How Not to Watch a Movie
No, really. I love "Crash." It's so... multicultural!
When I went to college, I was living proof of Allan Bloom‘s famous assertion that: “almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative…” Then I read Dostoevsky’s great suspense novel Crime and Punishment and the relativist barrier to wisdom was blasted out of my head by the book’s insight and dramatic power. It was that novel, as much as the Gospels themselves, that set me on the road to Christ and eternal jolliness. Years later, when I had entered a period of philosophical atheism and was reading various atheist writers, I came upon the porno-philosophic work of the Marquis de Sade, from whom we get the word sadism. The combination of his unassailable moral logic and his dramatization of the psychopathic results of that logic made me realize that moral atheism could not ultimately be defended. Seeking to confirm my belief system, I destroyed it.
The point is, we should at least now and then look to cultural works to change our minds not to sit there nodding at us like so many bobble-headed dolls. Has that approach led me down some wrong roads from time to time? Sure it has. Nietzsche’s hypnotic; Freud’s convincing; Hemingway’s cool — I went some way with each of them for a time. But even error strengthens you in truth ultimately, if you keep your mind and heart open, because in the end you not only wind up knowing what you think but why you think it. As a result, with luck, you reach a point where you can be convinced, but not seduced, where you’re open-minded but not empty-headed — a consummation devoutly to be wished, as Snooki or someone once said.
Miss Dargis and her leftist ilk may be beyond help. They don’t know what they don’t know. But for the rest of us, in my humble O, art should be a playground for the soul. We don’t need to argue with it. We can lose ourselves in it and trust we’ll still be there when we get back.
Cross-Posted from Klavan on the Culture
No matter what you do; no matter how you try to manipulate or “fix” it, comic book superheroes are (like heavy metal music) a white boy phenomenon.
Saying “Blacks were kept out of it,” just doesn’t cut it. Blacks were kept out of night-clubs, so they made their own, and whites flocked to them. Blacks were kept out of baseball, so they made their own league and proved themselves.
Blacks weren’t represented in superhero comics and… they didn’t care.
The heros of comic books taught right and wrong, inspired readers to strive and be better ourselves. You cannot be a hero if you are being told you are a victim and powerless. Even today the “heros” of the civil rights movement do not ask their colleagues to be more to achieve more but instead complain as a victim of an invent that never happened to them.
Metal is a “white boy phenomenon”?
Ever hear of Living Colour?
http://www.theroot.com/views/loud-and-living-colour
Thank you, Mr. Klavan. I have to admit (guiltily) that I loved the movie Avatar, despite its anti-technology slant and idiot glorification of The Noble Savage. I loved it for its technical marvels of believable CGI (kind of ironic, no?), its beautiful world-building, its scifi notion of transferring personalities into avatars, heck, even for the sappy romance. Nice to know I’m not some ideological traitor.
There are lots of movies I’ve enjoyed while mentally deleting certain political viewpoints I don’t agree with. If the movie is well structured and well acted, as you said, it’s probably worth watching for other things than just a narrow viewpoint.
That said, there are some movies I avoid because I know they’ll make me angry. Super hero movies aren’t usually among them.
“Movies with a Message” are acclaimed as wonderful by those who are pro-message, regardless of scripting, direction, asthetic qualities or anything else. As I recall, turn of the century (19th to 20th) filmmaking already had captured the hearts of those who saw the value of ‘sending a message’ along with the entertainment bait. That message was supposed to be uplifting per the Hollywood Production Code and the Hayes Office which led to some pretty bizzare script modifications in adaptations of classic print form art. The Canterbury Tales, Scheherazade, the Decameron have all been Bowdlerized to one degree or another.
Leni Riefenstahl made some beautiful, memorable films, if you could get past the message.
The Hollywood RED Witchhunt, Black-listing of world class artists for fear of content and the blatant adoration of fourth rate flicks because they carried the ‘right’ message are but a few of the contentions. Come to think of it, an overwhelming majority of what we call classic Black and White films from ‘Birth of a Nation’ to Hal Roach’s Rascals and Our Gang comedies could not be made today because they would offend some segments of todays society, although they accurately reflect the times in which they were made, or which they were set.
How many ‘Blacksplotation’ films of the sixties and seventies are even available today in current formats? How is the current Rating System any different from all the previous censorship scams? How can Artistry, Content, and Message be resolved as independent parts of a work of Art? Which part should I look for, Entertainment or Message?
