By Colby Malsbury

The culture is fetid. That’s no secret to anyone.

Why else would the mighty conglomerate known as Netflix show its first-ever signs of legacy fatigue because, as it turns out, people don’t look upon it as their moral duty to pay ever-increasing subscription rates to view Barack Obama narrating a history of the Stonewall Riots, or to view Idris Elba portraying Thomas Jefferson, or to view the umpteenth iteration of a poor Jewish soul wandering lost and abused through Nazi-occupied Europe spreading the heathen gospel of Semitic humanism? This offal is why Christians cut their cable to begin with. No thanks. Time to move on.

To where, though?

Why, to the wonderful world of alt-culture streaming, of course! Where, away from the pressure cooker of FCC standards and societal Woketopianism, courageous content creators of derring-do can bring forth their wares for us to sample, and we can create a nice little niche for ourselves! If only our satellite providers had allowed us more leeway in picking and choosing our channels, perhaps we’d still be with them today.

So what delectable goodies should we start out with?

Hey – what’s this showing up on top of the Google Search – LOOR? They’re Christian? They’re conservative? They produce their own movies, yet??? Finger, hit that subscribe button and let’s get this party started!!!

And here we go….

Uh…

Oh no.

Oh NO.

OHHHH NO NO NO NO FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND TRUE PLEASE NOOOOOOOOO…….

*****

Yes, friends, neighbors, and my faithful Indian companion Tonto, we mark the return of one of Kinism’s most chemically-laden opponents: the impish – or rather, gnomeish – Marcus Pittman. Ever since his career as a nutritional prophet was rudely interrupted on account of his presuming to praise God for genetically modified organisms, he has found himself a far more lucrative gig – establishing himself as the apostle of Christian-oriented multimedia entertainments. He now fancies himself the Church’s Darryl F. Zanuck – holding a steadicam in one hand and a doughnut in the other. ‘Let’s take back the culture!!!’ is his rallying cry. Which might be a good sight easier than taking back that doughnut from his mitt, all right.

Thus, after preliminary years of rather tiresomely reiterated hype about how literally and totally epochal his upcoming venture was going to be – and after a two-year detour into the realm of the pandemic where I must say, in all fairness, he was firmly anti-mandate in all of its manifestations – earlier this year he launched the first ‘product’ off of his brand new streaming service LOOR.TV.

What exactly does ‘LOOR’ mean? Search me! If it’s an acronym, I can find no information about it anywhere. In all likelihood, because Pittman is one of those types who eagerly awaits the all-encompassing panacea of the Metaverse to become reality, the definition of LOOR offered by the Urban Dictionary is most apt: ‘Used as a substitute for the word lore when it is leaked or sent out in a more official sense by a development team of an unreleased game.’ But a quick Google search turns up a couple of far more intriguing possibilities. Turns out that LOOR also means ‘foot rot’. Alternately, it is also the name of an Amazonian warrior character in a fantasy novel described thus: ‘She is a Batu and is a Ghee warrior of that tribe. Since the Batu live above-ground on a scorching planet, their skin is very dark.’ Given Pittman’s general unsavoriness and Afrocentric worldview, either of these could very well have influenced the platform’s name also.

But to cut a long story short: LOOR has finally begun releasing their own homegrown content. And what better subject for a flagship project than a reboot of the classic David and Goliath narrative? The Little Shepherd Who Could as a metaphor for The Little Sony Entertainment Wannabe That Could? What could possibly go wrong?

To quote Ronald Reagan: ‘Well…..’

LOOR’s market positioning is that it is the antidote to the toxic woke catechism of all things dead that Hollywood unceasingly hammers into our benumbed souls, as this recent post of theirs makes clear:

Stunning and brave, innit? Alack aday, it loses a bit of its credence when we witness precisely what the David series has to offer us:

Watch the trailer here.

So there you have it. In forty-four vainglorious seconds, we are presented with a Negro iteration of David beheading a decidedly Caucasian iteration of Goliath. And remember, kids: if you want to get away from black Vikings, black Tudor England, and a black American frontier, LOOR wants your attention! ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ is not a Scriptural aphorism. Perhaps someone should inform Marcus Pittman of that fact.

Our brothers in Christ over at the Pactum Institute recently issued a press statement on this development and what transpired after a tremendous furor was directed LOOR’s way, and I can’t improve on their reporting:

LoorTV claims to be alternative—a kind of “Netflix for Christians”—but in reality they seem to be just playing the same woke game. If Amazon can make black Hobbits, LoorTV can one-up them and make black Hebrews. What makes this even worse, though, is the fact that not only the testimony of history, but the infallible witness of Divine Scripture itself actually describes David as “ruddy and of a fair countenance” (I Samuel 17:42).

LoorTV countered criticism on social media by arguing that the actor chosen to play David was simply the best actor for the role. But if they were being honest, they know they would never cast a woman as David even if she happened to be the best actress for the role. Nor would they cast an 80-year-old man or a 4-year old boy to play David as he was fighting Goliath, even if they were the best actors auditioning for the role. By knowingly going against the witness of Scripture and history by casting David as an African, the production is not only historically inaccurate, but purposefully rebelling against and undermining the authority of Divine Revelation which has given us an infallible witness as to the physical complexion and ethnic identity of king David.

