The Lives of Other Inconvenient Truths
by Andrew LeighIt comes as no surprise that the liberal blogosphere did a collective spit-take over the National Review’s recent list of the top 25 conservative films of the past 25 years (full disclosure: the Buckleyites invited me to comment on one selection).
One lefty blogger wrote, “In the end, right-wingers cannot excape [sic] from the fundamental fact that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes — and therefore is inherently progressive.”
If true, then the left’s claim on the arts is about to weaken. Because the “assumptions” and “received wisdom” of the Establishment these days are predominantly progressive. After all, who is the Establishment now? No matter your ideology, surely you must agree that there’s nothing more tired and cliche than a “rebellious” artist infusing his work with the same old leftist bromides.
In sputtering reaction to the National Review’s shameless audacity, the Daily Kos, a leading liberal destination on the Interwebs, slapped together their own list of the top 25 liberal movies of the past 25 years. Their number-one choice? That sublime cinematic masterpiece, An Inconvenient Truth.
Interestingly, there was one overlapping title: Brazil, Terry Gilliam’s brilliant dystopian fantasy. Whether one pigeonholes Brazil as a liberal or conservative film probably boils down to whether or not one agrees with Jonah Goldberg’s thesis in Liberal Fascism. (One of the Kos picks, Thank You For Smoking, also earned a National Review honorable-mention.)
Looking over the Daily Kos list, however, one can’t help but notice that it seems relatively humorless (only two, maybe three comedies, versus five on the National Review roll) and didactic (six documentaries and five docudramas). So ask yourself, dear reader: assuming you had the means to watch DVDs, which group of movies would you rather have while stranded on a desert island?
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126 Comments
I imagine you know the answer you'll get from the majority of commenters. But from this leftie, the answer is: Frankly, neither. But if forced, I would take the list with the fewest Michael Moore films.
Happy?
I can't believe that the leftists at the Daily Kos have the chutzpah to say that right-wingers are pathetic. They read a top 25 list of movies from a site of the opposing ideology and they go ballistic. Basing all of your actions on what people on the opposing side do, doesn't that really defeat the idea of leftists being more independent and free thinking. If they are really free thinking then why do they let someone else's actions determine what they do? This post is the only time today where I've thought of these people, whereas with them they probably think of the NRO movie list every minute that they're awake. Devoting every minute of your day to hatred and vitriol is truly pathetic. They need to be happier. Oh well maybe a Conservative Republican politician will die soon. Then they can go back to celebrating another human being's death.
If progressives were really progressing they'd eventually stop being liberals.
4 Michael Moore movies (lies told for a liberal cause become truth). Several pro-terrorism movies (mass-murder for a liberal cause is a good thing). The left is sick.
Leftists can't seem to progress their own conceits, otherwise they would have figured out that being creative does not depend on your political views.
Which would explain why hollywood hasn't been very creative lately.
That's a pretty bad list. The Conservative list was pretty awful too, but the criteria for that list was what good movies are conservative, where this seems to be what liberal movies can we call good? Which makes for a list with a lot of loaded bullshit.
I'd rather pick my own desert island collection, thanks. And I can't think of a worse reason to pick a movie than the fact that it may (or may not) ratify my political beliefs. Or contradict the beliefs of another.
Some things are too precious to be reduced to political footballs.
Actually it would be interesting to try to put together a top 25 list of liberal movies from a conservative perspective. The 25 liberal movies that actually were persuasive or made you think. That would be an interesting follow up post.
Wow Algore's Oscar Winning Power Point got top billing? I AM SO SHOCKED!
I'd have a hard time thinking of entries, but that does sound like a good idea (didn't John N. do a Top 5 list like that on DHP?).
Of course, it wouldn't work on the other side. Conservatives — with apologies to Tull — can make the Left feel but we can't make them think.
Agreed. I wouldn't mind seeing a top 25 Conservative list from the Left as well (assuming they could be impartial enough to pick good ones).
I thought there were a number of very good movies on the Conservative top list, and a bunch more that I'd watch any time they were on the tube. I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing than watching Michael Moore or Al Gore. Just the fact that those two numnuts are "the standard" for so many on the Left should tell you everything you need to know about what's wrong with their party (and no, I'm not saying the Right is perfect either).
