Poliwood: With The Avengers Has Hollywood Rediscovered Patriotism?
Lionel Chetwynd and I have been taking a hiatus from Poliwood until recently. Perhaps we were getting tired of the sound of our own voices.
But that was then and this is now and we’re back with a revitalized and we hope (not to be confused with the Obama brand of the same word) a better show. It has a more rigid format – first television, then film and then… here’s the new, new part… an ending segment by Matt Atchity, Editor-in-Chief of Rotten Tomatoes. Matt’s a cool guy with a cool eye on what’s coming out in the cinema. He gets to see all the reviews early. (Hey, someone’s got to read them.)
Anyway, the second of the new shows is up now – The Avengers: Has Hollywood Rediscovered Patriotism?
You can see the YouTube above or check it out on PJTV here. Let us know what you think. Any improvements – we’re game. Also, suggestions on movies or television shows you would like us to discuss.
Cross-posted from Roger L. Simon’s blog.
Where you brought up the politics or lack of it was interesting and somewhat nuanced in the sense that you talked about the fact that sometimes what a thing is NOT is as interesting as what a thing IS.
In this sense, I took your meaning to be that there was no politically correct struggle within the film to enable, well, PC. The film simply tried to effortlessly depict what the Avengers are and do and left the PC mostly by the side of the road.
What’s interesting about that is what it means about where we’ve come to in the world of PC America. By that I mean we can feel good about ourselves, not by promoting that fact, but simply by not promoting a PC narrative – quit saying we’re bad and it turns out we’re not. So, what the Avengers doesn’t do, is what it does. This suggests that our true nature, once the PC veil is thrust aside that depicts America as a racist and bigoted entity, is a much healthier one than the supposedly more healthy one of PC and social justice and Rainbow Coalitions. The Avengers has diversity – of talent, and talent resides where you find it, not where you want it to be – certainly not in skin.
When the chips are down, who you gonna call? Not someone with high cheekbones, not Ghostbusters, but the best man, or woman, or gay, or whatever, for the job. If that’s true, we don’t need to stick stereotypes in the promote reality.
Well if one is going to quibble, we find the reason for Loki coming here, is because SHEID is using the Tesseract for Weapons technology, what sparks Stark
and Banner’s anger, although ?Fury insists it’s a defensive technology, akin to the Stargate and the Gou’ld.
I’m baffled by Simon and Chetwynd referring to Lord of the Rings or Tolkien in general as glorifying the Norse gods, or somehow in philosophic accord with Heidegger or Nietzsche. “Tolkien wrote to the Jesuit Father Robert Murray in 1953: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” Like his friend C.S. Lewis, Tolkien saw Christianity as the only possible counter-force to the modern neo-paganism of the West. Tolkien’s mythos involved one God, Eru (“The One”), and his angels (Ainur), consisting of Valar and Maiar (analogous to seraphim and cherubim), some of whom are fallen, namely Melchor (analogous to Satan) and his servants (demons), such as Sauron. Such fallen Ainur seek to be worshiped by men as gods, but they are false gods. This is compatible with Catholic doctrine (“the Christian Scriptures declare that all the gods of the Gentiles are demons” -Catholic Encyclopedia), the Douay-Rheims New Testament (“the things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils” -1 Corinthians 10:20), and with the Septuagint and Vulgate: “all the gods of the Gentiles are devils (daimonia, daemonia)” -Psalm 95:6. Carpenter suggests that the Lord of the Rings is an extended meditation upon the Lord’s prayer, with its themes of the Fall, temptation, forgiveness, salvation — even “our daily bread” (Lembas).