Or to put it another way: suppose all Israel decided to honor their newfound champion David by staging a theatrical re-enactment in his honor. A few soft-hearted (and soft-headed) scenario writers, eager to grasp the opportunity to evangelize to a beaten foe and anxious that the Philistines not feel excluded from the proceedings, opt to cast a Philistine in David’s role. Hey, they’re still in the valley of Elah, so there are plenty of newly-cowed potential thespians there anyway! Point being, though: would David feel honored? Hardly. He would have spat on the ground in disgust and stormed away, muttering opprobrium against this people of his in very similar fashion to Moses in the wilderness. And if he would have been grievously insulted, how much more so would the God Who Himself proclaimed the shepherd boy His servant over and over and over again? Well, that God – our God – is immutable. He is every bit as insulted by this modern depiction now as He would have been by the presumption of woke Israel then. Hollow claims of ‘artistic license’ on LOOR’s part cut no dice, since by their own admission they are a full-blown ministry. The musician David did not engage in Dadaist confusion while composing his psalms, and neither should Christian filmmakers when attempting a historically accurate depiction of Biblical times.

And let me reiterate: this is one of their initial public offerings. There’s no reason to not think that LOOR was designed to be a woke institution right from day one. More proof? Look at another one of their projects currently in the funding stage: a supremely dull- and cliched-looking anti-Ku Klux Klan documentary:

Watch the trailer here.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think ‘hot take’ when I think of the Klan. It has been a haven for FBI informants and methed-out playacting riff-raff since at least the end of the 1960s, and I was under the mistaken impression that that was fairly common knowledge by now. Wouldn’t it have been far more profitable – in both the monetary and spiritual sense – to crowd-fund a documentary on, say, Antifa’s war on Christianity? Oh, but there’s a possibility that the likes of Spike Lee and Lecrae might come across LOOR’s website during a surfing binge some late night, and we wouldn’t want to ruffle their feathers now, would we? It’s Pittman’s project, and if he wants to run it that way he’s welcome to it. But he ought not to be pretending this is anything more grandiose than yet another third-tier Judeo-Churchian copy of an existing platform – with all of its mortal flaws left fully intact. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

Of course, given the entire corporate culture surrounding LOOR, it would almost be an insult if they embraced traditional Christianity at all. For it goes without saying that this enterprise reeks of the ironic hipster snark that cosmopolitan Millennials adopt en masse to disguise their permanent want of real-world savvy.

Take the whole ‘fund-as-you-go’ schtick. The GoFundMe/Patreon model can still be a viable one, but its luster has been tarnished mightily by an endless procession of Brandons crowd-begging for charity so that they can continually upgrade their gaming systems for years on end, and spendthrift pederasts enabling them to do so. Anyone using it for legitimate purposes had better be the picture of respectability if they wish to be taken seriously. And LOOR fails miserably in that department.

Watch their fundraising video here.

It would appear from this vid that LOOR is also some kind of half-baked limited-time-offer cryptocurrency, only good for stroking Pittman’s ego? I don’t know, and I really don’t care to find out. Let’s just say Dogecoin looks like the pound sterling in comparison. What I do know is that I don’t appreciate hard sells, and for all the cutesy animatronics on offer here, that’s precisely what I’m getting exposed to. Shylockism in action.

And, it goes without saying, the imbeciles who would be attracted to this blatant schlepping of snake oil are the exact same types who seem to care about little other than that the Regulative Principle of Worship is applied to the stupid sludge they allow to play in front of their glazed eyes and count that as ‘entertainment’. Some choice screenshots from LOOR’s Facebook group:

Q: What is the difference between these people and those secularists who spent the quarantine years plopped in front of their tee vee watching Tiger King?

A: The secularists don’t fancy themselves parliamentarians-in-waiting in a future reclaimed Presbyterian theonomic government.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t make mention of the certified seal of honor LOOR’s way issued by the Grand Poobah himself:

And I thought Trump was a bad one for selling sizzle without the accompanying steak! Psst, Marky Mark – far, far more low-budget films turn out to be glorified home movies than otherwise. And given what your platform has been proud to advertise thus far, it’s a given you aren’t going to be producing another Passion of the Christ – but you will be bringing forth a slew of movies in the vein of Stunt Rock and A Thief in the Night before your ‘devoted’ base gets disgusted with you and moves on to some egregious rip-off of the MCU concept produced by The Hallmark Channel or something. That’s just the law of averages. As for the punk rock motif: since when are you a Dead Kennedys fan? Hasn’t gangsta rap always been more your affected style? And isn’t it every bit as anti-establishment as punk rock is? How come you aren’t pimping for your preferred genre, like you’ve been known to do this past decade and more? Couldn’t be because you took flak from your own followers over the David trailer, and you’re trying not to appear anymore of an anti-white embarrassment than you are already in order to keep those LOORbucks rolling in, could it? No, of course not. That would just be cynical, and far be it from me.

One thing we can take assurance in, though: the streaming services are about to go through a massive paring of their ranks as financial reality hits home for them all, just as happened with the opportunistic dot-coms of the early 2000s. There’s no reason at all to think that LOOR won’t be one of the casualties, given their branding strategy. Go woke, go broke. And in honor of the visual medium that LOOR is trying to further tarnish, let my final word on the subject be a meme: