How Not To Watch A Movie
I see white people!
Excellent blog-o-person Christian Toto — by way of two of my favorite sites, his own home at Big Hollywood, and Newsbusters — brings to light these really kind of pitiful comments from New York Times movie reviewer Manohla Dargis. Speaking with fellow (and far superior) critic A.O. Scott, Miss Dargis says this about this summer’s patriotic mega-hit The Avengers:
The world has moved on — there’s an African-American man in the Oval Office, a woman is the secretary of state — but the movie superhero remains stuck in a pre-feminist, pre-civil rights logic that dictates that a bunch of white dudes, as in “The Avengers,” will save the world for the grateful multiracial, multicultural multitudes. What a bunch of super-nonsense.
Now most of us don’t turn to movie critics for wisdom, so it may be unkind to expect Miss Dargis to do much more than parrot the rote, conformist notions of the intellectual bourgeoisie of her time. This sort of thing is, after all, just the sort of post-modern Babbittry that has transformed Times culture reporting from an essential to an irrelevance. Miss Dargis has a job to do and I assume she’s in tune with her Timesean masters when she praises bad movies like Hoover because their ideology fits hers and attacks a fun summer picture like The Avengers because it doesn’t represent some correct racial and sexual mix or whatever. So what? If a critic is a lockstep leftist and there’s no one around to hear her, does she even make a sound?
So rather than reassemble what’s left of the poor girl after Toto got through with her only to rip her to pieces again, I’d like to point out that there’s plenty of this sort of thinking on the glorious right as well. One ideology is as small as another in this regard, and there are plenty of good folks I know who can’t enjoy a book or film unless it praises God or country or Mom’s apple pie (which is, admittedly, extra special good). It’s actually a rare critic who, like Big Hollywood’s John Nolte, will praise a work of art even if he finds its ideology foolish. But then Nolte has a big brain. It’s his wife’s, but still…
And look, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying art and entertainment that comfortably reaffirms us in our world view. If it’s good stuff, it’s good stuff. Art is meant to be a delight before it’s anything else. But there’s plenty of good and delightful work that goes against everything we feel to be right and true, and I think by immersing ourselves in its vision unafraid we actually benefit, sharing someone else’s view of life for a period and expanding our own. This obviously isn’t going to happen to the goose-stepping Miss Dargis, but for the rest of us — I don’t think we have to feel that our essential values are so fragile that a touch of disagreement will shatter them. Rather the opposite. If they really are essential and true, they will withstand the assault of even a great artist’s moral errors and become all the stronger for them.
Is this the New Klavan, talking about the important issues of art in general? If so, I dig it.
Conservatives, especially academic types, talk about diversity of opinion. I haven’t seen The Avengers, but from what I understand there was plenty of friction between the superhero characters. I’m guessing moreso than the international team of GI Joe. If you see patriotic veteran Captain America and war profiteer Iron Man as interchangable white guys, you’re missing a whole lot.
Besides, the Avengers are specific characters. The lineup changes occasionally, but the cast of this movie was determined years ago. If they added Black Panther to the movie, people would be complaining that the only one who didn’t get his own lead-in movie was the black guy. If they made a Black Panther movie, people would complain about the message it sends (he’s a brilliant, wonderful, perfect person who gets his super powers from a drug). It’s no-win.
‘play ground for the soul’ – I like that. I love to be entertained, even by stories that are fantastic. I do want them to be internally consistent, but I can suspend reality at the concession stand. However, I am getting tired of action movies that always make us the bad guys (Bourne series) when we can just as easily be the good guys (Act of Valor). Hollywood frequently forgets that it’s a ‘playground’ and not a ‘classroom’.
The left has bought Marcuse’s premise that art is politics and that through over the top sex and violence social changes can be made. Anything that doesn’t reflect that idea is hopelessly bourgeoisie. How narrow and joyless.
“joyless” is exactly the right word. joyless and humorless. how can all the great comedians be liberals, but most liberals you meet are utterly without any wit?
That quote from Comrade Dargis is unbelievable. Even my grandmother who never left the farm was never that parochial. Hard to believe someone that dumb could get a job in a major American organ like the NYT. It’s a testament to how vintage Pravda-like careers in America have become. Loyalty to a cult of PC trumps brains. That’s the type of thing you used to read in Mad Magazine as an example of a total, empty-headed brainless and shallow idiot.
I agree with what you are saying but I think conservatives have a different expectation than liberals do when we go to the movies. We expect a movie to take unnecessary pot shots at our beliefs, and are surprised when they don’t. I think that it may be less that a conservative viewer only wants to see films that reinforce our world views rather we are really happy that we get to watch a film that doesn’t insult us on a fairly personal level. Avengers as a case in point, there were a couple of scenes that were kind of nice to see in a mainstream American movie. I enjoyed when Captain America was about to jump out of the plane and was reminded that Thor was a god. Cap’s reply, “There’s only one god and he doesn’t dress like that.” I thought that was a nice shout out to religious people, rather than most every other movie that portrays religious people as really stupid or really bad.
Make a good piece of art and the values will shine through.
