Rightards havin' a hissy fit about "Avatar"
Harry Hope
http://salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/01/05/the_conservative_backlash_against_avatar/index.html
Tuesday, Jan 5, 2010 12:12 EST
Conservative backlash against "Avatar"
A right-wing nightmare: The free market has spoken -- anti-American
lefty green propaganda sells!
By Andrew Leonard
A movie as big as "Avatar" deserves more than one blog post,
http://salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/01/05/the_conservative_backlash_against_avatar/index.html
and I'm afraid I just can't resist poking at the hilarious spectacle
of conservative movie critics launching into thermonuclear hissy fits
at the anti-American, greenie pagan leftist propaganda embedded in the
politics of James Cameron's epic.
The Los Angeles Times has a great story by Patrick Goldstein rounding
up the outrage.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-bigpicture5-2010jan05,0,5932910.story
To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be
an understatement.
Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing
film essayists, blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of
a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches
that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises ... Think of
'Avatar' as 'Death Wish' for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist
revenge fantasy where if you ... hate the bad guys (America) you're
able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all."
John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's film critic, called the film
"blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever
seen."
He goes on to say:
"You're going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the
movie's politics -- about how it's a Green epic about despoiling the
environment, and an attack on the war in Iraq ... The conclusion does
ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the
hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism
-- kind of. The thing is, one would be giving Jim Cameron too much
credit to take 'Avatar' -- with its ... hatred of the military and
American institutions and the notion that to be human is just way
uncool -- at all seriously as a political document. It's more
interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard issue
counterculture cliches in Hollywood have become by now."
My first response to these nitwits is to wonder whether any of them
went to see either of the "Transformers" movies, both of which kissed
American military ass with about as much love as anything this side of
John Wayne's "The Green Berets."
There has never been a shortage of big budget Hollywood blockbusters
aimed at making the U.S. look good.
The only thing deeply rooted in Hollywood is a desire to maximize
ticket revenue.
And that's what really got conservatives in a pickle.
Big government socialism is not rounding up moviegoers and lining them
in front of 3-D-equipped theaters.
Individuals, acting on their own desires, are plunking down their
cash.
This is the free market in action.
Simplistic left-wing environmentalist propaganda, as realized by
Cameron, turns out to be spectacularly popular!
Ouch!
That's gotta hurt.
For right-wingers convinced that a cap-and-trade mechanism to restrict
greenhouse gases is an affront to American values, it must be
extraordinarily galling to see the explicit environmental message of
"Avatar" embraced so heartily.
A cynic might point out that the real attraction of "Avatar" is not
the politics, of course, but the spectacle.
Just as I had little problem ignoring the military worship in
"Transformers" and managed to have a lot of fun watching giant robots
bash each other into smithereens, most moviegoers are probably more
transfixed by "Avatar's" amazing CGI special effects than by the idea
that the military-industrial complex is a natural-born planet killer.
But what to make of the fact that a movie that portrays a very
American-looking military in a profoundly unfavorable light is
explosively popular with audiences all over the world?
The Wall Street Journal reports that "Avatar" is already the most
successful movie ever in Russia, and is drawing huge audiences from
France to Brazil. "Avatar" has cleared $350 million in ticket sales in
North America, but $670 million internationally.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704350304574638672662549250.html
Anti-Americanism sells -- everywhere.
Maybe instead of ripping their hair out at the tragedy of the mass
enthusiasm for this "'Death Wish' for leftists," conservatives should
be trying to figure out just how such a thing came to pass.
_____________________________________________________
Hilarious
Harry
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
wrote:
Goddam rightwing idiots
You know, in a movie, sometimes when a cat walks across the screen, it
means that a cat just walked across the screen.
VFW
did you visit this You Tube
feature?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBDgSsCxik8
the world w/o humans or government
--
Hint; Enjoy the moment !