Movie Executives Are Despicable People

Hollywood studio exes are assh*les! Really? They say racist and obnoxious things? SHOCKING!!! They hate the smug stars with whom they work? I'm stunned! Actually, I'm not.

For those who don't know, a group of hackers calling themselves Guardians of Peace ("GOP") hacked Sony's computer network and made off with a ton of information related to their studio operations. This includes employee data, phone numbers, aliases used by stars, complete scripts, budgets and emails. The suspicion is that this was done by North Korea in retaliation for Sony releasing a film called The Interview, in which Seth Rogen and James Franco play film producers who attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un... who had his uncle eaten by dogs and looks like the nerd who sings "Gangam Style."

Anyway, for the past few weeks, they've been releasing these emails bit by bit, freaking out everyone in Hollywood. What the emails have shown is that much of what we suspected about Hollywood is true: it is populated by vile, hateful people. Indeed, read the following and tell me if you see a pattern:

● Sony pays its male executives a lot more than they pay their female executives.

● Sony lobbies against Google (which they call Googliath) out of spite in retaliation for Google not doing enough, in their opinion, to stop pirates.

● More movies make money than Sony admits publicly.

● Many of these emails were written by illiterate executives who don't know the difference between words like lose/loose, their/there/they're, and to/too. Foul language is the order of the day.

● Sony employees don't like Adam Sandler films, which they consider "formulaic"... though I wonder what they produce that isn't formulaic.

● Studio execs called Angelina Jolie "a spoiled brat" and complained about "the insanity and rampaging spoiled ego of this woman." When one exec was told to get Jolie's project under control, the response was: "DO NOT FUCKING THREATEN ME"

● The head of Sony pictures only knew Michael Fassbender because of the size of his penis, which he had seen on screen.

● They describe Leonardo DiCaprio as "actually despicable."

● Despite contributing heavily to Obama and supporting him, studio execs engaged in a racist discussion in which they tried to come up with a list of films Obama must like, each of which involved black actors.

● Studio co-boss Amy Pascal implied that actors adopt black orphans as accessories, and she described stars looking to work in television instead of in film as "the new black baby."

● Studio execs called Kevin Hart, who is black, "a whore."

● Studio execs described David O. Russell, who directed American Hustle, as "a loon" who "got in trouble" for feeling up his teenage transgender niece.

And so on. In response to this, these executives have claimed that these emails are not who they really are as people. Yeah right.

I find this interesting on many levels. First, the most obvious is that these studio execs are clearly odious people. They are hateful backstabbers who lie, in-fight, and think nothing of openly racist behavior. Yet when confronted with their own shameful actions, rather than being shamed, they claim "this isn't who I really am!" That's delusional. Of all things, you are the person you act like in private among people you view as confidantes.

Further, keep in mind how liberals react to suggestions of racism. When it's someone they don't like, they feel happy convicting you on the basis of their own belief about what must be in your mind. The slightest hint of verbalizing something as these people have done would bring instant groupthink howls that the person must be an unrepentant racist, followed by calls for termination of employment and social blacklisting. Yet as these are good liberals who give money to Obama, this will be excused with an apology. Is it any wonder, the public no longer buys claims of racism from leftists? Also, is it any wonder that leftists think everyone must be racists, as they clearly are?

Next, how blind do they need to be to attack a Sandler film for being formulaic, but somehow not see that every... other... film... they... produce... is formulaic these days? Not to mention, how do people who can't spell or choose their words correctly end up with power in the film industry?

None of this is surprising. Hollywood loves to be smug and liberal, but every time the curtain is pulled back we see evidence of racism, sexism, and corporate privilege. We see hypocrisy, perversion, and the worst traits of humanity offered up as evidence of superiority. This is just more of the same; it is nothing new, and it explains why Hollywood has devolved to the point that it can no longer tell a good story... because the shit floated to the top.

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Guest Review: The Lorax (2012) versus Fern Gully (1992)

by tryanmax

Those Holly-weird tree-huggers are always pushing their eco-weenie agenda onto our children. How dare they! Why can’t they leave us to trash the planet in peace? Apologies for the sarcasm, but it’s always been a point of irritation to me that conservatives have completely abandoned the cause of conservation. They share a root-word, people! I’m not saying that conservatives should start chaining themselves to giant sequoias, but knee-jerking against environmentalism looks like promoting pollution and destruction. Not good.

To better illustrate this point, let’s examine two animated films with similar themes: Fern Gully (1992) and The Lorax (2012). Both movies have been roundly criticized by the right as propagandizing to children by both pushing environmentalism and criticizing capitalism. But is this a fair assessment? In regards to Fern Gully, I say unequivocally, “yes.” But in regards to The Lorax, I think conservatives have leapt without looking.

First, a very brief synopsis of each:

Fern Gully is about a tribe of rainforest-dwelling fairies whose giant tree-home is threatened by a logging operation. The loggers are somehow being controlled by an ancient spirit of carbon emissions and petroleum byproduct. One fairy shrinks one of the loggers to her size so he can learn about the wonder and beauty of the blah, blah, Zzzzzzzzzz… Oops! I bored myself to sleep. Basically, it’s Avatar but it came first. Oh, and if the message that “humans are bad” isn’t driven home strongly enough, bat-Robin Williams raps about how evil they are.

The Lorax tells about a young boy living in a hyper-developed city who wants to find a real tree to impress a girl. To do so, he must find the Once-ler, who will tell him the tale of the short-sighted industrialist responsible for wiping out the Truffla trees that once covered the now barren and polluted land surrounding the town. At first the boy is impatient, wanting only to get his tree. But as the story unfolds, both come to realize the need to conserve the resources they depend upon.

I clearly have no love for Fern Gully. As propaganda, it’s about as subtle as a Molotov cocktail. It’s only saving grace is that its formulaic predictability works to undermine the intended message. Nature is worth protecting because it is magical and sacred and pollution is cast as opposing black magic. Responsibility is even shifted onto a giant black smoke monster who dupes the unwitting humans. At the end of the day, the message is simply to direct your faith/love/whatever toward the correct deity. This is pure emotionalism: pollution makes baby fairies cry.

While I’m poking at Fern Gully, I may as well point out its other flaws. This film traffics in the classic racist-liberal pairing of white man’s burden and the noble savage. The fairies are helpless to save themselves, despite possessing ancient wisdom and awesome magic, without the help of an obviously dimwitted youth of European descent. Plus, the film has aged terribly, not that timelessness is to be expected of every film. Stupid hairdos and ridiculous slang are forgivable, but having Mork from Ork rap should’ve been an obvious blunder at the time.

Just as obvious, I think better of The Lorax while admitting that it is hyperbolic in ways. However, that is how it achieves its impact, by extending real attitudes and actions to a satirical level. That Dr. Seuss imagined ends that remain fantastic to this day is impressive. Electronic trees and bottled air are ideas meant to be so absurd (for now) that everyone can’t help but agree about their badness. All can come together in the name of preventing something that likely wouldn’t happen anyway. Even the titular Lorax backs away from his absolutist cut-no-tree position.

However, conservatives don’t seem to be in on the joke. Reacting seriously to these absurd ideas, calling them indictments of industry or capitalism, ends up sounding defensive of wanton waste and pollution. Yet that is exactly how a lot of conservatives have reacted. They defend the obvious villain in the film and wonder why they are regarded as villains. Worse, they criticize the character who realizes the error of his material wastefulness which stands at odds with the usual conservative criticism of fiscal wastefulness. And if that weren’t enough, they equate The Lorax, a comparatively subtle fable, with Fern Gully which has even been dismissed by environmentalists as a blunt fairytale. In other words, conservatives come off as evil idiots.

