Actor Alleged Pedophile, Cult Leader Jared Leto Had Help From Hollywood,The Racist Movement Coming for High School Boys, Proof Pop Culture is Getting Better-Also Dumber. (The Five for 06/13/25)
Plus, indie-rock frontman's solo record is a must-hear. Netflix's best movie mystery series drops a trailer investigating...cults? Matthew McConaughey's new movie is about rescuing kids from a fire.
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter, but don’t always make the front page.
It’s Friday, so let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
A major theme of this week turned out to be “lofty aspirations vs. the reality on the ground.”
Example one comes from the LA Riots, when two of the most obnoxious (and likely, unshowered) white liberals you will ever meet stop a woman from getting to work. (To observe these specimen in real life, head down to your local Whole Foods or REI).
Mom: I have a kid I don't are having their children taken at What about my kids? That's what happens to my kids. But you can, if you could just move off the window.
How is it the people protest if there's, there's nothing to, no. How do y'all as white people feel about stopping a black woman from going to work?
Protestor [mocking tone]: Oh, no, not work. I care so much.
Mom: So you don't care about stopping black people from going to work. Look at this line, and you guys are, I'm not causing no problems. I'm not trying to.
It’s been said that what stops riots is weather (too hot, too cold, rainy) and work. The white folks who need a bar of soap don’t appear to need to go to work (trust fund much?), and don’t appear to understand that most people do.
Elsewhere, President Trump denied the reality on the ground by re-naming American military bases after military leaders who attacked the United States of America.
For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood. Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort AP Hill, and Fort Robert E. Lee.
We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It's no time to change. And I'm superstitious. You know, I like to keep it going, right? I'm very superstitious. We want to keep it going. So that's a big story. We just announced that today to you for the first time. They said, why didn't you wait till Saturday? I said, I can't wait.
Robert E. Lee was the leader of a foreign nation who preemptively attacked the United States in Fort Sumpter, and invaded Missouri (a Union state, most people forget), Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Lee personally attacked Gettysburg, where the goal was to loot Northern farmers for supplies (growing up on a farm, I take this kinda personally). My home of Pike County, IL was regularly raided by Confederate-backed coward bandits from Missouri, who stole horses and cattle from old men and pre-teen boys who tried to fend them off while the fighting age males were away at war.
”But he was a brilliant military strategist.”
Not for this country. For a failed nation.
”But he claimed to be a Christian like you.”
Cool. I bet at least a couple of the Germans my Great Uncle shot at the Battle of the Bulge claimed Christianity too. The reality is, the Axis powers preemptively attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, and Just War theory applies. Hey, maybe Great Uncle Gerald met a couple of the Germans he shot in heaven…maybe they were forced into service and not true believer Nazis. But wherever they went, he sent them.
With that in mind, are there nuances of the Civil War? Sure. Did some Confederates fight to defend their homes and not in defense of slavery? Probably, given the human rights abuses of the Union (including destroying food and medicine meant for Southern civilians).
But whatever case you can make for Lee, the reality is that he was a self-declared enemy of the United States of America.
Most people need to work. The Confederate States of America killed more members of the United States military than any other war. Therefore, Robert E. Lee killed more Americans than Hitler.
In a world of opinions, those facts are undeniable. But in a post-truth environment, everyone saw these two videos (which are pretty objective, as far as reality—rare in a divisive political environment) with through a lens that can’t even comprehend.
To paraphrase Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams—one screen, two movies.
[two]
Oscar winner Jared Leto (also the frontman for the band 30 Seconds to Mars) has been accused of sexual assault against multiple minors.
Leto, has been accused by nine women of inappropriate behaviour – including claims his conduct was “predatory, terrifying and unacceptable”.
Leto has “expressly denied” the accusations reported by Air Mail. They include an assertion by one woman that Leto approached her in 2006 when she was 16 and he was 35. She says Leto, who was seated in an LA cafe with then-19-year-old actor Ashley Olsen, grabbed the woman by the arm. “I looked down, and it was Jared Leto,” she said, adding: “We had a quick conversation, and he got my number.”
She continued that Leto called her home a few days later. “I don’t know if he was on drugs or what … It was the weirdest, grossest voice … [But] for me, it’s Jared, you know?..the conversations turned sexual. He’d ask things like: ‘Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever sucked a d---?’” (Leto “has not had a drink or used drugs in over 35 years,” the actor’s representative told Air Mail.)
These and other accusations make for grisly reading – another woman recalls how, once, when she was 18, Leto “suddenly pulled his p-nis out and started masturbating”.
In unrelated new, Leto has been accused of turning his band’s fan club…into an actual cult.
