HOT SPRINGS DOCUMENTARY FF REVIEW: Daniel Lombroso’s WHITE NOISE reminds us who the true deplorables are
It’s ironic that white noise machines are often purchased as a soothing way to drown out ambient sounds and help people sleep. The white noise in the documentary of the same name has been what has kept many of us up at nights for at least the last four years now. Everyone remembers Hillary Clinton’s speech about “Deplorables” who support Donald Trump, a phrase disingenuously treated by all Republicans as a shocking slur. Fewer may remember that it came shortly on the heels of another speech she made about the alt-right, the white nationalist movement that supported her opponent’s worst instincts, and for whom “deplorable” may be too mild a descriptor.
Daniel Lombroso’s White Noise follows three of the folks who are arguably leaders of the cyber-savvy, frequently racist movement comprised primarily of Caucasian dudes with complaints. There’s Richard Spencer, who overtly co-opts Hitlerian imagery and language while denying he in any way resembles a Nazi. There’s Mike Cernovich, whose initial claim to fame was as a misogynist pick-up artist and now hides behind the cloak of “satire” that he never allows his targets like director James Gunn to get away with. (Yes, he’s the one that got Gunn briefly fired from Marvel for decade-old pedophilia jokes.) And finally Lauren Southern, a Canadian Ann Coulter wannabe who couches her grievances in the language of cultural purity, mostly in order to bash Muslims and brown people. It’s a testament to the narcissism of all three that they truly must have thought letting someone follow them around with a camera would make them look good.
Unlike Milo Yiannopolous, an initial face of the Trump-loving alt-right who was often able to charm opponents into thinking he was just a merry free-speech prankster, these three are clear about who they are. Cernovich may decry some of Spencer’s more overt tributes to 1940s Germany, and Southern has somehow managed to keep her apparently nonwhite husband completely out of the public eye, but they all want to unite angry single dudes, then claim no responsibility when events like the anti-Semitic tiki torch Charlottesville protests happen. And they adore Trump for, as they see it, giving them none-too-coded approval. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, who recently got the high sign at the presidential debate, shows up a few times to cheer everyone on.
There’s a lot of potentially triggering talk in this film, which lets the bad people say what they want to say. So how’s it different from, say, Fox News or AM radio? Mostly in that these people say the quiet parts out loud. Trump may claim to be not politically correct, and say terrible things to rile people up, but even he’s not quite at the low, low level of these fans of his who want full racial separatism at best, civil war at worst. Except in the bedroom – Southern ends up marrying an unseen someone whom she admits isn’t white, and Cernovich’s wife is Iranian. Spencer doesn’t seem like a guy who gets much action besides face punches, and the movie neither confirms nor denies that.
Because even the most right-wing Republicans in American public discourse can’t defend white nationalism – though “American exceptionalism” is often a code phrase for it – the only viable tactic is to pretend it’s not influential, and statistically irrelevant. It’s imperative that, as ugly as it might be to look upon them, movies like White Noise due the duty of exposing the reality, and the genuine, hate-fueled influencers out there. Bless director Daniel Lombroso for having the patience and calm to actually do it.