Why does your critique raise in me more questions than answers?
To borrow from C. S. Lewis, abandoning tradition and embracing pop culture puts a person in the position of suffering “the degrading slavery of being a child of their times.” This “playground of the soul” argument w/r/t art may not get you too far in a world where the wine and brie crowd can stand around a crucifix in a jar of urine praising the genius, imagination, and courage of the perpetrator.
I agree…and despite Klavan’s eternal jolliness, “We can lose ourselves in it and trust we’ll still be there when we get back…” sometimes one overestimates their strength(s), and can’t come back.
There’s a term that applies from the Bible, it’s “a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”
Ship-wrecked faith is all it is.
One of my all-time favorite movies was “Doctor Strangelove,” despite its anti-military message. Satire is a more powerful way to make a point than to hit it seriously. And Kubrick was never more brilliant than in this production.
As for the comic books, DC Comics did try to appeal to female readers when they introduced the Wonder Woman character in 1941. Its creator, William Marston, seriously intended to portray a strong female role model for girls. And a TV series based on her, starting Lynda Carter, garnered respectable ratings for a few years.
Though even Wonder Woman had a largely male readership in recent decades. Probably due to her assets.
I was just formulating a comment saying, I have tried to watch Marxist propaganda films but couldn’t stand them, when I read your comment on “Strangelove.” I liked that film very much, though I hated the blind stupidity of its message. The sacarism evident in the statement: “In order to have peace we must make war” cannot alter the fact that the statement is often quite true.
Funny this should come up! My son and I had breakfast this morning. We were both talking about how we cannot stand Stanley Kubrik movies. I went on and on about how much I hate Dr. Strangelove. From the opening frame, the smug superiority of Mr. Kubrik just oozes forth. There is no humor, only disdain.
My son told me about a cheap trick Kubrik would use in his films to foster the appearance of genius. Kubrik would lift images from the books that he was turning into “art” and deliberately not explain what the images meant, even though the books explained the images fully. Intrigued film lovers would then ponder and pontificate endlessly about what Kubrik could possible have meant by these aritistic flourishes when all they had to do was go back to the books and read the explanations. The genius, Mr. Kubrik himself did not originate the image, the authors did, but the Brie crowd would cluck their tongues in intellectual wonder at the brilliance and the audacity of the filmmaker.
It is also interesting to note how many authors of the books to which Kubrik gave his full treatment, hated the resulting films.
The difference is in going to the movies to be entertained vs. experiencing culture. Both are equally valid ways of approaching the movies.
“…a bunch of white dudes, as in “The Avengers,” will save the world…”
One of the white dudes turns green so that makes him multi-cultural.
And another was a Russian woman. I’m wondering if the NYT critic even bothered to watch the movie.
BTW, Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow is one of my all-time favorite Marvel characters. She’s “hung with the big boys” for almost half-a-century, and her only actual “super power” is an apparent immunity to aging. He primary means of “hanging and banging” is being a homicidally-effective hand to hand fighter (without super-strength), as well as is being a crack shot with almost anything with a trigger at one end and a bullet coming out of the other.
As Denny O’Neil once said about Batman over at DC, she’s what anybody could be if they concentrated on being really smart, really athletic, and really, really scary.
cheers
eon
Puny critic, hulk smash. (who reads the times anymore?)
I guess Nick Fury is screamingly white? The guy who runs SHIELD?
Looking for some kind of core logic in the diatribes of the lost will never result in an individual understanding of what drives them to say what they say. But I can probably take a short stab at it. Here’s what drives them:
Fear.
Fear of non-conformance. Fear of not appearing to be hip to the jive. Fear of being left out of the Kool Kids Klub ™. Fear of having to question, and re-question, one’s core beliefs, so one can defend them, if necessary. Fear of having to perform the heavy lifting required to understand ourselves first, and then our external world, second.
It’s easy to adhere to an orthodoxy. That’s why so many choose it.
“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).”