It also doesn’t help that The Lorax is a pretty decent film in its own right. Dr. Seuss’ visual and narrative style is paired with catchy, Broadway-esque musical numbers. This bodes well for the potential longevity of the film, making it an even worse target for ridicule. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that conservatives should go soft on a film just because its production values are high. Unlike the ham-fisted, eco-magical Fern Gully, The Lorax ultimately finds a middle ground between conservation and modernity. Conservatives would do better to actually consider the content of a film before criticizing it.

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Film Friday: Elysium (2013)

You’ve heard the expression “a sucker punch,” right? Well, Elysium is a sucker gang rape, and it just won’t stop. This film is a nonstop blast of nasty liberalism from start to finish, and it’s very annoying. It’s also not a very good film.

Writer, director Neill Blomkamp became famous for District 9, a film that criticizes apartheid through an alien analogy. Basically, undesirable aliens land in South Africa (they are derogatorily called “prawns”), and they are put onto a reservation away from the humans, where they are kept under martial law including forced abortions and extra-judicial killings. This is a metaphor for South Africa’s homelands and shantytowns, and you are meant to leave the film feeling that the humans (read: whites) are murderous and racist.

Interestingly, like all self-righteous liberals, Blomkamp actually creates a rather racist metaphor in the process of accusing everyone else of racism. Indeed, the aliens are a metaphor for South Africa’s blacks. And how does Blomkamp present them? They are presented as murderous, violent and oversexed. They are borderline retarded, with most residing south of the border. They are lazy. They steal for a living and without compunction. They “have no concept of private property.” And most tellingly, the ultimate point to the film is that exposure to these prawns will infect the humans (read: whites) and turn them into prawns. Call me crazy, but that sounds kind of racist to me. Oh, and like all child-races, they need white liberals like him to protect them.

Well, Blomkamp has done this again in Elysium. This time, the story ostensibly involves evil rich people (read: whites) who live in a floating space station which gives them a lifestyle similar to the McMansion lifestyle so in vogue today while Hispanics fester upon the Earth in the once livable city of Los Angeles, which has now been reduced to little more than a massive shantytown. What’s more, these poor Hispanics are kept down by a robotic police force, slave labor jobs, and a total lack of healthcare. Again, you are meant to leave the film feeling that the rich (read: whites) are murderous and racists.

Once again, however, let us examine the other half of the equation. Here, Hispanics have taken over the golden city of Los Angeles and they have turned it into a shantytown. No attempt is made at running a self-sustaining economy as the only jobs anyone holds are those given to them by whites. Law and order has collapsed. No one cares for their homes or their property. Most get by engaging in criminal activity, such as stealing cars from other poor people. Essentially, they are lazy, dirty thieves who have ruined paradise. And the only person who can save them is white (Matt Damon). Call me crazy, but that sounds kind of racist to me.

Anyway, Elysium takes place in 2154 and boy is it ever full of holes. Matt Damon works in a factory and gets injured in an accident. He will die in five days from radiation exposure. Of course, he's a parolee, so he's easy to manipulate by the evil boss (a standard liberal trope) and he is forced to sign a release to get medical treatment, which release then cuts him off from medical treatment (another liberal trope). The only thing that can save him now is if he finds a way to sneak aboard the Elysium space station where every family has their own medical machine which can cure anything that is wrong with you. To do this, Damon agrees to kidnap his boss for an Hispanics gangster and retrieve information from his head. Only, it turns out that his boss is working with Elysian Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster) to stage a coup so she can shoot any Hispanics who try to flee the surface to the space station – when the story begins, Elysium is run by an Indian President who is soft on killing immigrants. I’ll leave the rest for you to figure out, only I will say that the story involves a corporate hit team and shaky-cam chase scenes until you’re ready to vomit.

Everything about this film stinks.

The message of this film is idiotic and offensive. The idea here is that whites don’t want to help Hispanics. In reality, the US alone gave $56 billion in foreign aid in 2013. Even worse, the film implies that the whites are maliciously denying the Hispanics medical care. Indeed, at the end of the film, medical robots race to the planet to hand out free medical care, and they do so without costing the whites anything. Hence, the message of the film isn’t that whites are cheap, it’s that they are malicious and are withholding lifesaving care even though it would cost them nothing to provide it. In real life, the West is constantly providing medical care throughout the world, even at a cost of reducing the care available here. In the US, $80 billion in free medical care is given each year to illegal aliens. So this film is slander.

Even beyond the messages however, this is just a poorly done and idiotic film. First, the film is awash in a particularly annoying shaky cam. It is as bad as Cloverfield at times. Secondly, the film is hard to understand as the sound is poor and, even worse, the accents are hard to follow. Third, the logic of this film is a joke. Consider this:

● A human race that is capable of building Elysium is more than capable of turning the planet into a paradise, so why waste billions of trillions on building the space station when it would be cheaper to clean up the planet?

● Secondly, what’s the point in denying the surface dwellers healthcare when it wouldn’t cost the Elysium dwellers anything to send down a few robot doctors.

● Third, to stage the coup, Foster gets an arms-dealer (military industrial complex) to re-write Elysium’s code to have her recognized as President. Doesn’t anyone think the people who live there will notice that their President has been deposed?

● Fourth, why have the surface dwellers given up any attempt to improve the planet themselves or run their own affairs?

The film is also deeply manipulative, only you won’t buy into their manipulations, which makes those scenes annoying rather than emotional.

In the end, this film pounds you with liberalism at every turn, and with nonsense – each scene ends with you wondering why anyone would actually act the way the people do. It presents whites, corporations and the military in the most clichéd, liberal-fabricated-negative light possible while it washes away the responsibility of these people to care for themselves. The plot is paper thin. The acting is poor. The action is entirely predictable. The fight scenes are way too long. The cinematography and sound are horrible. And you won’t care for a second about any of the characters.

Put simply, this film sucks; it’s a hacky political hit piece. You should avoid it.

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Noah... This Is God. Riiiiight.

That's a Bill Cosby reference for those who don't know. Anyways, it looks like Hollywood has done it again. After Mel Gibson showed them that there are billions of dollars waiting for anyone willing to make religious films, Hollywood set out to exploit this market. But their efforts haven’t been well received. Why? Because they keep messing with the message.

The latest example of this is the film Noah, which is making the rounds now. This film has pissed off bunches of Christian and Muslim groups – Muslims apparently consider Noah a prophet. It’s gotten so bad actually that the film team has sent out their cast to do damage control.

This may sound familiar. Whenever a film angers people who love some “property,” they trot out the actors to assure everyone that they have stuck strictly to the source material, and those complaining are just crazy whiners. Hence, the cast and crew of The Lord of the Rings ran around swearing that they all carried copies of The Lord of the Rings with them on set and that if there was some dispute about how the book went compared to the script, they would sit down and make sure they followed the book precisely. Yeah, that was a lie.

When Nicole Kidman starred in The Golden Compass, she actually ran around telling people how Catholic she was and how she would never ever ever do any film that was anti-Catholic or which promoted atheism. That was a lie too. In fact, while she was saying this, the writer-director was busy assuring the atheist community that he would not water down the book’s anti-Catholic, pro-atheist messages. And indeed, he didn’t.

There are many other examples, particularly involving religious films, where Hollywood puts out a film that is so not what the Bible says or what Christians believe yet they swear on their dark little hearts that those people complaining are the crazies. And that brings us to Noah.

You know the story of Noah, right? Noah was a meek man who was contacted by God to build an ark. I believe he sold insurance. Humanity had gone awry and God intended to wash the evil out of them with extreme prejudice. Noah was told to build an ark and fill it with heterosexual livestock. Noah was in a bit over his head, but he managed. He also tried to warn those around him, but they wouldn’t listen because they was busy fornicatin’. Then bamo! God goes all Erwin Allen! Rain, floods, evildoers washed away... the slate is wiped clean. Finally, the waters recede. Noah lands his Ark in Turkey and he opens the doors to release the animals and the people to go forth and never do evil again.

