Creative types have been left-leaning for a long time now, even before the current "wokeness" trend, so it's hard to find media that goes too far right.
The closest thing I can think of would probably be a lot of Christian movies. They often become so preachy and heavy-handed it impacts my enjoyment of them.
Good point. I kind of give Christian movies a pass since I like them as a Christian and they seem to be made for a Christian audience. Although I guess a well written story would have to be made if you want to reach a larger audience
I would expect a "Christian movie" to be preachy and about the message more than entertainment. A good movie with a Christian theme is The Passion of the Christ. The Ten Commandments is a classic for a reason.
What makes left-wing media so unpalatable is the fact that the characters are completely unrelatable and don't act like human beings. Instead of prioritizing your politics, just create a story where people act and interact in ways that ordinary human beings do. If you do that, you have already created a right-leaning story, or at least one that leans in the direction of freedom and common sense, and it's one that people will actually enjoy reading.
As far as good examples, Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert were both far from left wing and both wrote very good, immersive fiction that strongly featured their philosophies.
Pat Conroy is another one, if you're into classic fiction instead of scifi/fantasy. The Great Santini is the quintessential Great American Novel.
A bad example is a TV show that Billy Ray Cyrus did back in the 2000s called "Doc." The writing and acting were awful, and the audience was often just beaten over the head with the boomercon "message."
Just go back to the Classics. Homer, the Norse Edda, Beowulf, the Bible even.
Think in terms of parables and not sermons. The best writing (imo) is the kind that leaves just enough room for the reader to grapple with your words and form their own opinion while you guide them to your conclusion
If you need readings for traditionalist ideas, messages, & paths:
I. Brief Introduction
A Handbook of Traditional Living
II. First Steps
Julius Evola - Men Among the Ruins,
Rene Guenon - The Reign of Quantity and The Sign of the Times,
Hans Herman Hoppe - Democracy: The God That Failed,
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - The Menace of the Herd,
Anthony Ludovici - A Defence of Aristocracy,
Plinio Correa de Oliveira - Revolution and Counter-Revolution,
Thomas Carlyle - Heroes and Hero Worship,
III. Beyond the Pale
Oswald Spengler - The Decline of the West,
Francis Parker Yockey - Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics,
Julius Evola - Revolt Against the Modern World,
Rene Guenon - The Crisis of the Modern World,
Carl Schmitt - Political Theology,
Ricardo Duchesne - The Uniqueness of Western Civilization,
Eric Voegelin - From Enlightenment to Revolution,
Eric Voegelin - Modernity Without Restraint,
José Ortega y Gasset - The Revolt of the Masses,
IV. Further Explorations
Julius Evola - Ride the Tiger,
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - Liberty or Equality,
Satoshi Kanazawa - The Intelligence Paradox,
H.L. Mencken - Notes on Democracy,
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck - Germany’s Third Empire,
David Stove - On Enlightenment,
Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism,
Paul Johnson - Intellectuals,
Theodore Dalrymple - Our Culture, What’s Left of It,
Theodore Dalrymple - Life at the Bottom,
Thomas Sowell - Affirmative Action Around the World,
Wyndham Lewis - Time and Western Man,
Kevin Macdonald - The Culture of Critique,
V. High Culture
Roger Scruton - Beauty,
Roger Scruton - The Aesthetics of Architecture,
Roger Scruton - Understanding Music,
Matthew Arnold - Culture and Anarchy,
Harold Bloom - The Western Canon,
VI. Embracing Masculinity
Robert Moore - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover,
David Deida - The Way of the Superior Man,
Walter Newell - The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country,
Frederic Delavier - Strength Training Anatomy,
Mark Rippetoe - Starting Strength,
Tony Robbins - Awaken The Giant Within,
Marcus Aurelius - The Meditations,
Sun Tzu - The Art of War,
Robert Greene - The 48 Laws of Power,
Yamamoto Tsunetomo - Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai,
VII. Traditional Christianity
G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy,
Venerable Fulton Sheen - The Moral Universe,
Hilaire Belloc - Survivals and New Arrivals,
Michael Walsh - Roman Catholicism: The Basics,
Archbishop James Gibbons - The Faith of Our Fathers,
Henri Daniel Rops - This is the Mass,
Fr. Frederick William Faber - The Precious Blood or the Price of Our Salvation,
Fr. Frederick William Faber - The Creator and The Creature,
Robert Hugh Benson - Christ in the Church,
Cardinal Manning - The Holy Ghost, The Sanctifier,
Colin Lindsay - The Evidence for the Papacy,
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre - An Open Letter to Confused Catholics,