On Mr. Nolte's old website, he had a section in the DVD library called "Liberal Films That Don't Suck." They included:
-The Simpsons Movie
-Dr. Strangelove
-Philadelphia
-All Quiet on the Western Front
-Paths of Glory
-Breaker Morant
-Gallipoli
-To Kill a Mockingbird
-High and Low
-the Monty Python films
-Apocalypse Now
-The Grapes of Wrath
-Modern Times
Your mileage may vary, of course.
4 Michael Moore "docs" are telling, but I'd be more interested to see what are Liberal's top 25 most hated films of the last 25 years. Maybe NRO can do their own list to inspire the debate. I'll start it off (excluding the afore mentioned MM craptacuars): Lions for Lambs, Born on the 4th of July, Platoon, Casualties of War, Dead Man Walking, The War at Home, Syriana, Good Night Good Luck…. ah, I've just sarted and I'm getting a headache.
Brazil? That movie was maddening. What about Hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy? May as well have chosen the movie "Naked Lunch". It might help explain what the media is going through.
It would have to include:
Fight Club
Sweeney Todd
Titanic
Dr. Strangelove
and The Abyss
The fact that Daily Kos tried to imitate National Review brought this quote from the movie Heathers to mind: "Just another case of a geek trying to imitate the popular people and failing miserably. "
Well said… Perfect
(part 2 of 2 of comment)
American Beauty a film about a married man who is dead, who recounts to us how his midlife crisis got him killed for among other things, lusting after his daughter's friend, buying a Trans Am, much to the chagrin of his cheating wife whose only interest is in real estate, and being misunderstood by the Vietnam vet neighbor who we are shocked to find is a cruel, brutal man hiding his homosexuality.
American Beauty won Best Masterpiece for 1999. Sam received an Oscar for Best Genius Director, as well. Not bad. Not bad at all. But was it really that good of a film? Of course we heard all over the place how brilliant it was, and I must admit, there were some interesting plot twists, or reversals as screenwriters like to call them. But nothing that could not have been garnered from any screen writing course by Syd Field or anyone else who has taught screen writing. In fact, even actor Brian Cox , who played a screen writing guru in the film 'Adaptation' would have no trouble in navigating and charting all of the movie's shock moments with nothing more than a good map and stop watch.
Joe Bob Briggs, in his old movie host show Monster Vision used to display, at the beginning of each film he screened, a tally of items viewers were about to be subjected to. The lists usually included severed heads, bloodsucking monsters, flying brains, that sort of thing. Well, maybe we need an Uncle Sam Mendes Tally.
It might go something like this…
American Beauty:
1 jack-off scene by anti-hero (this opens the movie – remember, this won Best Picture),
1 failed marriage,
1 divorced neighbor,
1 drug dealer (hero figure),
1 hot teen lusted after by anti-hero,
1 precocious teen daughter who runs away with drug dealer.
1 cheating wife/entrepreneur,
1 Trans Am,
1 child beating and murderous homosexual Vietnam vet,
1 plastic bag flying.
1 Best Picture Oscar.
1 Best Director Oscar.
Now, with that kind of stuff, Sam received so many accolades, so much praise that it was a cinch he'd raise money for his next major release, The Road to Perdition. The only film that had reviewers reaching for dictionaries that year. For this one, Sam went back into American history and uncovered an underworld of Chicago when Irish eyes weren't smiling so much. Perhaps, with this lush mob story, he had dreams of becoming the next Francis Ford Coppola. Who knows? Nice try, good cast, but essentially a failure. Even Luca Brasi couldn't persuade me to travel down that road again.
Needless to say the words 'brilliant', 'masterpiece' and 'genius' were written and uttered in front of all the right people. Regardless of the box office disappointment, Sam was doing fine. It would take a lot more than that to keep a down man good. Let's face it, his heart was in the right place, he was determined to expose more negative undercurrents of American culture if it killed us. And who could blame him? In English culture, there was nothing to expose. Nothing in the long history of Great Britain that could be anything but great. No, America is where his dreams lay. Which also happens to be the focus or target of his latest picture: The American Dream.
Revolutionary Road is Sam's answer to the positive feelings Americans have about the American Dream. What is the American Dream? What do most Americans think of as the American Dream, the Golden Era? Why, the 50s, of course. Ike, fridges, TVs, dishwashers, peace and comfort, a nice home with a picket fence and a car in the garage. A pretty picture, indeed.