That’s basically the story that billions of people know and believe. That’s the story you get from the Bible and the Koran (with a few “dirty infidels!” thrown in). But that’s not the story Hollywood made.

From quotes gleaned from people who’ve seen the film and from the cast, this Noah is a Biblical grade ASSHOLE. Seriously, he’s a monster. At one point, his son even rebels against him, saying, “I thought you were chosen because you were kind.” To which, Noah like the Dark Knight responds, “I was chosen because I can get the job done.” Seriously, could anyone in their right mind picture Noah as the Dark Knight? He’s supposed to be meek and kind. He’s supposed to be out of his league. He spends his time trying to warn all the people who mock him as if he were in Revenge of the Nerds. That's part of the message -- that God picks people you overlook to deliver his message. Noah is not a bad-ass action hero. Nor is he a colossal jerk. Interestingly, they also never use the word “God” in this film.

So why would Russell Crowe act the character this way? Why would director Darren Arnofsky allow/choose this? Because to them, these stories are fiction. To Christians and Muslims, they are fact. And that difference is key. If these stories are fiction, then you can improve them and make them more entertaining. Sure, let’s make Noah into a warrior or King of the Assholes, it will add some great fight scenes when he holds off the Orc invaders and it will add dramatic gold when he reconciles with his gay son... I smell an Oscar. But if you see these stories as fact, then any change is an affront to reality. Making changes or filling in the gaps with obviously fake “interpretations” is as fraudulent and insulting to you as it would be to liberal Baby Boomers to add a gay sex shower scene to a JFK biography or have Obama selling crack out the back of the White House in his inevitable biography.

That’s really what’s going on here. When Hollywood has made religious films that stick to the material, no matter how messed up that material may seem to nonbelievers, the believers have responded with an outpouring of love and cash. But when they’ve treated these stories as fiction to be massaged, they’ve failed.

And then to send out the cast and lie about what they’ve done just adds insult to injury.

Thoughts.

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Good Does Not Mean Simple

Last week we talked about how Hollywood only shows one kind of racist: the neanderthal. Our general conclusion was that Hollywood lives in terror of being misunderstood. Today's article relates to that, as you'll see. Today's article is about the way "good people" are portrayed by Hollywood. It irritates me.

Have you ever noticed how good people (other than the hero) get portrayed by modern Hollywood? You know who I'm talking about. These are the people the hero must defend, the people the villain slaps around, the people we will see in the happiness montage when the film ends... salt of the earth types. These people are typically older whites, with a rainbow of color mixed in behind them. Their leader is a man in his 50s who has gone gray. They keep their heads down and smile softly. They are childlike. They keep their hands clasped before them like they are praying. They move slowly... shuffling. They speak in short, simple sentences that are packed with gratitude, hope and helplessness. Yep. Awww.

Let me describe this another way: they are f**ing useless. They are neutered and passive. They are the definition of meek. They are so meek that I honestly find myself wanting to smack them around on principle. It's no wonder films are full of so many villains. These people are sheep, and as Eli Wallach says in The Magnificent Seven, "If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep." I hear ya, Eli, I hear ya.

Look, here's what bothers me. First, "good" does not mean "simpleton." It does not mean "meek." Those are not even synonyms for good. There are many simpletons who do evil things, just as people who are meek are typically passively aggressive... not good. Good is about doing the right things, caring about those around you, standing up to evil. Good is not about shuffling your feet or weeping that you need help from a hero. That's pathetic, not good. In fact, people who are good are typically a hell of a lot stronger and more confident than those who aren't because being good requires you to stand up for what is right, not succumb to what is easy. Being good is anything but being passive. In fact, I would argue that you can't be passive and be good. If you are passive, the best you can be is neutral.

It frustrates me that Hollywood is misrepresenting what it means to be good and selling it as such an unpleasant thing. It also frustrates me that the whole idea is rather fascist. Yeah, fascist. Superman saving good people from a power they struggle against but cannot defeat alone is cool... it makes him a superhero. Superman saving people who are too fricken timid stand up for themselves is a tale about how useless the public is and how they need superior men to lead them. That's a creepy, fascist message.

You know where I think this comes from? Did you ever seen Willem Defoe play Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ. He started this. He presented Christ as a meek simpleton... and everybody ran with this. Since that movie, so many people really have come to think of Christ as a man who never raised his voice, never complained, and never spoke back to anyone. And since Christ is considered the model for good, that has become the model they use when they want to show these "good people". Grrr. For the record, that wasn't Jesus. How do I know? Because I've read the Bible. Christ was passionate, with a gift for oratory. He was aggressive. He called a spade a spade. He attacked the money changers in the temple. He stood his ground against the Romans. Those aren't things these meek, pathetic creatures Hollywood is selling as "Christlike" could ever do.

Hollywood isn't good at portraying subtlety anymore. So when they portray villains, they make them cartoon villains so everyone knows what they mean. And when they portray the "good people" the hero needs to help, they go in the other direction. They try to make them Christlike so no one could possibly think they are anything but good (as an aside, making them useless also makes the superhero seem stronger by comparison). But they are using the wrong model. They aren't making them good or Christlike. No. They are making them useless. They are making them the kind of people who deserve the blame when evil prevails because they don't stand up to. That's not "good." "Good" is people who are confident in their convictions and stand up for them. They don't allow evil to control them or others around them. Meek is people who are too afraid to speak their minds.

You know what else is interesting? I've been watching a lot of Gene Autry films lately. It's fascinating to me that in the supposed age of "black and white simpleton thinking" (i.e. not the modern sophisticated world), things were much more nuanced. The public in Autry's films weren't helpless. They weren't pathetic. To the contrary, they were a little hot-headed actually. They had had enough and they were looking to set things right on their own. It took Gene to come into the picture and to calm everything down to make sure everyone acted correctly. When I look at old Superman shows, again, the public was doing their best to solve the problem. They didn't have the firepower to defeat the bad guys, but they were trying. No one stood by helplessly wishing to be saved. That's a twisted stereotype modern Hollywood inflicts on the past in a sneering way, but it's really modern Hollywood that it applies to.

I think this tells us something worth noting about Hollywood. Hollywood today doesn't seem to get the difference between good and meek, and they see the public as meek, helpless, and unwilling to help themselves. I find this frustrating because it flies in the face of reality. The American people are action oriented. They stand up for what they believe. They help those in need. They try to stop evil where they see it, and are constantly working to make the world better. Why does none of that appear on film anymore?

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Liberalism Sucks On Film: Children of Men

“We can learn so much from this film,” said Amanda Tapping on a Sci-Fi Channel promo for Children of Men. Up yours. The only thing we can learn from this film is that liberal films tell the same lies no matter what their supposed premise. Children of Men demonstrates this perfectly. This film is supposed to be the story of what happens when humanity suddenly becomes sterile. But it’s not. This film is a standard liberal rant about racist white Christians who oppose immigration. It just uses the movie plot as a pretext.

What would really happen if humanity suddenly became sterile? Things would probably be pretty nice at first, as a shrinking population would mean less crowding and less competition for jobs. Fewer kids on your lawn. Sure, some people would be sad, but for most, life would continue unchanged. Then the bad effects would hit. A falling population would mean deflation: falling asset values, slowing economy, and fewer jobs. Whole industries would vanish as the young disappear. Soon it becomes hard to find people to do the jobs the young do today, like manual labor... retirement would end. No doubt, there would be a race to automate as much as we could, but as the human population dwindles, those who are left would struggle to fill their basic needs. This would be the point where society would have cohesion problems.