Fr. James F. Wathen - The Great Sacrilege,
Fr. Luigi Villa - Vatican II About Face!,
Fr. Joseph Deharbe - A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion,
——–
Alexander Schmemann - For the Life of the World,
Kallistos Ware - The Orthodox Way,
Lorenzo Scupoli - Unseen Warfare,
John Marler - Youth of the Apocalypse and The Last True Rebellion,
Seraphim Rose - Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future,
VIII. History Revisited.
Admiral Raphael Semmes - Memoirs of Service Afloat,
Anne Jean Marie René Savary - Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo,
Claude François de Méneval - Memoirs to Serve for the History of Napoleon I,
K. P Pobyedonostseff - Reflections of a Russian Statesman,
Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France,
Regine Pernoud - Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths,
Lothrop Stoddard - The French Revolution on San Domingo,
Sidney George Fisher - True History of the American Revolution,
Lawrence H. Keeley - War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage,
Alexis de Tocqueville - The Old Regime and the Revolution,
Peter Oliver - Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion.
What are "right wing ideas"? Through the lens of modern politics most of the people here aren't "right wing", but liberals/libertarians ... from 20 years ago.
Depends on what you deem right wing. I've seen some truly awful religious leaning films like Knowing that made me go 'wtf is this shitty ending!' afterwards.
Ironically Dev did a video yesterday breaking down a few games the left TRY to claim support their beliefs (TLDW, they miss the mark 90% of the time), you're better off focusing on characters holding the opinions than focusing on the story and world supporting it as that's typically when things go to shit and the characters are bland mouthpieces.
Right-wing doesn't mean anything but whatever is in opposition to left-wing propaganda (or "reactionary" as they call it) which has completely enveloped the world thanks to liberalism. Take any fictional story and ask - technology and language differences aside - could this have been written in the West 200 years ago? If so then it's considered right-wing by someone today. If it shows normal family behavior then it's right-wing. If it has masculine men or feminine women then it's right-wing. I once found a movie blog written in the late 90s/early 2000s by some weirdo who had a hate boner for Michael Crichton. I don't think most people ever thought about his politics, but to her everything he created was right-wing or misogynistic. She particularly hated Rising Sun and Disclosure.
I suppose bad stories would be those that glorify some kind of fake idealistic "traditionalism" that never existed and are clearly an author tract. If it's written well enough you might not notice.
Reality has a right-wing bias. If you ground your works in realism, or even in properly grounded fantasy with a strong realism aspect, it will inevitably be viewed as right-wing over time.
If you want an example where it goes wrong, Wizard's First Rule does it right... But over the course of the series (The Sword Of Truth) gets more and more preachy, until it gets to a point in, like, book 6 (Faith of the Fallen) where the noble capitalist worker talks to commies for 5 seconds and they go "all my brainwashing is undone, I never thought I could live free, wow!" and riot in a burst of freedom because he makes a statue declaring that communism is bad. He also fucks a true believer commie lady into free-market capitalism with the power of his dick, who's all like "all the other men I slept with as per communist protocols to sleep with various men were all bad, but your capitalist dicking awakened my vision to reality, capitalism is the true way of god!"
...I'm only slightly editorializing, the story beats are all those. It gets bad. Still readable, the author is a good writer, but the content is... almost a parody, but it plays itself too straight too long for you to laugh.
if you're going to write stories, write stories that you as the author think are going to be good. if you try to put limits or conditions on your writing, it will be subpar. maybe this would be good as a writing exercise, but it will not be your best work.
This is the reason why so many woke productions are so bad. it's not necessarily the leftist politics, though that does certainly factor in. it's the fact that they are so concerned about what kind of thing they are writing about instead of what they are writing about. Characters get nerfed, landscapes make no sense, settings feel contrived, all so they can fit their story into this little box that they deem acceptable.