Dear Klavan on the Culture:
I don’t completely disagree with your premise but I’d like to qualify my agreement. My point is this, even great art can be so abhorrent that we recoil from it. And sometimes not-so-great art is lionized because it shocks. So let me give a few examples. I used to be a huge Coen Brothers fan. Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, Big Lebowski, et cetera. Sure I used to wince over the lefty digs and slanted portrayals of anything traditional. But still a big fan. Then I went to see No Country for Old Men. Now, I will agree it’s well made and has a compelling story but I haven’t come out of a movie so depressed in many years. Pure nihlism. And many years ago I was told by my movie-critic brother that Blue Velvet was a “great” movie. When I watched it all I saw was pathology and not even very interesting pathology. I don’t demand a happily-ever-after story every time. For instance, The Red Dragon is an incredibly grim book. No one can mistake it for Disney. But it doesn’t repel me the way Blue Velvet did.
So I guess my point is that just because something is declared “great” art doesn’t mean we’re Philistines if we think it sucks.
Regards,
John
I think you missed the point of Blue Velvet. It’s not about the violence, it’s about surrealism and psychoanalysis.
kacper:
I undoubtedly missed David Lynch’s point. But in the two movies of his that I’ve seen (Eraserhead and Blue Velvet) there seems to be a preponderance of mental illness and a minimum of plot or character. I’m sure there is an audience for this (in fact my brother is a fan) but I’m guessing that many will agree with my analysis.
Regards,
John
Count me in as one who agrees with your analysis. I remember seeing Eraserhead in the late 70s. It was a midnight screening and we were all in altered states of awareness, so I chocked up the disturbing nature of it to my baked state of mind. Fast forward three decades — forcing myself to sit it through it in its entirety again, sober, made me realize that it was actually a psychopathic piece of refuse. I guess that means I’m lowbrow, but if that is indicative of high art, I’ll wear my pedestrian taste as a badge of honor.
Ah, the late seventies, a magical time much like today, when Jimmy Carter lusted in his heart and Deconstructionists told us that someone sitting next to you in class could be considered a “text.” Luckily for me my interest in culture was mostly comedy and sci-fi. Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein were as high brow as I got.
Regards,
John
Know what you mean about Blue Velvet.
However, you missed the redeeming hilarity in that amongst the frenetic bizarre stuff a couple of times the young guy and young girl would look at each other and say solemnly: ‘It’s a strange world.”
Can’t argue with that!!
Jill:
It’s been a long time since I saw that movie. I don’t doubt there were some “good” parts. But maybe that’s because it’s extremely difficult to make something that’s 100% anything (good or bad).
Regards,
John
Dear Mr Klavan,
I’d just like to share my experiences on the matters you write about.
A great example of a beautiful movie with a poor moral message is Hanneke’s Chocolat. The heroine goes around having illegitimate children with gypsies; religious people are repressed bigots, and sad, sad, sad. But the film is pure poetry, it would be hard for anyone to deny that.
I spent a long time struggling with Christopher Hitchens’ arguments against theism, but when I finally managed to deconstruct them to the basics, apart from the verbal virtuosity, all I found was a bunch of non sequiturs, and a small point on totalitarianism. It was worth it.
I’m still an atheist, but de Sade is somewhere on my reading list, so we’ll see.
Damn, my English is so clumsy.
It’s not just liberals who don’t know what they don’t know. That is the natural state of man. My own theory is that atheism is a product of fear and light pollution.
Fear: None of us want to deal with our triviality in respect to the incomprehensibly vast universe that is our ohsotemporary home. None of us want to admit that there is no immortality in our accomplishments. We need to be “special and smarter than” in the here and now. Since a God we could fully comprehend would be, necessarily, a very small God and since we are specialandsmarterthan, there must not be a God. That’s the ticket. No God; nothing more special or smarter than meeeee! Stands to reason.
Light pollution: With the growth of cities, and the clustering of humans not immediately dependent on gathering/producing food as a livelihood, comes light at night. This reduces our ability to see stars. Difficult to stand under truly dark, moonless sky and say to one’s self, “Self, old son, I know it seems incredible but all this…(dramatic pause)…comes from nothing. Yes, one day Nothing out there in Noplace up and decided to become…(dramatic pause 2, the sequel)…EVOLUTION! And voila! Here we are. That’s science, you see? That’s rational. ‘Splains everything.”
And, Mr K, my own view is that the source of your jollity is your creativity; that the most visible aspect of God is infinite creativity; that if we are made in God’s image, it manifests itself in our ability to make stuff and take joy in the process.
I once asked my friend, the composer, David Noon, ” Dr. Dave, what’s the meaning of life?” and he replied without the slightest pause, “To create and give it away.” And he was grinning as said it. So we create, enjoy…in joy…, let go and create again. But know that no ‘thing’ lasts. Not even stars or galaxies. (“I am Ozymandias, King of kings…”) Have as good a time as you can. If possible, love your work. Do not loose sleep over the unknowable. And, in the end, it’s back to the source.
Atheism = light pollution
I love it!
Someone ought to inform Ms. Dargis that the leader of the Avengers is black, Ms. Romanov is a woman and the Hulk is green.
It still pains me to read of Mr. Klavan’s apostasy, from both Judaism and agnosticism. You can accept Christian morality without actually accepting the magic, ya know!
So to ease your pain, an unlikely alliance of Jews and agnostics (or would it have to be agnostic Jews) must try him for apostasy? Do agnostics recognize the existence of apostasy? Maybe they just would not be sure if apostasy exists?
Regards,
John
To Dargis’ credit, she gave high praise to The Dark Knight Returns. That movie will soon land high on a revised National Review list of most conservative movies ever . . .