Well, not on Sam's watch anyway.
No, I haven't seen Revolutionary Road. But I can guess what road it's taking us on. I think I'll be revolutionary and take the other one.
-Robert Reilly
Tokyo, Japan
I don't accept the great art premise. The best films were made as commercial productions; factory output. The fact that passionate craftsmen made such things work says nothing of their politics.
"…the fundamental fact that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom…"
And by this standard "An Inconvenient Truth" becomes art?
Isn't that sort of backward? Documentaries might be important (or not) and they might be constructed with a measure of craftsmanship and skill (or not), but are they art?
If that's *art* then the liberals can have it.
I'll take the sort of "art" that gave us cathedrals and stained glass and the classic painters and Handel and Bach. And curiously… NONE of that was designed to challenge assumptions and received wisdom. No matter how many people read the statement I've quoted and tut their approval of it, and no matter how many people who consider themselves conservative rush to assure themselves and others that they *too* value art by that definition… the truly magnificent artistic accomplishments of humanity were not revolutionary statements.
Not that conservatives are opposed to revolution… but not for it's own sake, not tearing down what's been built, simply for the tearing down.
“In the end, right-wingers cannot excape [sic] from the fundamental fact that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes — and therefore is inherently progressive.”
This, of course, means that, since they can't be challenged, progressive have neither assumptions nor received wisdom. Glad to hear it.
Whoa…those guys at KOS have gone Full Retard. Never go Full Retard man…
Hear!Hear!See we do share some common veiws.
unfortunately,that seems to be the only setting at kos.
"great art challenges assumptions"
I challenge that assumption.
HOLY CRAP I JUST CREATED GREAT ART!!!!!
Ah, where would irony be without liberals?
nothing like a good kos hate fest.very classy group over there.whenever a lib friend starts with the old "hateful cons.crap"I merly direct them to kos'thread on the death of tony snow,then have them contrast it with LGFs'thread on ted kennedys' brain tumor/The differences are striking,and is clear for all to see who the hate filled folks really are.
Fight Club is one of my favorite movies. Despite all the plot holes and the gaping fact that Brad Pitt can't act, it's a great movie. No one plays a psycho as well as Edward Norton. Which of course begs the question: is he actually "playing" a psycho???
It would be better if the left "challenged the assumptions and recieved wisdom" of that pile of half-truths and outright lies.
The lost battalion
True grit
The longer version makes a LOT more sense. It's basically 1984 done in Gilliam's style of crazy.
In order to discuss the film Apocalypse now should we not link it to the line of books from which it supposedly eminates. Namely the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. These books are probably better described as "Classical Liberalism" which would be very much against the collectivist ideology of the neosocialist left that has arisen today.
The books basically dealt with the fact that once the veneer of society is stripped away that man basically reverts to an animal. It infers that we need an order to controll us.
As an "Individualist" I believe that men can find a moral course even in the breakdown of society. I think this is why we have developed morality and social order.
Can't remember the name of the film. It was a B film for sure. The plot was basically that all outlaw bikers across the nation get along and really are not bad people despite their rep. In reality racist conservative southern businessmen are responsible for telling lies about them in order to discriminate beacause the outlaw bikers (in the film) are all such progressive environmentalist. At the scene where two old ladies scream unrealistlcly when the bikers offer to help them fix their tires I walked out. It takes a lot to get me to walk out on a movie that I paid the ticket price too. Don;t remember the name but that is on the top of my list as the worst.
The best films were made as commercial productions; factory output.
Excellent point. Looking at the "magic" year, 1939, for movies, and knowing the history of the system at the time, it's impossible to believe these works were motivated by anything other than capitalism, with a smattering of patriotism thrown in from time to time. Yay, capitalism!
Good Point…..
And while we are at it what is the challange being made in a love poem. What is the assumption or received wisdom that is challenged. Or is Love now not a valid subject for art.
I did not get that memo………
what no" Ben Hur", "The Ten Commandments", "El Cid", "The Mouse who Roared", or "The Quiet Man"? Too old, too un-hip, too much patty fingers?
The odd thing is, I own most of the top 25 and though I have worked for years on the farthest end of the movie "biz" (merchandising), I have a rather small collection of personal films.
what about "Black Hawk Down"?