Children of Men doesn’t address any of that however, because that’s not why the film was made. This film was made as a statement against things liberals don’t like, and the science fiction question of sterility is irrelevant to what happens in the film. Indeed, nothing about this film would change even if the premise had been overpopulation, nuclear war, the discovery of immortality or the invention of transporters. This is “the liberal film” hiding behind a veneer of “what if humanity were sterile” and it ignores its veneer just like Elysium ignored the reality of immortality and Total Recall ignored the reality of whatever its plot was supposed to be about. In fact, if you look closely, you’ll find that these are the same movie with each just pretending to have a different premise.

Moreover, everything this film says is twisted propaganda meant to tell you how white Christians are racists and only liberal government can save the world:

● Racist Whites: Throughout the film, there are heavy overtones accusing whites of racism. This should be no surprise as the director has stated he wanted to make a statement about all those rotten Europeans and Americans who don’t want immigrants in their midsts. Let’s debunk, shall we? Whites are the least racist people on the planet. They have opened their countries to tens of millions of immigrants of all races. They let in around three million more each year. They send billions of dollars overseas each year to help improve conditions. They’ve fought wars to save non-whites from oppression. Third Worlder’s don’t do that. Just try sneaking into Mexico from the south and see what happens to you. Think the Asian countries let in other races? They don’t. The Japanese even suggest to parents of half-Japanese kids that they leave the country. What about the Middle East? Do you think they’re tolerant of Jews, Christians, women, the wrong kind of Muslim? Do any of these people help the rest of the world? Hardly.

Yet, this film turns all of that on its head. Here the whites turn to fascism to keep these non-whites out. Why? Because that is what liberals want you to believe whites really want, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The fact that the baby is black and the people trying to kill the mother are white is not an accident either. Said director/writer Alfonso Cuaron: “The fact that this child will be the child of an African woman has to do with the fact that humanity started in Africa. We’re putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that.” Down with whitey. Essentially, this is a racist genocidal-snuff film. Who’s the bad guy here again?

As an aside, one of the real ironies of liberalism, which plays out here again, is that liberal films are typically condescendingly racist. Notice that it takes three of the whitest liberals on the planet to save the helpless black girl with the baby. The list of liberal films that use the racist “Noble Savage” or “White Man’s Burden” trope is a mile long and this one belongs on that list.

● Evil Christians: Speaking of evil, the oppressive government has Christian overtones. Why? Well, because liberals like to think Christians are racist and oppressive. Of course, they pretend that Muslims aren’t oppressive or racist, so they are shown in this film actually protecting the woman and her baby. Let’s debunk, shall we? First of all, you’re an idiot if you think Europeans will turn to a Christian government. Christianity is effectively dead in Europe. And if you think some Baptist who wants to stop you from buying a condom is oppressive, but somehow militant Muslims who kill Jews and Christians, mutilate the genitalia of young girls, blow up schools that teach girls, and go to war with people of every other religion are not oppressive, then you don’t know the meaning of the word and you should STFU. This film wrongly pretends that atheist Europe is actually Christian and then it falsely swaps the traits of Christianity with Islam so it can slander Christians while wrongly idealizing Muslims... because that is what leftists want you to believe.

And again, note that no part of this makes any sense in the context of the movie. Christianity plays no role in the film except as a label. And real-world Christians would protect this woman because they advocate children. They would never try to stop this birth. That’s something militant, atheist environmentalists would do... but again, the film flips that to score political points.

● People Are Not Animals: Finally, the film presents the public as savages. It makes them out as animals who turn to their worst impulses the moment they realize the world will end one day. This is total bull. Human history has shown time and again that people rise to the occasion in times of crisis. They become caring, selfless and noble. They help each other out, share what they have, and band together. The only time they don’t is when liberalism has robbed them of their morality and their motivation and they decide to wait for the government to save their butts. There is no reason to believe in this premise that people would turn violent or turn to fascism as this film assumes. There is no reason to believe that any government would collapse until the whole race became very old. But again, examining the question the movie supposedly posits isn’t the point to this film. The point is to score propaganda points and the basis of the film is irrelevant; the same film would be used for overpopulation or any other crisis.

Moreover, the point being made here is the old liberal trope that people are animals unless their worst behaviors are tamed by liberal, hippie government. Indeed, the only good people in this film are the white, pot smoking, unwashed hippies who run the underground railroad for immigrants. Give me a break. People who don’t bathe don’t bathe for a reason: they lack the motivation to attend to anything except their hedonistic pleasure. Not coincidentally, hippies are total hedonists. Their nobility stops and starts with the phrase, “Man, somebody (else) ought to do something...” This idea that these liberals would actually put forth effort and undertake risk to help people is Liberal Ex-Post Historical Jerk-Off Syndrome, where liberals who don’t lift a finger to fight the petty evil in their midsts today claim proudly that THEY would have stood up to Hitler if they had been there and THEY would have fought to free the slaves. Liars.

Notice too that the director doesn’t even have the courage to tell you what these hippie dipsh*ts would have done differently. Like all other liberal heroes, they just stand “against oppression” and they promise that they would have found a different way to handle whatever problem it was, without ever suggesting what that could be. That’s called a cheap shot.

And that’s what this film is: a cheap shot. This film is a cheap shot taken at liberal boogeymen who don’t exist in the real world. And to take that cheap shot, this film adopts a premise it never bothers addressing. That’s the real crime here. With plummeting birthrates around the world and urbanization, the idea of depopulation is a very real issue that cities and countries are coping with. Add in the fact that certain chemicals apparently are devastating sperm counts, and it’s not inconceivable that the human race might one day become sterile. Watching science handle that or watching society fail little by little would be much more interesting than watching the same liberal claim about white fascists hating brown immigrants in a different package. That would be a film we actually could learn something from.

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Toon-arama: Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)

Usually, tryanmax does the Toon-arama articles around here, but this one needed to be done. . . grrr. If you’re like me, and I know I am, then you enjoy a good Superhero cartoon now and then. Justice League: The New Frontier is NOT such a cartoon. To the contrary, it’s vile leftist crap flung from the bowels of a fetid monkey. Do not see this film. Do not let your kids see this film.

Justice League: The New Frontier tells the story of how rotten the racist police-state known as America is. It is the story of the various well-known superheroes and how they struggle against the oppressive American state in the 1950s. For example. . .

● The film begins with a tirade against humanity and nuclear weapons.

● We are told that the Korean War was not worth fighting.

● We arrive in Indochina, where we learn that Superman and Wonder Woman were made to sign “loyalty oaths,” because they are suspect.

● The police are omnipresent and spy on average citizens. The government also rounds people up and makes them disappear to keep them quiet.

● There is a lot of talk about McCarthy and we’re told that the country “needs a leader” to set us free. . . a very leftist way of thinking: only an all-powerful leader can free us from the oppressive all-powerful state.

● We are shown a television news broadcast which informs us that a black vigilante had kept “white supremacists at bay” until he was “caught by a mob and killed,” because no doubt mobs of whites get incensed when blacks defend themselves against white supremacists. Naturally, the cops “have no suspects,” because no doubt white cops would look the other way. The Flash then uses this news broadcast as a backdrop to tell us that the world needs more vigilantes like the dead guy and that he’s quitting being a superhero because the government is hunting him like a criminal and he doesn’t want to see his family hurt. Funny, I don’t recall our government ever rounding up family members of criminals.

● In the most obnoxious moment in the film, Wonder Woman returns to her homeland and is asked by one of her people “tell us about America.” To this, Wonder Woman responds, “It’s changed since the war. Back then, we were in the right. They still say they are in the right, but they don’t always act that way.” Uh huh, like when they make lying cartoons like this perhaps?