In 2019, Jared Leto and his band Thirty Second to Mars started a cult. The band invited fans—who call themselves the Echelon—to a retreat in Croatia where Leto, dressed in white robes, hosted hundreds of his devotees for a 3-day music festival complete with yoga and movie screenings. The band tweeted photos of Leto leading hundreds of people—also dressed in white—captioned, “Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.”
It wasn’t the first time Thirty Seconds to Mars embraced the phrase—it's appeared on the band's merch and in their music videos. Playing on journalists telling them that they have a “cult following,” Leto and the band decided to give it a more literal definition. (The Mars Island retreat was said to return to Croatia in 2022, though that appears not to have come to fruition.) But beyond the adoring fans who will pay money to be isolated on an island with Leto and indoctrinated into his cult, the actor and musician has forged relationships with a number of close collaborators. Through his unconventional methods and distinct style, Leto has made clear that his music, films, and fashion are more than a part of his celebrity, they’re artistic statements. His “real” cult aside, L’OFFICIEL takes a look at the people who have helped fashion the cult of Jared Leto.
All of this has resurfaced an interview from 2016, in which Leto admitted to putting disturbing items in his Suicide Squad castmates trailers’ in the name of “method acting,” including used condoms, dead pigs, rats and anal beads.
Leto’s behavior has been enough of an open secret in Hollywood that it’s inspired fellow creators to takes shots at him, including (allegedly) the villain in the video game Far Cry 5, who’s a maniacal cult leader (the resemblance is uncanny) and an episode of Law & Order SVU, which a Leto-like character, an actor, murders one of his underage lovers. DCU boss and Superman director James Gunn has also regularly accused Leto of pedophilia.
Some of the good ones were trying to tell us, or at least speak up as they were able.
The accusations stretch back to 2006. But for the last 20 years, Leto has been a darling in Hollywood, hobnobbing with elites like Vogue CEO Anna Wintour, who makes sure the actor and vocalist is at the Met Gala every year.
It’s tragic, but pretty well known, that celebs are often power hungry perverts who prey on minors. With the Leto story coming to light…the bigger question is…who knew for the last two decades? And who’s been covering for him?
[three]
Pop culture is getting dumber…and also better at the same time.
We’ll start with the former. If you skipped over reading Animal Farm in high school, it’s a scathing critique of the horrors of Communism in the USSR.
But hey, that’s for smart people. Perpetual stoner Seth Rogan (who claims he smokes week from “waking until I go to sleep”) decided to turn it into a kid’s stoner comedy, devoid of any bite against Communism. From the IGN review:
Instead, Serkis paints the terrifying rise of porcine dictator Napoleon (Seth Rogen, playing brilliantly to and against type) in a broader brush for a modern era of big business run amok. In toning down the more graphic elements of its descent into totalitarianism and simplifying the depths of its commentary, the director and performance-capture pioneer trades a dystopian tone for something a little more uplifting.
It’s a fun movie with some creative visual choices and a great cast, but it’s also hard not to feel like it lost some teeth on its journey from the page to the screen.
Gone are the specific allusions to the Russian Revolution and the stinging critique of Stalinism laced into Orwell’s “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” allegory.
It takes some work to absolutely destroy one of the most important novels of the 20th century, but looks like the Rogen-led comedy pulled it off.
In Rogen’s defense, he may not be smart enough or well read enough to understand why Communism is bad. You would think that 100 million dead of starvation, execution and banishment to Siberia would be easy to understand…but here we are.
Animal Farm takes a brilliant story and waters it down with the irony and meta-jokes of postmodernism, which ultimately lead to no meaning at all in the story.
By contrast, my favorite movie of 2025 was also animated (and I watch almost nothing that’s animated).
Animal Farm shouldn’t have been for kids, and Predator: Killer of Killers DEFINITELY isn’t. It’s an anthology that tells the story of the trophy hunting Alien race who comes to earth to collect human skulls…dropping into ancient Norse culture, the Samurai era of Japan, and into a WWII pilot dogfight. The mini-stories tap into themes of family, self-sacrifice, brotherhood and choosing the greater good.
Against all odds, Predator perfectly captures the best of Classical storytelling, the same style as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and The Lion King.
It’s a breath of fresh air after the postmodern dribble of nearly 15 years of postmodern dribble dipped in irony (The Skeleton Twins, The Lobster, Thor: Love and Thunder).
That’s not to say that there aren’t great postmodern films (The Matrix, Fight Club, The Lego Movie), but we’re mostly exhausted from the irony, in-jokes and lack of real stakes.
That’s not to say that all stories on the screen this summer are turning back the clock to the Classical style. Superman appears to be told through a metamodern lens, acknowledging that postmodernism happened, and pushing back against the meaninglessness.
