, Mr. Orban, in the process of that, leave Billy Elliot alone. He's done nothing wrong. He's certainly not a threat to anyone. No government official should ever be in the business of deciding what movies, plays, tv shows, songs that his/her citizens can consume. Let the artists do their art without harassment. Thank you.
I'll end this blog post with what I think it one of the best scenes from the Billy Elliot movie. It's where young Billy openly defies his stern father by daring to dance right in front of him. I find it very powerful. Please enjoy!
1. That kind of thinking is what made the Medieval or Dark Ages so dark. By incorporating the most dominant religion (that being catholicism at the time) with the government many innocent people were slaughtered for not showing allegiance to that religion and intellectual enlightenment was pretty much forbidden. Galileo famously was put to death under this system for the crime of scientific discovery. Thankfully, historical figures like Martin Luther and Leonardo Da Vinci lead a Renaissance and helped free the world of this suppressive way of life.