Problem is, almost NO movies today praises God OR Country. The only recent movie out of all the movies released recently that was openly patriotic about America was “Act of Valor.” Other than that, nothing. And I don’t count “superhero” movies because they are NOT movies about real people. Basically, for years now it has been fashionable to trash America, especially the military. This was very true with all of the military movies coming out about Iraq during the George W. Bush administration. Even “The Hurt Locker” didn’t have very many decent things to say about the American military. I wish we had more movies that at least were proud of this country, or at the very least had some nice things to say about this country. But all you get is America bashing in this country or young stupid kid movies that don’t say much about anything. This is probably why a lot of adults don’t bother going to movies these days.
What a nice thought, and I am happy for the author if he can simply drift and enjoy the experience. Unfortunately, after many years, I simply can’t deny logic, reason and truth. When one rarely sees one’s own culture portrayed in a positive light it makes you sick at heart and frustrated. So I, in large part, have quit watching TV, with very rare exceptions and most movies are just not interesting to me. I am tired of being offended and paying for the experience. In otherwords, it is not that I am close minded, it is that I am tired of being pushed, pushed and told I am stupid and irrelevant and should be ashamed and guilty of my culture (and when I say culture I don’t mean race, as some do). I am also tired of being lied to, as history is rewritten and twisted to fit the current narrative. And the most important thing I am tired of is the effect all this ‘art’ is having on the culture at large. For people who are either, new to this country or young people new to the world in general, this art influences them; and not in a good way. Because of this art we, in this country, lack a frame of reference we can all refer to. We lack a history and a current story that we have in common. Truth, Justice and the American Way mean one thing to me and something totally different to someone else. Truth is now subjective, Justice is only Social Justice and the American Way is Big Government providing for everyone’s needs, wants and desires. I believe in the old objective Truth, Rule of Law Justice and the American Way of individual responsibility and caring for your neighbor. Is there any wonder the two sides can’t talk? No, art has let us down, then driven us into the dirt. It is not benign thought.
Well said.
Seeking to confirm my belief system, I destroyed it.
The point is, we should at least now and then look to cultural works to change our minds not to sit there nodding at us like so many bobble-headed dolls.
This is exactly the kind of logic I expected to find after seeing the caption on this piece.
There may be ideology in movies and TV programs. It’s often hard to tell because the general level of puerility destroys the credibility of any message there may be. When the vehicle is a piece of crap, you’ll never make it to the land of meaning.
As to dueling movie critics, well, they remind me of a bunch of kids fighting over which is better In-N-Out or Five Guys.
Post-modern Babbitry is a great phrase. I’ll use it!
Thank goodness we have people on our side who are so concerned that we might be becoming close-minded sticking only to the constant stream of conservative TV & movies that Hollywood puts out.
I agree, but there are several challenges with Hollywood nowadays:
1]Many actors are so vocal in their contempt for my values and lifestyle that it’s hard to watch them on screen, let alone financially support their work.
2] They’ve forgotten that you must have a good story into which the message is delivered. So many movies appear to have built a story around the desired message. Nolte has made this point on many occasions.
3]Stereotyping. Characters and plots are completely predictable. Christians are judgmental hypocrites. Soldiers are either poor, uneducated rubes (victims)or bloodthirsty killers. Southerners an dumb. East Coasters are super-smart and enlightened. If there’s a terrorist, a noble Muslim is wrongly accused, but it turns out to be a neo-nazi or US soldier or the CIA/FBI/NSA. Big business is out to lie, cheat steal, and/or destroy the neighborhood or environment. Scientist are morally superior and have no agenda but the truth. Etc…
I look at it this way: Even the occasional bad movie can make you appreciate what’s right with the good ones.
Me: “Prometheus sucked! It made no sense religiously or scientifically!”
Libarts type: “It wasn’t about making sense, it was about the experience!”
Me: “Like Avatar without the top-tier special effects and well-thought-out world?”
Libtype: “Cameron’s a hack! Prometheus was about implacable stellar gods and mankind’s dangerous yearning to know them!”
Me: “Like John Carter without the likeable and interesting characters?”
Libtype: “Andrew Stanton and the rest of the Pixar crew are all overgrown manchildren who fetishize SCIENCE! Prometheus was about the foolishness of nerdy science ‘experts’ who are blind to the ugly complexities and primal of human nature!”
Me: “Like Splice without the thematic focus and tight plotting?”
Libtype slipping into reactionary mode: “Joel Schumacher’s a gay Jew who loves campy comic book schlock! Prometheus, in the end, was about the dangers of desiring temporal immortality!”
Me: “Like The Dig without the human sympathies and happy ending?”