● Frank Sinatra is presented as a coward.

● Our government decides they want to commit genocide against Mars because the Martians might be dangerous.

● And obnoxiously, after the good guys defeat the evil creature which wants to wipe out humanity, the film ends with Kennedy’s New Frontier speech and we’re all supposed to cheer because America has found a leader who would stop the mass arrests, would never send US troops to somewhere like Indochina, would never support an invasion of Cuba, would never threaten the world with nuclear annihilation, and would never be seen with shallow posers like Frank Sinatra. Yep.... that Kennedy.

*ssholes.

Even beyond this, this cartoon is despicably cynical and it’s definitely not for children. The film begins with a rather graphic suicide as the narrator shoots himself. It then moves to the end of the Korean War where Hal Jordan (aka the Green Lantern) is forced to kill a North Korean soldier in hand to hand combat. After he shoots the soldier in the head, you see blood splatter all over Jordan’s face. The introduction of Wonder Woman a minute or two later involves her discussing what sounds like mass rapes in Vietnam and how she disarmed the Vietcong rapists and then let the women of the village “extract justice.” Batman at one point tells us that he has a piece of Kryptonite so he can kill Superman, just in case, and he threatens to kill another ally by setting his house on fire. He must be fun at parties. It goes on like that.

This cartoon stinks.

This is evidence of why you can’t just assume that cartoons are safe for children. It also shows you the bizarro world in which liberals live. Indeed, focus on the key moments of hypocrisy here. The film tells you that the all-power government is evil because it uses violence and terror to control its people (something which never happened). They even add fake ideas like the government rounding up family members and making people “who know too much” disappear. . . whoever that is. Yet, the solution, offered is to find “a strong leader” who will bring vigilante justice, i.e. violence and terror. Does that seem sick to anyone?

Think about this. You constantly get beat over the head with this idea that violence is evil. BUT at the same time, we’re told that violence is great when it’s done for a reason the leftist writer believes is appropriate. That’s called the ends justify the means. And don’t forget, these same hypocrites who are decrying violence are exploiting violence by creating a very violent cartoon to milk your wallet.

This cartoon really highlights the unprincipled nature of liberalism. Everything they decry is only bad so long as the wrong people do it, but once the right people do it for the right reasons, suddenly it becomes a good thing. In essence, this belief system is a form of the ends justifies the means, combined with a caveat that people we like are presumed to have good ends.

The left is sick.

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Rex Reed: Not Enough Hate In Lincoln

I wonder about liberals sometimes. This time I’m wondering about liberal movie critic Rex Reed. He just wrote a review of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln which pans the movie for being “sanitized and sentimental.” That’s liberal code for “doesn’t fit my worldview of how evil these people really were,” and that’s exactly why Rex doesn’t like this film. Oh, and he’s an idiot.

Rex’s review of Lincoln is rather an interesting read. For one thing, it’s full of politics and it’s laughably ignorant. To start, Rex tries to basically claim Lincoln for liberals and accuse the Republicans of being pro-slavery by claiming that the Democrats of the era were “rabid right wing conservatives in those days” and he calls the Republicans “liberal, left-wing.” This is untrue, but typical of Democrats. Somehow, in their world, all good deed were done by leftists and evil regimes like the Nazis and the Soviets somehow were conservative/libertarians.

He then refers to the screen play negatively as “a whopping drag” whose “verbosity does to movies what a House filibuster does to action on a health-reform bill.” Well Rex, filibusters occur in the Senate, not the House, which is really basic civics. . . even for liberals. And the House didn’t stop the health-reform bill, that’s only in your twisted liberal imagination. Indeed, when it was passed, the Democrats controlled the House. . . and a supermajority in the Senate. That means it couldn’t be filibustered, Rex. I guess liberals don’t know that though as they keep blamed Republicans for somehow interfering with Obama passing Obamacare. . . which never happened.

He also points out that the film is based on a book by “historian Doris Kearns Goodwin,” and he describes it as “noble, civic-minded, [and] exhaustingly researched.” He does not mention that Goodwin is a liberal sycophant with a real love for the Kennedys and a close relationship with the Democratic Party. Indeed, her husband was a speechwriter and advisor to Kennedy and Johnson, both of whom she’s also written biographies for. Nor does he point out that she’s been accused of significant plagiarism. Nope, she’s just identified as an “historian.” Do you think he would be as neutral about a conservative? Doubtful.

Finally, we get this ironic ending: “In a divisive election year when the Sunday morning pundits knock themselves out debating whether the political system still works, it’s a good time to revisit a year when it did.” Yes, the Civil War was indeed a time when the nation’s political system worked. Idiot. Even if he’s just talking about Lincoln affording blacks legal protection, it would take another 100 years before that actually happened. What did you think those Civil Rights marches were about in the 1960s Rex?

Anyway, let’s get to this idea of the film being “sanitized and sentimental.” Rex points out that the following bad things are in the film. Thaddeus Stevens, the passionate abolitionist, is presented as having a secret black mistress, and his “personal motives don’t always extend to the country’s best interests.” And Lincoln “threatens his wife with the madhouse” over her grief over the death of their son. But then our political and historical genius Rex mentions some things that don’t get included:

(1) “In reality, Lincoln believed in equality under the law, but not racial equality; he had no use for blacks and maintained a strong personal belief that whites were a superior race.”

(2) “Honest Abe was not so honest either. He and his cabinet of rivals were not above bribery, lies, suspending habeas corpus or bending the Constitution to break the South’s economic infrastructure. These are facts Spielberg conveniently overlooks.”

There you have it. This film was evil because it didn’t show Lincoln as a deeply corrupt white supremacist. Because of this, Rex calls the film “Spielberg’s bloated $50-million history lesson” and “a colossal bore” and “so pedantic, slow-moving, sanitized and sentimental that I kept pinching myself to stay awake—which, like the film itself, didn’t always work.”

This really highlights the problems with liberals. For one thing, Rex doesn’t know jack, yet he’s smug enough to try to give a history/civics lesson. Consequently, anyone who reads Rex’s review and believes any portion of it, will basically be a dumber American than when they started. Nice work, Rex.

Secondly, he’s so blinded by his need to see the past as full of evil people that he's incapable of enjoying a film about someone unless it shows their dark side. Talk about cynical! Not to mention, consider his inability to separate out his political views from the review. He can’t enjoy the film for what it is, he attacks it for what it is not, and what it is not is cynical enough to suit his view of history. This is why you can’t trust liberals, because they are incapable of separating their beliefs (unfounded or otherwise) from everything else they do.

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Guest Review: Act of Valor (2012)

A Film Review by Tennessee Jed

To my knowledge, this is the only movie ever to use active duty Navy SEALS in major roles, although they are not even individually identified in the credits. But, their participation permits a degree of realism not attainable with actors such as Charlie Sheen or Demi Moore. What the film may lack in budget, “name” actors, or production values is more than offset by authenticity. This alone makes Act of Valor virtually mandatory viewing for fans of the military film genre, and highly recommended for anyone who simply wants to better understand and appreciate the ethos of these rare and special people whose job it is to constantly risk their own lives to protect us.

The production is the brainchild of Michael “Mouse” McCoy and Scott Waugh who co-produced and co-directed. McCoy, a former dirt bike champ and film extra, developed The Bandito Brothers production company along with fellow stunt man Waugh. The movie’s genesis may be found in a short feature they produced for the Navy in 2007. During filming, they got to know several SEALS. Conversations with that group led to the citing of numerous true acts of heroism, some of which were chosen as the basis for a possible future feature film. The producers hired screenwriter Kurt Johnstad to develop a screenplay that would contain these specific actual acts of valor.