I concur and I think that these themes come through loud and clear in ApNow.
Unfortunately, I think that many conservatives reflexively reject ApNow because they have been told it's an anti-American, anti-Vietnam, "crazy military" movie. But that's a total misunderstanding.
The French soldiers make it clear the filmmaker was not anti-American. In fact, they beg (in tears) the Americans to fight to win, not to follow their mistakes. Moreover, they slam the leftwing peace-movement for its disloyalty and its disasterous effect on individual soldiers.
(continued)
At the same time, the overriding theme isn't that Vietnam was an evil war, but that it was fought in an "evil" manner — i.e. it was fought by politicians, not soldiers, and without leadership or dedication and without respect for the soldiers. Those are very conservative criticisms of liberal military policies.
Nor is it anti-soldier. The good guys are shown to be loving/caring for their men beyond all else, and they all maintain order in the ranks. Duval's character, who represent the gung-ho military, loves his men and also shows tremendous humanity with his protection of the wounded VC soldier. On the other hand, the bad soldiers are usually shown as drug addicts who deny all authority.
Uh, yeah…that's true and all. But these lists weren't "desert island lists." The author was just using that distinction to help sort out which list would be more entertaining or substantial.
The single most un-PC character in movies in the last 20 years. Rock on, Sgt Osiris!
Yeah, Karen Finley was trying to prove that Feminists can be appealing, if they're covered in chocolate. That was an assumption she was unable to challenge, so I guess it wasn't art.
"The Killing Fields"? The Kos Kids actually had the audacity to put "The Killing Fields" on their list?
Maybe I am wrong, but I thought that was the film that illustrated the horrific results of America deciding to abandon a region of the world to Communism.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend's mother. The mother was a former hippie and we were discussing the after effects of America leaving Vietnam. Her response: "they just all learned to get along".
I was speechless.
Man, this Right vs. Left feces flinging gets tiresome!
It depends on what you mean. If you're saying that name-calling is tiring (on both sides), then I agree. If you're saying it's wrong to point out the truth (especially when people have been lying for years to smear the other side), then I disagree. The truth is everything. Once it's out there, we can disagree about the where's, why's, etc…. Until we can agree on the facts, it will always degenerate into name-calling and attacks.
"In the end, right-wingers cannot excape [sic] from the fundamental fact that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes — and therefore is inherently progressive.”
Perhaps, however the black box has trapped all art inside a myopic and provincial environment unable to challenge assumptions and received wisdom and blinds those eyes to the world; art today is about getting that place in the VIP room and to get there requires conformity, any thought outside the black box carries the risk of being ostracized out of the groupthink which in turn removes the social network lining up to get into the VIP room.
Art is The Lives of Others, those so desperate to remain inside the black box will cooperate with the Stazi in order to maintain their place in the VIP room; the old poet thought he was bringing something new only to end up an outcast in a decrepit room full of forgotten people wasting their lives away in rot and misery
The poet is dying, diseased by its own provincial myopia held captive by the groupthink; the nature of this poetic beast is obedience to the master who doles out the food. Nothing more, nothing less.
Puppet movies, they don't require compliance. Perhaps this explains why Team America was so unusual and out of the ordinary.
I honestly will fight anyone who thinks Reagan was a win. Neocon's assemble! Let's fist up.
If my top ten was littered with fact-bending, boring, propaganda pieces, frankly, I'd be concerned with my taste and perhaps my sanity, as well. They call themselves "liberals" and To Kill a Mockingbird is nowhere to be found. Erin freaking Brockawich? V for Vendetta? Yikes.
Not all great art is made by left-wing libs. Check out songs by the Conservative Music Underground at: http://www.myspace.com/rogerweber
You'll see what I mean.
So many commenters made great points that I can't possibly respond to them all, so I'll just put my ¢2 in.
Art – real, actual art – has been murdered by leftism, not advanced by it. All you have to do to confirm this is to look at the garbage hanging in any art gallery or listen to the crap coming off of any concert stage: It's all pretentious excrement, and the "artists" and "composers" are dilettantes who have never mastered a single technique related to their respective crafts.
Perspective and light? Harmony and counterpoint? Who needs to learn those things when any given "expression of inner self" is considered, de facto, legitimate art? Hell, when anything goes, EVERYTHING IS ART, right?
