Epstein's List: A Power Game of The Minority

Aristocrats like the former presidents of the U.S., Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, former U.S. Vice President Albert Gore Jr., Britain's Prince Andrew, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, the prominent director George Clooney and scientist Stephen Hawking— these names have appeared on a list of criminals.

Recently, the New York District Court made public a 900-odd-page document and revealed the names of up to 100 people. This list of names is derived from the infamous "Jeffrey Epstein case". The island involved in this case called Little St. James Island, which is now known as "Orgy Island"/the "Land of Lolitas", spans 75 acres. It is surrounded by coral reefs and planted with densely packed trees. It takes 15 minutes by boat to reach Cyril E. King Airport, and three and a half hours to get to New York. Exactly how many living American aristocrats and elites have ever set foot on this island, and witnessed or even been personally involved in sexual activities with minors? Is the heavily forested "secret chamber" within the island inundated with men with raging sexual desires and sex captives?

It is extremely difficult for an ordinary person to imagine what is really going on out there. Fortunately, we have films that act like mirrors. Despite how distorted the truth they reflect, we still get a clearer understanding that sex, itself, is a right to claim. A tiny minority claim this right from people, deprive them of it, and turn it into their spiritual supplement.

1. The Elephant in the Room

Born in 1935 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, Jeffrey Epstein registered his company in the Virgin Islands in 1998 and bought Little St. James Island. In 2000, he was accused of engaging in sex with a 14-year-old girl, and since then, a semen-dripping hell was unveiled. He faced court and public interrogations after being slapped with multiple charges of being involved in sex with minors. In 2019, he committed suicide in prison. But death only took his life. What he left behind remains a mystery that baffles and angers the mainstream, and perhaps leaves them feeling immensely curious.

How did these men play the power game? In 2022, Damien Chazelle, the director of "La La Land," filmed "Babylon," which is centered on Beverly Hills in the 1920s. The title of this movie refers to the ancient city of Babylon, a mysterious land in Mesopotamia. In this city lies the widely known "Hanging Gardens of Babylon", and it is strongly believed that this place has expensive, grand buildings and the people there enjoy luxurious and comfortable lives. An innumerable number of people bought into this illusionary image and spread the word about it. As a result, it became an unsubstantiated truth. The movie "Babylon" comes up with another side of the "truth"— how sex became the most popular wild activity under an unfettered environment in the Hanging Gardens which is also regarded as a sanctuary.

At the beginning of the movie, a truck loaded with elephants struggles to move up the hill and the keeper alights to push it forward. Just then, the elephants raise their tails, their gigantic anuses expand, and a "dung downpour" rains down on him. This scene is dedicated to the audience, with the aim of getting them to quickly dispel their expectations of watching people live elegant and decent lives in the movie.

Sure enough, as night falls, the party in the ancient castle heats up quickly under the adrenaline-pumping drum sounds and rapid jazz tunes of trumpets. It is flooded with sweaty gyrating bodies of screaming men and women of varying ages and colors. Their bodily fluids and vomit stain the floor like a layer of foam on the sea of lewdness as waves of lasciviousness drift through the air. In the relatively quieter secret chamber, a drunken female dancer dies from a sudden cardiac arrest after being injected with drugs. In order to transport her body out of the party without alarming other partygoers, the male protagonist, a Mexican film crew member who aspires to make a name for himself in Hollywood, comes up with the idea of herding the movie props, which are the incontinent elephants mentioned earlier, into the party hall. At that moment, the boundary between humans and beasts is breached, because all party revelers are animals.

We often use the metaphor "an elephant in the room" to refer to the ubiquitous phenomenon of hegemony. "Babylon" concretizes the elephant and makes it a totem that masks sexual exploitation and sexual activities. The act of welcoming and worshiping elephants represents the sexual form of submitting to the male organ and the power it represents.

2. Sex Slaves Owned by The Minority

In 1999, the movie "Eyes Wide Shut" by the great director Stanley Kubrick talks about an imaginary adventure that takes place during the Christmas holidays. A highly respected middle-class couple learns by chance about a secret ball attended by a small group of people in an attempt to salvage their lackluster marriage. The attendees are all dressed in evening gowns and masks, and they can casually choose their sexual partners to make love. An abundance of mirrors are used in the movie to create cold, smooth, and shining "facades" that correspond to the masks worn by the characters who work together to create ambiguity in the movie. As a result of these "facades", the drug dealings and arousing sex positions or combinations of sexual partners become equivocal. They play with the minds of the characters and audience and make them unsure whether the secret ball truly exists. The ball may have merely been an unspoken attempt by the couple to get back at and hurt each other, but of course, it can also be interpreted as an over-the-top sexual provocation.

In any case, this old movie has imparted to many of its fans the understanding that empty rich people are sexually adventurous. Sex is casually used as a bargaining chip in the game of misdemeanors for flaunting, gifting, and socializing. Sex, too, is also one’s own filler. Either you "buy" it with power and wealth and play with bodies to proclaim your mighty abilities; or you sell your seductive body to gain wealth and power, as well as to receive fragile and unreliable love and sense of security.

We have got to admit that we associate our distant imagination of ancient Babylon and even ancient Greece partially with alcohol. There is a saying that Babylonians "only have sex, not gender", but it eventually becomes hidden, and only occasionally causes us to develop illusions. Extreme power, wealth, or sexual partners are scarce resources. The more distant and distorted the unbridled fantasies, the stronger and more enduring moral values become. Anyway, the ball is not a reality that the vast majority of people experience. The confusion, anger, and curiosity sparked by "Epstein’s List" is yet another proof that these scarce resources are occupied by a tiny minority in this world.

3.Speaking of Lolitas

In the latest news report, a victim claimed she was sexually assaulted by Britain's Prince Andrew when she was just 17 years old, but Buckingham Palace dismissed the allegation as completely untrue.

Most of the victims of exploitation on "Epstein's List" were minors, and the infamous Little St. James Island was apparently dubbed "Orgy Island"/the "Land of Lolitas" after the original novel "Lolita" by a famous author called Vladimir Nabokov, which has been remade into movies many times. The novel’s protagonist, Humbert, a university professor, has a monster hidden within him - a deadly fetish for underage girls. He perceives the young female protagonist Lolita as "the bison and angel of Europe". The former symbolizes his lack of vitality, while the latter signifies his lost innocence. When the novel was released, many suspected that Nabokov was full of empathy for Humbert and that it is a fundamental stigmatization of Lolitas who may potentially exist in reality. In other words, the story turns disillusioned, weak male adults in literature into romantic men. Men’s liking towards Lolita cannot be restrained, and is a ritual to commemorate things like love, youth, and poetry, which can only be completed with sex. Though the late Nabokov himself once mentioned that he was critical in his portrayal of Humbert, otherwise, he would not have ended up losing Lolita, she also eventually grows up and sees through his character. Humbert is a tragic figure. A line in the book reads, "He gave her money because she needed it, and he cried because she didn't need him anymore."

Fiction is different from reality. In modern society, the Lolita Complex has been heavily labeled as sexually exploitative, and no girl wants to be anyone's Lolita because it not only means she has to be a target of sexual exploitation, but she will also be morally considered to be a vain and evil girl. Assuming that there are many Lolitas on "Orgy Island"/the "Land of Lolitas", those girls are all victims regardless of whether they were forced into or voluntarily chose to be involved in sexual exploitation because minors are the bottom line of modern social conventions as these underage girls are incapable of defending, explaining, or rescuing themselves.

The story of "Epstein's List" is one that neither Nabokov nor the movie "Babylon" could write.