The Plot

The story follows seven of the members of the fictional “Bandito” platoon from SEAL Team 7 based at Coronado Island in San Diego, and includes four separate but interrelated military actions. After a brief introduction, the film grabs your attention with some great footage of the team conducting a training HALO jump near San Diego, then quickly switches to Manilla where we witness a suicide bombing that kills, among others, the American ambassador and his son. The mastermind, Abu Shabal, a Chechan jihadist, escapes. The scene again shifts-- this time to Costa Rica where CIA covert operative Lisa Morales is posing as a pediatrician while investigating drug smuggler Mikhail “Christo” Troykovich. Recent communication intercepts have indicated a possible relationship between Christo and Abu Shabal.

Morales’ cover has been compromised, however, and she is kidnapped, and her colleague murdered by Christo’s thugs. The mission becomes one of “personnel recovery”, and the team prepares for deployment (referred to as “going down range”) by assessing intelligence, tactics and contingencies. The platoon is lead by Lt. Rorke, and his platoon chief, Steve. Members are “Weimy” (the sniper), Ray (communications), “Sonny,” “Mikey,” and “Ajay.” They work with
Senior Chief Miller, the operations officer. After a hotly contested, ultimately successful action, the team gathers sufficient intelligence to tie Christo to Abu Shabal, and Christo is subsequently taken down on his yacht by SEAL team 4.Through interrogation, specifics are revealed of a plan to smuggle terrorists onto U.S. soil through a tunnel provided by Christo’s smuggling connections. The team enters into a desperate race against time to intercept and stop them.

So What Really Makes It So Authentic?

The decision to use active duty SEALS works well on many levels. Like the re-enactors in the film Gettysburg, the group insisted on accuracy above all else. This resulted in two key elements impacting the film making process. First, the SEALS planned the actual operational tactics used in the fictional engagements just as they would in real life. Second, they literally reworked significant amounts of dialogue so that the spoken words were more reflective of what might be expected of actual participants.

Much of the “Costa Rican” fire fight was filmed on the “live round” range at the John C. Stennis base in Mississippi. The filmmakers were initially scared to death, but eventually agreed it created a level of intensity or adrenaline rush that could not be otherwise duplicated. By working with the actual team, the latest in weapons technology is fully displayed. The viewer cannot help but be awed when viewing the sniper, tracer, and artillery fire instantly turning bad guy’s pick up trucks into swiss cheese. Watching the SEALS silently rise out of the water, rifles at the ready is a thing of beauty as is the night HALO jump into Costa Rica. In another film first, two of the Seals who are headed to Somalia to monitor Abu Shabal’s movements get picked up by an actual active duty nuclear submarine.

The Theme

The point of the film is to more closely explore the bond of brotherhood, code of honor, and sense of duty developed by these guys. They are completely squared away and the very best in the world at what they do. In an “extra” feature from the Blu-Ray disc containing interviews with the SEALS featured in the film, the individual who played “Lt. Rorke” makes a statement that really stood out to me, and is extremely telling. During the all too frequent funerals he has attended for lost comrades, there is always a small part of every survivor that is secretly a bit envious of their fallen brothers because there is no more honorable way to meet one’s death. Much of this is stated quite eloquently at the end of the film in a quote from the great Tecumsah about the code of the warrior, and was touched upon in my earlier review of the film The Duellists.

So Why Did Some Critics Pan It?

The film received numerous negative reviews from the “mainstream” reviewing community. A quick stroll through Rotten Tomatoes yields a 4.5 of 10 rating although 76% of readers liked the film. The consensus comments from so called “big name” reviewers such as Richard Corliss, Peter Travers, and Roger Ebert are couched in terms of cliched script, stilted acting, and jingoistic or non-nuanced point of view. Others called it nothing more than a recruiting film. That kind of comment more likely masks an anti-military orientation or a given reviewer’s personal political agenda. Perhaps they were happier with anti-war films such as Rendition, Lions for Lambs or In the Valley of Elah all of which bombed at the box office.

How far Hollywood seems to have fallen from the days of support for the troops in WWII. This story moves along at a brisk pace, and I cannot really think of any wasted scenes. It seems absurd to complain about a script being a cliche when it is taken from a composite of real events, and there was not one point in the film where I felt like any of the lines being spoken were awkward, cheesy, or stilted. In fact, using real SEALS to speak them makes scenes with family and friends all the more touching.The people who made this film truly deserve our thanks and I highly recommend it.

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Guest Review: In Time (2011)

By tryanmax

I am stunned to think that this movie came from the same mind as Gattica. I had mixed expectations when I sat down to watch. The premise—time has literally become money and if you run out, you die—sounded a little clunky to me. But I figured that maybe Andrew Niccol could pull it off. Besides, dystopian sci-fi is my favorite genre and I figured, if nothing else, I could expect some fast pacing, cool, futuristic visuals, and some clever one-liners.

** spoiler alert **

Never underestimate Hollywood’s ability to let you down.

Synopsis (Note: the names have been omitted because I don’t care.)

Scruffy Poor Guy (Justin Timberlake) lives in a future where humans have been genetically engineered to stop aging at 25. If they want to live longer, they must earn more time. Time is currency; one can earn it or spend it. To keep track of time, everyone has a timer embedded in their forearm. If it reaches zero, you die instantly. A side effect of the engineering is that everyone’s speech is riddled with wordplay about time.

In the ghetto, people live paycheck to paycheck. (ha!) So when a Stranger comes to town with a century on his clock, it attracts the attention of a gang of time thieves called the Minutemen. (ha!) Scruffy rescues him and in return the Stranger gives him his time (ha!), effectively committing suicide—but not before letting Scruffy in on the “vast conspiracy.” For the first time in his life, Scruffy has time on his hands (ha!), but the Timekeepers (a.k.a. cops, ha!) think he murdered the Stranger and the gang is now after him, too. Scruffy decides to skip town with his Hot Mom and go live the high-life. Before he can reach her, however, she runs out of time. (ha!) Now Scruffy is out for revenge and he plans to take it from, who else?, some rich dude he’s never met before.

Flawed Concept

One of the challenges facing any dystopian narrative is that, more so than other genres, it relies heavily on a gimmick. As far as that goes, the one here isn’t all that bad. The trouble is that this can lead to a weak script if the gimmick is made to carry too much. That is precisely the problem with In Time.

Most dystopian tales deal with the individual against a repressive society, but the “time is money” concept more easily pits the haves against the have-nots. This film dabbles with both as well as third concept involving the desirability of immortality, which might have paid off immensely if it weren’t so quickly abandoned. After a bit of waffling, the film finally takes off on a social justice screed that is itself a gimmick.

It is apparent that no real thought was given to how a society such as this one might actually work. For starters, in the film funds can be transferred—or stolen—with a simple handshake, so the fact that this society hasn’t crumpled into total anarchy is something of a miracle. Besides, given the life-or-death consequences of poor money management, one should expect the average person to have the financial acumen of a mutual fund manager. Plus, there is no logic that dictates only the affluent can live past 100 while the poor must die much younger.

It’s also impossible to get a sense of value within the movie. Prices seem assigned based on the needs of the plot rather than comparative worth. A point is made of shocking the audience early with the idea that a cup of coffee takes four minutes off of your life. But a “decent lunch” costs about 30 minutes while a five-mile bus ride costs two hours and a typical loan payment is two days. Things get even more out of whack when the action moves from the poorer “Time Zones” (ha!) to the more affluent ones. Suddenly, things move from being priced in minutes and hours to being valued in months and years. This is supposed to illustrate the grave disparity between rich and poor, but when a century makes one astonishingly rich, even the well-to-do can barely be making ends meet. Maybe I’m obsessing over the details. Or maybe it’s just lazy writing.