Let me think about that for a second… mmmmmmmNo.
Sadly, these leftist, wrongly-so-called "progressive" attitudes have completely taken over the art and music departments at universities to the point that real, actual artists have exactly no place there anymore. In fact, if you have the audacity to become an autodidact and learn the traditional techniques of your chosen artistic field – since there is almost nobody left alive who can teach these things anymore, that is the only way one can do it now – YOU WILL BE REJECTED BY THESE INTOLERANT, TALENTLESS MORONS!
After being a professional musician for several years between my BM and MM degrees, I actually decided I wanted to compose music in a more traditional vein. Silly me, I held the abjectly errant view – from the leftist pseudo-artist perspective – that if I wanted to BE an extension of a tradition, I'd have to actually, you know, LEARN THAT TRADITION. So, I wasted my time in completely idiotic pursuits like studying the entire history of the evolution of traditional music and music theory. I went all the way back to Hucbald of Amand and studied – actually, I spent HUNDREDS of dollars buying texts so I could keep them and go through them multiple times at my leisure – virtually everything about traditional composition and theory. In a few short years, I had a music library that would put many colleges to shame.
So, imagine my shock when I returned to school only to find that I had wasted all those years and thousands of hours of effort studying to learn and understand how music was composed… or, at least, that's what my leftist pseudo-musician professors – who, strangely, didn't make their living composing or performing music – told me.
Well, I got the MM through sheer granite-headed stubbornness, but I was FORCED to withdraw from a DMA program because the professors were – as I deduced much later – embarrassed by this guitarist in their midst who could do things like, oh, I don't know, actually compose fugues in J.S. Bach's late Art of Fugue style. One even went into a spittle-slinging rage when I played a string quartet fugue for him, and called what I was doing, "musical archeology." Can you believe that crap? That's open and tolerant?
So now I just have to content myself with worthless things like being able to compose the greatest fugue ever written for solo guitar, because nobody needs or wants to know how to create real artistic music like that anymore. much easier – and much, much less work – to just kiss a leftist professor's ass to get your latest travesty played (Which may have taken an entire afternoon to cobble together). INFINITELY LESS SATISFYING, HOWEVER!
OK, now I'm ranting. LOL!
I would have to challenge a couple of those being liberal.
Breaker Morant is not liberal. It clearly draws a line between right and wrong (no moral ambiguity). That line is drawn when the government decides to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers to score political points (sound familiar Rep. Murtha?). Moreover, the film points out that sometimes war requires men to do rotten things and makes the point that you can't hold the individual soldier accountable the way you would a civilian. There's more, but those alone are themes that would make your typical Hufpo'r try to exorcise the Pentagon.
I would also argue that Apocalypse Now (the redux at least) is fundamentally a non-liberal film. Yes, on the surface, the military is shown as incompetent or crazed and Vietnam presented as a "bad" war. BUT, the overriding theme is not anti-military so much as it is anti-politicalization of the military. Moreover, the French are very pro-American and really bring home the evil of the anti-war left sabotaging the war effort — great speach about throwing grenades that don't blow up. Again, not liberal themes.
After finally getting a chance to sit down and watchit… I'd have to say DistrictB13 falls in the "liberal genre movies that don't suck". (Yeah, I actualy enjoyed the movie), even though the whole thought process behind it was liberal:
Put in all the classic left-wing miscasts about conservative beliefs:
Seal up entire sections of cities due to crime rates? "aka: Detainee camps"… check
Bad govt official who wants to blow up the problem: check
Corrupt cops who just want to "get by": check
One good cop who has to be shown by the super good guy that its' all a setup : check
Besides that though, I actually enjoyed the movie (I dont know why, I just did)
I thought that the 25 most conservative movies list was pretty sad, because there were so few to choose from. I couldn't come up with any that were better myself either.
But this is made even more difficult when we look at what conservatism means today vs what liberal means today.
Most "liberals" aren't. Many conservatives are classic liberals wanting to conserve liberal traditions, freedom of speech, freedom of (not from) religion, etc. A classic liberal can believe that abortion is murder and therefore wrong and still not be a religious zealot.
But seeing the Kos list reveals a lot to me, especially that it is dominated by documentaries. They still miss the point.