If you set out to write a right-wing story, it may be a cathartic read to those who are tired of woke politics, but it will ultimately be just as trashy.
Just set out to write a good story, however it manifests.
Gurren Lagann: this is a pretty indulgent anime, but it heavily revolves around themes of inner strength and personal freedom, as well as fighting spirit in the face of adversity.
Starship Troopers: while the source material was intended to be a leftist cautionary satire, the movie adaptation does an excellent job at portraying healthy nationalism in my opinion.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (specifically the episodes revolving around Quark): I know, I know,
automated gay space communism
however I think the writers did an excellent job conveying the merits of capitalism and greed through the character quark. often times he is the butt of the joke, but there are several episodes where his philosophy and the ferengi rules of acquisition end up saving the day.
Starship Troopers: while the source material was intended to be a leftist cautionary satire, the movie adaptation does an excellent job at portraying healthy nationalism in my opinion.
Are you sure you don't have this backwards? The movie seemed like yet another attempt by a Hollywood leftist to satirize extreme nationalists, but everyone in the audience was like "yeah that's awesome!" The book plays it straight and goes into great detail about how a society like that can effectively work.
He's got it right. It portrays it as awesome and badass, even though that wasn't the intention at all.
Also giving it the credit of just "extreme nationalists" is far too kind to Verhoeven. He literally meant it to be "America is fucking actual literal Nazis" the entire time.
Read stories written before 1960. Almost everything after is tainted by liberalism. You could make the argument that the cutoff should a lot earlier but start there.
I came to the realization that fiction itself is a liberal/romantic concept. Where the author creates a false reality which is a form of wish fulfillment or exploration of some abstract imaginary concept. The purpose of which is to distract the audience from their real lives.
The converse is doing a kind of work that makes our physical reality better, whether through paid labor, entrepreneurship, or charity.
I'd just not worry about politics. Make a good story that draws the reader in. There will be things that come into the writing just by nature of the writer's worldview, that's inevitable. What isn't is using a character as a soapbox to expound on your political manifesto.
Creative types have been left-leaning for a long time now, even before the current "wokeness" trend, so it's hard to find media that goes too far right.
The closest thing I can think of would probably be a lot of Christian movies. They often become so preachy and heavy-handed it impacts my enjoyment of them.
Good point. I kind of give Christian movies a pass since I like them as a Christian and they seem to be made for a Christian audience. Although I guess a well written story would have to be made if you want to reach a larger audience
They are some good ones out there. Father Stu is a recent one that is really well done.
I would expect a "Christian movie" to be preachy and about the message more than entertainment. A good movie with a Christian theme is The Passion of the Christ. The Ten Commandments is a classic for a reason.
What makes left-wing media so unpalatable is the fact that the characters are completely unrelatable and don't act like human beings. Instead of prioritizing your politics, just create a story where people act and interact in ways that ordinary human beings do. If you do that, you have already created a right-leaning story, or at least one that leans in the direction of freedom and common sense, and it's one that people will actually enjoy reading.
As far as good examples, Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert were both far from left wing and both wrote very good, immersive fiction that strongly featured their philosophies.
Pat Conroy is another one, if you're into classic fiction instead of scifi/fantasy. The Great Santini is the quintessential Great American Novel.
A bad example is a TV show that Billy Ray Cyrus did back in the 2000s called "Doc." The writing and acting were awful, and the audience was often just beaten over the head with the boomercon "message."
Just go back to the Classics. Homer, the Norse Edda, Beowulf, the Bible even.
Think in terms of parables and not sermons. The best writing (imo) is the kind that leaves just enough room for the reader to grapple with your words and form their own opinion while you guide them to your conclusion
Just skip the Voluspa.