Heavy Handed Liberalism

This may not be the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it is definitely vying for the most blatantly liberal. From the annoying electric whine of all the cars to the token black guy who “gets it” when no one else does, this film practically has an “Obama/Biden” sticker on the back.

The film is so chock full of tirades, I can’t recall a scene without one. Several times, Scruffy broadly labels the rich as thieves. Sheltered Rich Girl (Amanda Seyfried) laments her privileged station a few times. Evil Rich Guy (Vincent Kartheiser) delivers a canned speech about Darwinian capitalism and the next stage of evolution—you know? the one that comes after conquering disease, age and death. Timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) laments that Scruffy is hurting the very people he means to help because that sounds like something a cruel conservative might say.

And remember the “vast conspiracy” I mentioned earlier? Here it is: the rich live in luxury while the poor struggle to survive even though there’s plenty to go around! This is what liberals pat themselves on the back for sorting out? The only thing more juvenile is the plan Scruffy and Rich Girl hatch to bring “the system” down: steal lots of money and if that doesn’t work, steal more money. I hate to say it, but a plot like that makes “unobtanium” seem like pure genius.

Nothing else is good, either!

At the beginning I said I was hoping at least for a quick film with eye-candy and witty dialogue. This isn’t even that. At only 100 minutes, In Time feels interminable, and endless chase scenes aren’t to blame. Rather it belongs to a repetitive stream of leftist pontifications. The art direction seems to have been lifted from Gattaca minus several bucks, so the only eye-candy takes the form of the entirely twenty-something cast. Somebody must’ve told Niccol that a good script has a twist at the end, because there is one thrown in that contributes nothing to the story and isn’t all that surprising anyway. And the dialogue, well, I don’t need to waste your time. (ha!)

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A Conservative Opportunity In Hollywood?

I’m wondering about the future of the film industry. In particular, I am wondering if there isn’t an opening developing for conservatives? I don’t mean that Hollywood is about to open its doors to conservatives. What I mean instead is that Hollywood failed to lock the door and its audience is escaping. Maybe conservatives should think about offering them a new home? Consider this.

The entertainment industry has become an oligopoly (though groupthink basically makes it a monopoly). Six companies control 90% of all viewing hours on television: Disney, News Corp, NBC Universal, Time Warner, CBS and Discovery. These companies decide what you get to watch. They also own either in whole or in part, the major studios, who dominate the theater chains. Thus, a handful of companies are responsible for all the films and television you see. Even independent companies like Netflix or Blockbuster rely on these companies to provide them with content.

Ok, so why is that important? Because these companies have fallen into the same trap that all monopoly/oligopoly companies have fallen into before them.

When a company has “market power,” i.e. the power to exclude competitors and dictate to consumers, they get lazy and greedy. Specifically, they realize that it makes no sense for them to innovate or embrace change because their current business model gets them much higher profits than they could otherwise obtain in a free market. Thus, they put their energy into maintaining their monopoly rather than improving their products. This results in: (1) high prices which consumers see as unfair, (2) lack of innovation in the product, (3) an unwillingness to embrace technology, and (4) poor customer service.

The entertainment industry is beset by this. Films are generic so they can be marketed to the broadest possible market. No risks are taken. To make foreign sales, the film companies now strip out anything from films that would harm the films in any region, rather than customizing them by region. Hollywood also forces theaters into a destructive business model. And they fight any technological change which would give consumers greater choice. This is the exact course the music industry charted to its near death.

All of this results in falling box office attendance, falling numbers for cable subscribers, and an increase in pirating.

But here’s the thing. This isn’t 1950. Technology is giving people a way around the entertainment monopoly. The web has made it ridiculously easy to self-publish a book, a record, or even a film. Indeed, you no longer need a distribution network or a chain of theaters to get your film shown. Similarly, modern technology has made it incredibly cheap to shoot movies as you no longer need million dollar cameras and miles of film or a multimillion dollar studio backing you. All you need is a solid digital camera, an eye for using it and editing software.

My point is this. Hollywood is pricing itself out of the market right now at the exact time that technology has opened up avenues for alternatives. Moreover, Hollywood has chosen this moment to start turning out corporate computer-generated crappola for product and is busy stripping out the great dialog (too complex for foreign audiences), the cool humor (too many people might not get it), and the cool patriotic and pro-human themes audiences love (won’t play in China or Berkley).

This creates an opportunity. If conservatives are smart, they can create a new Hollywood, picking up the opportunities Hollywood won’t touch and selling them to audience over the net, either through the creation of a new film site, eHollywood, or in partnerships with the likes of Blockbuster and Netflix. This is an historic opportunity to get ahead of the curve and conservatives should seize it.

Am I right or wrong? What would it take for you to start watching truly independent films?

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It’s a Wonderful(ly Capitalist) Life(!)

by tryanmax
It’s a Wonderful Life, the quintessential tale of selflessness, gratitude, and the blessings of friends and family—traditional values all—is for many as much a holiday tradition as trimming the tree and baking cookies. So it may seem odd that Frank Capra’s beloved tale should be considered by many to be strongly anti-capitalist. Indeed, back in the HCUA days the FBI fingered the film in a memo entitled “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry.” And just last year, Glenn Beck got into a back and forth with a progressive blogger over the issue.

One could simply brush off the interpretation of these Grinches, these Scrooges, these Mr. Potters, if you will, as “missing the point.” Yet that does little to reduce the embarrassment that a film so adored for epitomizing the best in human nature would cause to conservatism by disparaging the free-market. Gladly, this is not the case.

Quite the contrary, It’s a Wonderful Life praises a far more substantial vision of free-enterprise than its detractors seem to apprehend. Besides that, the film is also a tribute to family, a salute to Americanism, an homage to goodwill, and an ode to traditional values all wrapped up in a beautiful golden-age Hollywood Christmas card.

NOTE: If you haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life, what’s the matter with you!? Go out and find a copy and watch it right away! In the meantime, here it is re-enacted by bunnies in 30 seconds: LINK. Of course, there’s much more to the story, but for the sake of brevity (hah!), this article assumes familiarity with the film.

The Director

Before discussing the movie, I’d like to examine Frank Capra’s directorial style. Many of the ideas explored in It’s a Wonderful Life are not unique to that picture. Capra explored similar themes in almost all of his work. He intentionally centered his films around values he acquired growing up in the Italian neighborhoods of early 20th c. L.A.; hard work, self-reliance, and a love of freedom and the American Dream. (The real one, not that chicken-in-every-pot nonsense.)

This decision wasn’t made without controversy. His diatribe against political corruption, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, met with unilateral opposition from the US Senate. Meet John Doe attacked exploitation of the poor by politicians and the media. His last film bearing a strong political message, State of the Union, took on special interests and crooked electioneering with a message that would likely resonate with the Tea Party today. If It’s a Wonderful Life contained an anti-capitalist message, it would be coming from the most unlikely of sources.

A Tale of Two Capitalists

How then can anyone find such a message in the film? I suspect it comes partly from accepting one of liberalism’s favorite bogeymen: the heartless capitalist. The confusion makes some sense because actual specimens do exist. There are unscrupulous men in this world who can justify almost anything that garners profit. (George Soros comes to mind.) The bogeyman is crafted simply by painting all entrepreneurs and businessmen with this broad brush. This is the sort of “capitalist” vilified in the film, and I shudder to think that any “conservative” would defend it.

Henry F. Potter is presented as such a capitalist, a wealthy businessman, banker, and slumlord who looks down on everyone and is frequently credited with “owning the town.” In other words, Potter controls virtually all means of production and exchange in Bedford Falls. He may be the primary purveyor of jobs, but he also has considerable sway over the way the town is run, which he is apparently not shy about exercising. Potter is the picture of a small-town oligarch rather than the enterprising businessman.