Whether or not you have any interest in these individual stories, pay attention. Because the lens of American storytelling is taking new angles.
[four]
Music festivals are dying…and it’s Taylor Swift’s fault. And Beyonce’s. Maybe. Kinda.
Well, inflation is playing a factor too.
CNN reports:
While music festivals have long retained a grip on American identity, their hold might be slipping.
Though the number of festivals has ballooned since the late ‘90s and early aughts, it’s not clear that the demand has kept up, said Will Page, former chief economist of Spotify.
Inflation and tightening budgets have people spending less in nearly every part of American life, including nightlife, fashion and dining out. While you could once see your favorite act play a major stadium and still attend a festival that same summer, music enthusiasts today are having to choose between the two.
“Roll forward to 2024, you go all in to see Taylor Swift, and you don’t bother with the festival,” Page said. “We’re seeing an element of displacement, of cannibalization, of the stadium acts eating the festivals’ lunch.”
In other words, we’ve become more risk-averse. Why would you want to travel and pay hundreds of dollars for a weekend pass (not including costs for camping, drinks, food, etc.) to see artists you’re not sure you’ll enjoy? Especially when you could spend it on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour instead? People want their echo chambers, Page said, and gambling on a festival might not seem worth it.
Running a festival has become more challenging for organizers, too.
As ticket pricing structures have changed, more artists are foregoing festivals for their own worldwide arena tours, where they can make more money, Page said. That’s made it harder for festivals to attract top talent.
Operation costs are also rising, Page said, but there’s a limit to how much festivals can charge for tickets.
“You have a credit crunch facing festivals across the board,” he said. “But particularly the smaller festivals are less able to hedge, less able to negotiate those terms, to manage that cost inflation.”
I’m not sure how to fix this one, but it’s a shame…if only because music festivals are one of the few American pop culture experiences left that are (mostly) screen free.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
Woah. The third entry in the Knives Out series features gumshoe Benoit Blanc investigating a possible miracle…or, a possible cult? Will Jared Leto be in the cult?
This one won’t be out for awhile--see it December 12th.
Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar, Dallas Buyers Club) and America Ferrera (Barbie, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) co star in the true story of a bus driver and teacher who navigate through an inferno to protect 22 children from a rampant wildfire.
Based on a true story, and heading to theaters before landing on Apple TV+. This may be Oscar bait, but it looks highly watchable. No release date, but out this fall.
A group of friends gather for a 40th birthday at a rural retreat, only to be interrupted by a nuclear warhead being shot at California. Commentary on modern, self-obsessed culture staring down death? Maybe. Dumb? Probably. Funny. Hopefully?
And speaking of dumb fun, you’re either into a comedy starring Pete Davidson (SNL, The Suicide Squad) and Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop, The Nutty Professor) as armored car drivers, or you’re not. I’m guessing this is more of an airplane/hotel movie, when you throw on something and half-watch it when you’re traveling or otherwise occupied. Looks OK, but not appointment-viewing good.
[new music]
Matt Berninger, the iconic baritone in the long-running indie rock outfit The National, dropped his second solo album. Solo, Matt’s output doesn’t sound THAT different than when the Ohio native is with his five piece (he’s backed by two sets of twins—weird, and awesome), but the solo stuff tends more towards the downbeat and hushed.
The whole album feels like the mix of spending time in a smoke-filled corner bar and the coziest corner of a marble and oak library. Highly recommended.
[read & learn]
In the early 2010’s, trandsgenderism was taking hold of young girls via online message boards, many with autism or severe anxiety. “Trans regret” stats are tough to come by, but a study of hormone treatment of the military by the National Institute for Health found that 29% of biological men and 46% of biological women stopped transgender hormone treatments while in the military.
That’s still a majority who continued on hormones, but the sizable minority who stopped should scare the bejesus out of parents of pre-teens and teens who have been talked into a medically irreversible solution when the root issue may be severe anxiety or autism (in females, going on Testosterone temporarily reverses anxiety, but then it comes back full force).
In the same way, author Rod Dreher (go read all this stuff) argues that just as alienated young girls were going on hormones to relieve mental health issues with other root causes, high school boys and twentysomethings are turning to white nationalism as a way to deal with loneliness and alienation.
Dreher goes into an incident in which the headmaster of his sons’ classical Christian school was outed as a White Nationalist and fired…but that some of the students have carried those views to college, and are spreading them.
Do not miss this conversation.
And finally, The Mail Man is one of the best novels I’ve read this year. Set in the Midwest, both urban (Indianapolis, Chicago) and rural (Danville), the story follows a private courier who interrupts a kidnapping. It’s refreshing to get a book that nails the tone and tenor of small town America, without stooping to stereotypes. Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Until the next one,
-sth