If you need readings for traditionalist ideas, messages, & paths:
I. Brief Introduction
A Handbook of Traditional Living
II. First Steps
Julius Evola - Men Among the Ruins, Rene Guenon - The Reign of Quantity and The Sign of the Times, Hans Herman Hoppe - Democracy: The God That Failed, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - The Menace of the Herd, Anthony Ludovici - A Defence of Aristocracy, Plinio Correa de Oliveira - Revolution and Counter-Revolution, Thomas Carlyle - Heroes and Hero Worship,
III. Beyond the Pale
Oswald Spengler - The Decline of the West, Francis Parker Yockey - Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, Julius Evola - Revolt Against the Modern World, Rene Guenon - The Crisis of the Modern World, Carl Schmitt - Political Theology, Ricardo Duchesne - The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, Eric Voegelin - From Enlightenment to Revolution, Eric Voegelin - Modernity Without Restraint, José Ortega y Gasset - The Revolt of the Masses,
IV. Further Explorations
Julius Evola - Ride the Tiger, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - Liberty or Equality, Satoshi Kanazawa - The Intelligence Paradox, H.L. Mencken - Notes on Democracy, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck - Germany’s Third Empire, David Stove - On Enlightenment, Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism, Paul Johnson - Intellectuals, Theodore Dalrymple - Our Culture, What’s Left of It, Theodore Dalrymple - Life at the Bottom, Thomas Sowell - Affirmative Action Around the World, Wyndham Lewis - Time and Western Man, Kevin Macdonald - The Culture of Critique,
V. High Culture
Roger Scruton - Beauty, Roger Scruton - The Aesthetics of Architecture, Roger Scruton - Understanding Music, Matthew Arnold - Culture and Anarchy, Harold Bloom - The Western Canon,
VI. Embracing Masculinity
Robert Moore - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, David Deida - The Way of the Superior Man, Walter Newell - The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country, Frederic Delavier - Strength Training Anatomy, Mark Rippetoe - Starting Strength, Tony Robbins - Awaken The Giant Within, Marcus Aurelius - The Meditations, Sun Tzu - The Art of War, Robert Greene - The 48 Laws of Power, Yamamoto Tsunetomo - Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai,
VII. Traditional Christianity
G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy, Venerable Fulton Sheen - The Moral Universe, Hilaire Belloc - Survivals and New Arrivals, Michael Walsh - Roman Catholicism: The Basics, Archbishop James Gibbons - The Faith of Our Fathers, Henri Daniel Rops - This is the Mass, Fr. Frederick William Faber - The Precious Blood or the Price of Our Salvation, Fr. Frederick William Faber - The Creator and The Creature, Robert Hugh Benson - Christ in the Church, Cardinal Manning - The Holy Ghost, The Sanctifier, Colin Lindsay - The Evidence for the Papacy, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre - An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, Fr. James F. Wathen - The Great Sacrilege, Fr. Luigi Villa - Vatican II About Face!, Fr. Joseph Deharbe - A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion, ——– Alexander Schmemann - For the Life of the World, Kallistos Ware - The Orthodox Way, Lorenzo Scupoli - Unseen Warfare, John Marler - Youth of the Apocalypse and The Last True Rebellion, Seraphim Rose - Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future,
VIII. History Revisited.
Admiral Raphael Semmes - Memoirs of Service Afloat, Anne Jean Marie René Savary - Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo, Claude François de Méneval - Memoirs to Serve for the History of Napoleon I, K. P Pobyedonostseff - Reflections of a Russian Statesman, Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France, Regine Pernoud - Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths, Lothrop Stoddard - The French Revolution on San Domingo, Sidney George Fisher - True History of the American Revolution, Lawrence H. Keeley - War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, Alexis de Tocqueville - The Old Regime and the Revolution, Peter Oliver - Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion.
ThatsAlright is that you?
Unfathomably based reading list.
That's the conpro reading list bruh
What are "right wing ideas"? Through the lens of modern politics most of the people here aren't "right wing", but liberals/libertarians ... from 20 years ago.
Depends on what you deem right wing. I've seen some truly awful religious leaning films like Knowing that made me go 'wtf is this shitty ending!' afterwards.
Ironically Dev did a video yesterday breaking down a few games the left TRY to claim support their beliefs (TLDW, they miss the mark 90% of the time), you're better off focusing on characters holding the opinions than focusing on the story and world supporting it as that's typically when things go to shit and the characters are bland mouthpieces.
Avoiding political messaging is right wing these days.
