It was just about a year and a half ago when I was making fun of Sebastian Gorka for using the catchphrase 'release the kraken', trying to sound tough by uttering a line from a children's fantasy adventure movie, and, in typical right-wing fashion, totally muffing up the pop-culture reference. I mean, the kraken pretty much lasted less than five minutes:
Well, now there's a new kraken in town, ready to be released... QAnon favorite lawyer Sidney Powell (best known for messing up General Flynn's plea deal) is trying to overturn the recent presidential election by claiming that the Dominion voting machines flipped the election to Biden, and threatened to release the kraken:
My favorite take on this is that she really meant 'release the Karen'. I suspect that, like the kraken in Clash of the Titans, this stupid conspiracy theory promulgated by a grifting shyster, will last all of five minutes, and the next conspiracy theory will be extruded through the right wing social media-to-professional media pipeline, Human Centipede style.
Once again, we have a culturally non-savvy person (if they hate Hollywood so much, why do they always quote movies?) thinking that saying 'release the kraken' makes her sound tough, and once again, the kraken will accomplish nothing and the war will be lost.
The movie not having anything to do with the actual kraken, which is usually depicted as a giant cephalopod, reported as living in the far north Atlantic.
ReplyDeleteWasn't there a J. G. Ballard (that master of disaster) novel called The Kraken Wakes? I don't know what it's about - great title, though. You don't "unleash" a Kraken, because it cannot be leashed. As you say, just dumb tough-guy posturing.
I just looked the SF novel up - the author is John Wyndham, another British master of disaster. Not about the legendary Kraken, but it sounds pretty chilling even so.
ReplyDeleteI read that Wyndham a few years ago. It has memorable moments, but Wyndham wrote the horror equivalent of the cozy mystery, so "chilling" is maybe not exactly right. One thing I sort of vaguely recall is how the apocalypse doesn't cause mass hysteria -- business goes on as usual in the face of it, just steadily eroding. Actually looking around at 2020, I suppose that IS chilling...
ReplyDeleteWyndham is great, I really loved 'The Midwich Cuckoos', though 'Day of the Triffids' is kinda hokey.
ReplyDeleteTheir movie references never work. Remember pre-arrest Brad Parscale promising that the Death Star "is firing on all cylinders"? So apparently it had an internal combustion engine. And of course "FRAUD AT POLLS!" is a joke headline from "Citizen Kane."
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