Hollywood Has Seen the Enemy...Avatar's success had nothing to do with its gassy pantheistic blather, but try telling Hollywood that.
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
blather, but try telling Hollywood that.
By Jonah Goldberg
National Review Online
Friday, February 5, 2010
It's Oscar time. Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- I haven't
seen anywhere near all of the contenders. For that reason alone, I
can't write an Oscar column. Then throw in the fact that I think the
Oscars are one of the most overhyped events in American life. They're
almost as bad as the Grammys were when they were still around.
Wait, they still have those? Really?
OK, well, the Oscars are still overrated.
But I do love movies, and I'm fascinated by what they say about
American life. Of course, movies don't always reflect or articulate
what moviegoers are thinking. Often they merely express what
Hollywood thinks Americans are thinking or what Hollywood thinks they
should believe.
For instance, over the last decade, Hollywood has unleashed a stream
of high-profile films directly or indirectly about the war in Iraq.
Nearly all of the polemical anti-war films bombed. Robert Redford &
Co. were desperate to remake Coming Home and other anti-war films,
but Americans weren't interested. The few war movies that did well
pretty much avoided the sort of preachy jeremiads you'd expect to
hear at Susan Sarandon's book club. For instance, The Hurt Locker --
nominated for Best Picture -- largely ignores the debate over the war
and instead tells a gripping story about our troops' heroism. The
Kingdom, another War on Terror movie, was a hit despite the best
intentions of director Peter Berg, who wanted it to be a parable
about the cycle of violence. It succeeded because it was a good
action movie that depicted Americans as heroes.
It's a bit funny, then, to hear some people claim that Avatar, with
its cartoonish environmentalism and hackneyed attacks on the military
and those evil corporations, is proof that Americans love serious
left-wing preaching with their popcorn. "For years," writes Patrick
Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times, "pundits and bloggers on the
right have ceaselessly attacked liberal Hollywood for being out of
touch with rank and file moviegoers, complaining that executives and
filmmakers continue to make films that have precious little resonance
with Middle America." The last laugh is on them, cackles Goldstein,
because Avatar "totally turns this theory on its head."
I'm sure Goldstein's right. No doubt James Cameron could have made
Avatar for $300 million less and still made a fortune. After all,
audiences didn't need the 3-D digital magic, explosions, giant
aliens, or spectacular backdrops. All they wanted was an extended
lecture about the evils of corporate America and the cruelty of the
military, and some gassy pantheistic blather about the need to get
back to nature. Why, Cameron could have simply recorded a poetry jam
at Barbra Streisand's house and still put out the highest-grossing
film ever.
Goldstein's effort is a good example of how critics and historians
want to impose significance on films that may not be there.
Early Cold War movies from the 1950s rank pretty high as targets for
film-school vivisection. For decades, film historians have insisted
that Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is a thinly veiled (and
paranoid) allegory about Communist infiltration. The movie ends with
the protagonist screaming directly into the camera: "They're here
already! You're next! You're next!"
The funny thing is that the filmmakers never saw it as an allegory
about anything.
That doesn't mean Body Snatchers didn't reflect Cold War anxieties.
But it's a good reminder that filmmakers aren't always aware of their
inspirations and that sometimes the best way to articulate a larger
message is to not try to.
Indeed, when Hollywood tries too hard, it usually comes out lame. The
original Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) was driven by a fear that
the Cold War would turn hot and mankind's propensity for violence
would destroy the world. The 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves -- playing
yet another emotionally impaired, semi-stupid, quasi-robotic savior
figure -- was a predictably lame lecture about how humans (i.e.,
Americans) are bad stewards of the environment. It wouldn't have been
so annoying if it weren't for the fact that the same movie is made
nearly every year.
Since the end of the Cold War, Hollywood has been in desperate
pursuit of enemies. You'd have thought that 9/11 would have provided
a great opportunity for Hollywood to find a worthy enemy. But it
turned out that moviemakers were more comfortable depicting jihadi
terrorists before 9/11 than after (rent The Siege and Executive
Decision if you don't believe me). They've tried (and retried)
aliens, drug kingpins, bad weather, and the always-enjoyable zombies.
But, with a few exceptions, Hollywood is still most comfortable with
the idea that the enemy is really us.
- Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and
the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American
Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. � 2010 Tribune Media
Services, Inc.
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http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YTk4MDRjZjBiNGU3YzlmMWIwNTQ4MjU5ZTM5MGZiYzI=
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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RichA
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Avatar's success had nothing to do with its gassy pantheistic
> blather, but try telling Hollywood that.
>
> By Jonah Goldberg
> National Review Online
> Friday, February 5, 2010
>
> It's Oscar time. Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- I haven't
> seen anywhere near all of the contenders. For that reason alone, I
> can't write an Oscar column. Then throw in the fact that I think the
> Oscars are one of the most overhyped events in American life. They're
> almost as bad as the Grammys were when they were still around.
>
> Wait, they still have those? Really?
>
> OK, well, the Oscars are still overrated.
>
> But I do love movies, and I'm fascinated by what they say about
> American life. Of course, movies don't always reflect or articulate
> what moviegoers are thinking. Often they merely express what
> Hollywood thinks Americans are thinking or what Hollywood thinks they
> should believe.
>
> For instance, over the last decade, Hollywood has unleashed a stream
> of high-profile films directly or indirectly about the war in Iraq.
> Nearly all of the polemical anti-war films bombed. Robert Redford &
> Co. were desperate to remake Coming Home and other anti-war films,
> but Americans weren't interested.
The same "people" who created monsters like American/Freedom hating
communists (and indirectly, the Nazis), crazed environmentalists and
the hippy horror of the 1960's have the same genetic make-up as those
in Hollywood now. Their job, to destroy the West, is never over, and
they'll keep at it. When a movie like, "Swimming to Cambodia" makes
$300M, I'll believe they are in-key with the mainstream of America and
we know that will never happen.