Opposite him is George Bailey, the reluctant but principled proprietor of the Bailey Building and Loan. While Potter’s form of capitalism is underhanded, monopolistic, exploitive, Bailey's is straight forward, even-handed, and, most importantly, competitive. The B&L is just about the only venture in Bedford Falls that Potter hasn’t got his fingers in, and he can’t stand it. Throughout the film, Potter attempts every angle to take over the B&L from takeover to buyout to outright theft.

Through all of Potter’s attacks, however, Bailey presses on and invests himself into turning the marginal B&L into a cornerstone of the community. He wards off a run by delivering an econ-lesson in brief, explaining how the patrons' money isn't in the B&L, but in the homes and ventures of all their neighbors. He founds Bailey Park, providing a modest but better alternative to Potter’s slums—and considerable consternation to Potter himself. Bailey doesn’t mean to irk Potter, it’s just a side-effect of his selfless approach.

A Visit to Potterville

To underscore the superiority of George Bailey’s brand of capitalism, Capra gives us, in a flight of fancy, a glimpse of the town as it would be if Potter were left to run roughshod over it. No one can argue that the pursuit of a dollar is still the driving force in town. However, without Bailey to compete with Potter, the emphasis has changed from the honest buck to the easy one.

Gone are the quaint storefronts, replaced with seedy bars and dance halls. Not only has the respectable nature of the town vanished, but so has the optimism. The vibrant Bailey Park is replaced by a cemetery (no subtle symbolism there). The human toll is apparent in the creased faces and impatient demeanors. Whereas Bailey’s enterprising ways lifted people up, Potter’s exploitation has brought them down.

What’s Missing

If that isn’t enough to convince you, It’s a Wonderful Life continues to praise the free-market in what it leaves out from the story. For one, not once does anyone insinuate that Potter is a criminal, or that he even ought to be. Until the climactic moment when Potter discovers Uncle Billy’s misplaced deposit, every thing he does is perfectly legal. Furthermore, even his sole act of theft goes undetected that we know.

Also, it is revealed that Bailey’s business acumen is such that he is able to build houses for half the cost of their finished value. With skills like his, Bailey could have easily padded his own salary and hiked his rates. Instead, he continues in his—and his father’s—original mission, to help his clients realize their own American dreams.

Final Thoughts

Like many good stories, It’s a Wonderful Life clues the audience in to what the story is about from the outset. It starts on Christmas Eve. The town of Bedford Falls lies still under falling snow. The only sound to be heard are the rising prayers of the townsfolk, all pleading for the same thing—the well being of George Bailey. Above, the prayers are received and an angel named Clarence is recruited to answer them.

“Is he sick?” Clarence asks of Bailey. “No, worse,” replies another angel, “He’s discouraged.”

Right away this exchange reveals this to be a story about discouragement and its counterpoint, hope. Capra’s message isn’t simply about what is right or wrong, and it certainly isn’t about what is fair. It is about the hope that upholds principles in the face of adversity. Hope isn’t just a bunch of fanciful wishful thinking as some might suppose. It is derived of opportunity and possibility. These things are also the underpinnings of a free society in all respects, be it in the market, speech, worship, or whatever.

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Politics of Trek: “Patterns of Force”

If you haven’t seen the original Star Trek series, you should. Not only is it deeply woven into our culture, but it hits a high-water mark in terms of science fiction addressing social issues without beating you over the head with the message. Moreover, whether they realized it or not, it’s a fundamentally conservative/libertarian show. So today I want to start a new series pointing out some of the most conservative Star Trek episodes from the original series. . . as compared to the ultra-liberal Star Trek: The Next Generation. Let’s start with Episode 50: Patterns of Force.

The Plot

This is “the Nazi episode.” The crew of the Enterprise is called to Ekos to investigate the disappearance of Federation historian John Gill. Gill, one of Kirk’s professors at Starfleet Academy, went to Ekos to observe their culture. As the Enterprise nears Ekos, they are shocked when a nuclear missile is fired at them. Beaming down in secret, they discover that the Ekosians have replicated Nazi Germany, right down to the uniforms, and the Ekosians are planning to exterminate their peaceful planetary neighbors, the Zeons. What's worse, John Gill has made himself the Führer!

Eventually, Kirk and Spock find a way to get to Gill. When they reach him, they discover he’s been drugged into a stupor and is little more than a literal figurehead. Deputy Führer Melakon is the real power.

Why It’s Conservative

On its surface, you might think a story about Nazis is left wing. After all, Hollywood wants you to believe the Nazis were a right wing phenomenon equivalent to Libertarianism/ Conservatism. This is laughable, as the national socialist Nazis were everything the left claims to love. Yet, many people still ignorantly accept the idea the Nazis were rightists rather than leftists because that’s what they’ve been taught by leftist teachers. So it shouldn’t surprise if a show about Nazis was meant as an attack on conservatives.

But “Patterns of Force” isn’t actually an anti-Nazi story. Rather, it’s a warning against the idea of the “benign” totalitarian government. To see this, we need only look at the episode’s payoff scene where Kirk questions Gill after McCoy counteracts the drugs given to Gill. Kirk angrily demands to know why Gill violated the Prime Directive (non-interference in alien worlds). Gill answers that the Ekosians were a divided people and Gill thought he could unify them using the Nazi model. Kirk then asks why Gill picked the Nazis, who were cruel and murderous. Gill (with an assist from Spock) explains that the Nazis, while ruthless, were highly efficient and highly organized. Gill believed he could recreate the good parts of Nazi Germany without the bad parts by being a benign dictator. Here's the transcript:

KIRK: Gill. Gill, why did you abandon your mission? Why did you interfere with this culture?
GILL: Planet fragmented. Divided. Took lesson from Earth history.
KIRK: But why Nazi Germany? You studied history. You knew what the Nazis were.
GILL: Most efficient state Earth ever knew.
SPOCK: Quite true, Captain. That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.
KIRK: But it was brutal, perverted, had to be destroyed at a terrible cost. Why that example?
SPOCK: Perhaps Gill felt that such a state, run benignly, could accomplish its efficiency without sadism.
KIRK: Why, Gill? Why?
GILL: Worked. At first it worked. Then Melakon began take over. Used the. Gave me the drug.

This is not a liberal message. To the contrary, it is a fundamentally conservative message.

Liberals desire powerful government. They believe that even totalitarian regimes can be good so long as they are run benignly. Indeed, you’ll often hear liberals suggest that we should suspend things like rule of law and free elections or give the state tremendous power so it can achieve some supposedly noble goal that can’t be achieved the legal way.

Conservatives, on the other hand, know you cannot give power to one person without taking away freedom from another, and they understand that what sounds like benign power to some is tyranny to others. They also understand that when too much power is given, tyranny will always follow. That’s the point of Lord Acton’s most famous quote: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

This difference in belief is the core or fundamental difference between conservative and liberal thinking.

And while it is true that many liberal stories involve people fighting against oppressive governments, it is important to note that they rarely (if ever) criticize the concentration of power. Instead, they merely attack those who would misuse the power, i.e. those who would use the power for purposes of which the liberals don’t approve -- this is why oppressive governments in liberal stories are always police states, military dictatorships or theocracies. And in many cases, the resolution of the story involves the replacement of the evil government with a benign council of experts or bleeding hearts who will then use that power “to help people.”

“Patterns of Force” rejects this as faulty logic. It warns that you cannot have a benign dictator. It warns the problem is the concentration of power itself because the misuse of that power is inevitable. And no matter what the intentions may be for the creation of the state, the very concentration of that much power will attract someone who will misuse the power for evil.

And that makes this a fundamentally conservative message.

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