Right-wing doesn't mean anything but whatever is in opposition to left-wing propaganda (or "reactionary" as they call it) which has completely enveloped the world thanks to liberalism. Take any fictional story and ask - technology and language differences aside - could this have been written in the West 200 years ago? If so then it's considered right-wing by someone today. If it shows normal family behavior then it's right-wing. If it has masculine men or feminine women then it's right-wing. I once found a movie blog written in the late 90s/early 2000s by some weirdo who had a hate boner for Michael Crichton. I don't think most people ever thought about his politics, but to her everything he created was right-wing or misogynistic. She particularly hated Rising Sun and Disclosure.
I suppose bad stories would be those that glorify some kind of fake idealistic "traditionalism" that never existed and are clearly an author tract. If it's written well enough you might not notice.
Reality has a right-wing bias. If you ground your works in realism, or even in properly grounded fantasy with a strong realism aspect, it will inevitably be viewed as right-wing over time.
If you want an example where it goes wrong, Wizard's First Rule does it right... But over the course of the series (The Sword Of Truth) gets more and more preachy, until it gets to a point in, like, book 6 (Faith of the Fallen) where the noble capitalist worker talks to commies for 5 seconds and they go "all my brainwashing is undone, I never thought I could live free, wow!" and riot in a burst of freedom because he makes a statue declaring that communism is bad. He also fucks a true believer commie lady into free-market capitalism with the power of his dick, who's all like "all the other men I slept with as per communist protocols to sleep with various men were all bad, but your capitalist dicking awakened my vision to reality, capitalism is the true way of god!"
...I'm only slightly editorializing, the story beats are all those. It gets bad. Still readable, the author is a good writer, but the content is... almost a parody, but it plays itself too straight too long for you to laugh.
if you're going to write stories, write stories that you as the author think are going to be good. if you try to put limits or conditions on your writing, it will be subpar. maybe this would be good as a writing exercise, but it will not be your best work.
This is the reason why so many woke productions are so bad. it's not necessarily the leftist politics, though that does certainly factor in. it's the fact that they are so concerned about what kind of thing they are writing about instead of what they are writing about. Characters get nerfed, landscapes make no sense, settings feel contrived, all so they can fit their story into this little box that they deem acceptable.
If you set out to write a right-wing story, it may be a cathartic read to those who are tired of woke politics, but it will ultimately be just as trashy.
Just set out to write a good story, however it manifests.
now to actually contribute to your question:
Gurren Lagann: this is a pretty indulgent anime, but it heavily revolves around themes of inner strength and personal freedom, as well as fighting spirit in the face of adversity.
Starship Troopers: while the source material was intended to be a leftist cautionary satire, the movie adaptation does an excellent job at portraying healthy nationalism in my opinion.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (specifically the episodes revolving around Quark): I know, I know,
however I think the writers did an excellent job conveying the merits of capitalism and greed through the character quark. often times he is the butt of the joke, but there are several episodes where his philosophy and the ferengi rules of acquisition end up saving the day.
Are you sure you don't have this backwards? The movie seemed like yet another attempt by a Hollywood leftist to satirize extreme nationalists, but everyone in the audience was like "yeah that's awesome!" The book plays it straight and goes into great detail about how a society like that can effectively work.
He's got it right. It portrays it as awesome and badass, even though that wasn't the intention at all.
Also giving it the credit of just "extreme nationalists" is far too kind to Verhoeven. He literally meant it to be "America is fucking actual literal Nazis" the entire time.
Read stories written before 1960. Almost everything after is tainted by liberalism. You could make the argument that the cutoff should a lot earlier but start there.
I came to the realization that fiction itself is a liberal/romantic concept. Where the author creates a false reality which is a form of wish fulfillment or exploration of some abstract imaginary concept. The purpose of which is to distract the audience from their real lives.
The converse is doing a kind of work that makes our physical reality better, whether through paid labor, entrepreneurship, or charity.
I'd just not worry about politics. Make a good story that draws the reader in. There will be things that come into the writing just by nature of the writer's worldview, that's inevitable. What isn't is using a character as a soapbox to expound on your political manifesto.
The Passion of the Christ. Just let Jesus die for everyone man. Why so divisive?
Amen, brother. The vibe I get is handshake wants us to do their work for them in compiling a list of works that make us look bad.