Funny Ha Ha

I recently discovered an American independent film movement known as “mumblecore.” Last night I had the misfortune of watching Funny Ha Ha, the very first mumblecore film. I assume the name of the movement has to do with the fact that the pathetic actors featured in the films, despite being college graduates, have a hard time speaking proper English as they constantly mumble, whisper, stutter, and have an overall difficulty being linguistically assertive whilst speaking. The main character in Funny Ha Ha, a girl named Marnie whose cutesy good looks are ruined by her feebleminded personality, certainly personifies the verbal mumble to the very core. The question I had to ask myself after watching Funny Ha Ha is how anyone could find anything at all interesting or engaging about the film. I assume the title of the film is supposed to be ironic in the most hipster fashion. The fact that critics have compared the banal realism of mumblecore films to the gritty realism of the works of John Cassavetes is nothing short of cinematic blasphemy and complete ignorance in regards to authentic emotions. After all, Cassavetes’s film A Woman Under the Influence has more emotion in 2 seconds of Gena Rowlands desperate cries than all of the silly slacker scenester scenes in Funny Ha Ha combined. 

The protagonist Marnie in Funny Ha Ha is a recent college graduate who cannot find work nor a decent man. As a college graduate myself, I can honestly say that I have met some of the stupidest and most impressionable people (both students and professors) whilst obtaining my liberal arts degree. Marnie certainly shares many of the characteristics of the typical hipster dullard girl that one could easily find while roaming a college campus. Probably the only thing of value I learned in college is the way of the enemy and the overall intellectual bankruptcy of modern academia. Although I am the sure New-Left counter-culture revolution of the late 1960s might have been entertaining for students during those times as it was something new, now these Frankfurt school inspired ideas have turned into the dogma and gospel of banality, fundamentally flawed ideas to start with that have never advanced past their initial theories for they are mere critiques and not living ideas. As the great German political philosopher Carl Schmitt once wrote, “The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion.” Schmitt’s statement about liberalism certainly holds true in regards to the liberal nihilists of Funny Ha Ha as they endlessly talk about nothing, giving no evidence that they have real personalities, let alone the will to power. 

Marnie knows that she needs a real job and a boyfriend but is completely unable to assert herself in actively fulfilling her desires. To say she does things half-ass would be too generous of a description in regards to Marnie’s monotonous behavior. Marnie is obsessed with an equally pathetic slacker named Alex. Unlike Marnie, Alex cannot make his mind up whether or not he should start a relationship with a beautiful lady that fancies him like no other. Out of nowhere, Alex ends up marrying a Jewish American princess without telling his friends and family. I found Alex's quick marriage to be the most enlightening aspect of Funny Ha Ha. After all, most liberal ideas (both young and old) are of Jewish origin (especially those promoted in academia) whether it be Spinoza, Marx, Trotsky, Marcuse, or Tim Wise. Although liberals describe themselves as “progressive,” one does not have to look too hard to realize that the rise of liberalism parallels the decline of the occident. Europe became powerful through hard work, tradition, self-control, and with strong uncompromising idealism. Of course, liberalism promotes self-gratification of the individual, cosmopolitanism, weakness, acceptence of most things degenerate, and various other poisons that have sickened the Western world. The Jews, being an alien group to Europeans, do well in a liberal globalized world as they could never collectively live up to the standards of the traditional western world, hence why they were early proponents of liberal ideas in the first place. European Jewry reached it’s peak in power in Weimer Republic Germany, the most degenerate era (up to that point) in German history. That being said, it is not hard to understand why many German nationalists saw Jewry as their greatest enemy. In Funny Ha Ha, the Jewish girl certainly knew what she wanted and married herself a good little goy boy while in her aimless Marnie could not even find the energy to attract Alex with anything more daring than infantile fart jokes. I guess all those feminist classes really destroyed Marnie’s female instinctual seducing powers. 

If I did not know that Funny Ha Ha was supposed to be a serious critically acclaimed art film, I would have assumed it was an exploitative parody of the all-embracing impotence of white liberals. If the average white college graduate is as pathetic as those featured in the film, maybe the white race deserves to cease to exist. One of the flaws of your modern white person (especially college educated) is listening to and honestly believing wholeheartedly in the lies of the liberalism that are being fed to them. While your average “minority” knows that liberalism is a tool (used by those with slave moralities, who cannot take control by merit/action but instead demand rights as a “victims”) of war used against whitey for power and the destruction of everything that is of European origin, liberal whites actually believe the fantasy of world peace and equality. As the great German philosopher/historian Oswald Spengler, a man that predicted many of the modern ills that now contaminate the West, long ago wrote, “Pacifism means letting the non-pacifists have control ... Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage war again, the colored races will act differently and become rulers of the world.” Marnie and her friends cannot rule their own lives, let alone provide stability for future generations to fight for their very existence. After watching Funny Ha Ha, I felt that I was mediocrely mumbled at to the core, hopefully never again will I have to endure such a deplorable cinematic chore. At the end of the film I truly felt sorry for Marnie, an undeniably beautiful girl lost in a sterile sea of purposelessness.

-Ty E