Libtype: “THIS IS NOT A VIDEOGAME FORUM YOU TASTELESS SUBMORON!” Couldn’t you see the symbolism in the murals? Didn’t you watch the Youtube backstory that explained Weyland and David’s motivation?
Me: “So it’s like The Avengers with a much greater dependence on a diehard nerd fanbase and backstory for the movie to make sense to the average viewer?”
Libtype: Joss Whedon’s a comic-loving goon hack! He could never get the religious symbolism shown in the mural and the faith of the main character!
Me: “Didn’t Whedon write Alien: Resurrection, which was pretty much all that religious symbolism and more, with a French director?”
Libtype: “Whedon didn’t have the guts to show a crucified alien, did he?”
Me: “So it’s like Neon Genesis Evangelion’s weird and creepy religious symbolism without the excuse of being Japanese?”
Libtype: “ANIME NERD!!!”
My pet peeve along the art/politics nexus is the fact that mid-century Russian art and architecture are celebrated, while German mid-century art and architecture are unmentionable in the field of criticism. Somehow Stalinism art is more artistic than fascist art. If art can exist beyond politics, then it is time to introduce the art world to German art, 1933-45. The paintings are kitsch, but I consider the architecture to be magnificent.
It’s only my opinion, but there are five things which since the late ’60s have ruined a lot of movies:
a) mockery of God & Christianity in general
b) gratuitous sex in movies
c) gratuitous violence in movies
d) totally unnecessary profane language
e) political propaganda & attempts at indoctrination
I find myself staying away from movies which include some, or all of these five things listed. I also find the majority of movies I have enjoyed were made prior to the leftwing revolution at the tail end of the ’60s. There were some big names who continued to make good, clean, entertaining movies after the ’60s ended, but not too many. John Wayne & Steve McQueen come immediately to mind. Both were outspokenly against gratuitous violence, sex, & profanity in movies. With the exception of Ali McGraw’s swearing in “The Getaway” Steve McQueen’s best movies are profanity free. I understand the point Andrew Klavan is making. I just find movies that contain negative content of the type I listed to be not worth the money. Gratuitous violence, sex, & profanity are insulting to the viewer’s intelligence. Ironically, my favorite movie of all time was made in 2003. This was worth the admission plus:
http://youtu.be/66ihy4_YatY
Hollyweird had no hand in this great film.
Andrew,
If someone calls me an a-hole I am going to be very much disinclined to patronize him or give him money.
Once Hollywood made movies that were powerful and thought-provoking arguments for the liberal point of view — at least the point of view at that time — in The Heat Of The Night comes to mind, just about anything from the ’60s with Sidney Poitier comes go mind — and the power of their arguments is demonstrated by the way in which what they were arguing has become mainstream.
Now, the left simply resorts to simplistic mocking. They can’t make an argument because they don’t have an argument. There is no foundation to the claims it tries to make today which can be summed up as “abortion is good,” belief in God is silly,, anal sex is joyous, and we need more government and regulation.”
The usual Hollywood movie is banal tripe, hung together with a little pc propaganda from time to time because the film makers have no original ideas. So out comes the evil military industrial patriarchy and or the lone detective fighting the racist corrupt city hall. Sometimes its the spunky girl detective. sometimes its the blood thirsty hot woman in stretch pants.
so, what new idea is it I am supposed to be learning?
I love that the one time Joss Whedon makes a film that’s based on characters developed by others, he’s suddenly become a “pre-feminist.” This about the man who gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly.
The problem with movies is that people lack courtesy and have the attention span of fleas.
What is the point of going to a movie, if you are going to ruin it for all around you with texting, and having the light from your phone destroy the mood created for the film.
And that says about all one needs to know about the culture. Self centered, egoists, that think the world revolves around them and if they aren’t in useless and idle communication the world stops. So sad.
Andrew, Thanks. I still find it hard to enjoy 30 rock with knucklehead on it.
30 Rock is an example a program I like which also has mockery of things I believe in. But it also has lots of mockery of things I mock. There is enough over the top kookiness to make me enjoy myself with this one.
My favorite show on tv is Curb Your Enthusiasm. It always stuns me how the very liberal Larry David is able to satirize so well many of the things he claims to support.
It would take just a whiff of some truth to reach Baldwin and David and they’d be ours. You know what they say about a liberal mugged by reality…