Documentaries aren't art, unless you are talking about artfully misrepresenting the truth via documentary, but that still is a different category. Many of the other movies they cited had an overtly political agenda and therefore were mediocre films at best. At least the conservative movies cited by NRO were not overtly political (they could not have been made in Hollywood in the last 25 years had they been).
Art transcends politics. If you take conservative and liberal and reduce these worldviews to their essence we get the "constrained view" vs the "unconstrained view" that Thomas Sowell writes about in Conflict of Visions. Theatre has been exploring these fundamental issues ever since it began in Grecian times.
Any film or play that has a goal whether explicit or implicit of pushing a political viewpoint is not art. It can't be art.
I would argue that every good tragedy is conservative.
"A Simple Plan" was a great tragedy. It explored a moral dilemma; something so morally trivial as keeping found drug money no one knows about, and the deceitful behaviour that inevitably must follow leads down a path of increasing abandonment of morals and ethics to subsequent horrors .
Both liberal and conservative believe in consequences when all is said and done. Liberals tend to call this karma. What is different is progressives conveniently apply a moral code retrospectively. IE if something bad happens to you, you must have done something wrong (even in a previous life!). They won't judge actions, results speak for themselves in their world (and again, maybe not in this incarnation). It is an elaborate ruse they weave for themselves
Progressives don't deny these things exist, they just don't want these things to apply TO THEMSELVES, and will work overtime to deny that it should apply to them. – because they have good intentions – because they are somehow better, etc.
Conservatives have a moral code they believe (living that code perfectly or not is irrelevant) people should live by to avoid negative consequences for themselves and others. In other words, conservatives believe all these things have been pretty much figured out.
The Kos list is quite unimpressive and many of these films operate out of a very conservative premise : that there should be justice. If there should be justice then there is wrong and right. That they believe they are personally immune from these things is the real issue.
And here I thought a documentary was supposed to … you know … document … what's there. Not bundle it up, cut it up and paste it in with your own opinions to make the reality of what's there look like fact and "wisdom " in order to try to trick people into challenging the reality they assumed was there.
Although, I do find it interesting that they put Brazil in their list too. It shows that as far apart as we are from the left, there is still one thing we all share: an inherent mistrust of strong, authoritarian government. As soon as they wake up from their drug-induced BO fetish, they may yet realize what they have done to this country. We'll all have to pray that by then it isn't too late for us to stand together. I posit that this shared mistrust is something we've drawn from our immigrant roots across the board. Even those of us with Native American blood have a reason to mistrust a strong government.
"In the end, right-wingers cannot excape [sic] from the fundamental fact that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes — and therefore is inherently progressive.”
What leftists and progressives fail to realize that art since its inception has been a capital venture. Early artists didn't paint, draw, or sculpt because they wanted to challenge assumptions. They wanted to get paid. (Or they wanted to please the gods; either way it was to enable profit or prevent profit from being lost.)
Here's an artistic irony: Art thrived in the Renaissance due to the excess capital citizens had as a result of the Black Plague. They were able to use this capital to invest in artistic commissions like the Sistine Chapel. This "trickled down" to non-religious paintings like <gasp> individual portraits. Soon, so much capital was being invested into the artistic community, they were able to abandon the idea of realism and venture into impressionism. They were able to abandon portraits and venture into landscapes. Slowly, art shifted from a reflection of reality to a reflection of idealism. Yes, this is progressive. But it could not have been progressive without capital and PROFIT!
Ancient Greek and Roman art follows the same pattern. Individual capital, the autarkeia economic systems, enabled those individual sculptures. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, "progress" only comes as a result of capital. Anti-capitalistic ideas are possible only because capitalism has allowed them to be.
I think that is a good observation, well done. What's interesting is, how do we help our liberal "friends" make the connection? It's as if they think a strong government is ok as long as it has their interests and ideology behind it. It doesn't occur to them that big government will have whatever/any ideology it takes to get BIG, then once it IS BIG is when the real totalitarian crap begins….basically, how do we get them to understand they are simply being used? Do we need to create a documentary? Hhhhmmmmm…
I think that, on balance, NRO's list actually has much better movies on it (come on, who is going to sit through Wag The Dog or Erin Brockovich in 2009?), but at least the Kossacks went to the trouble of picking actual liberal movies instead of deciding that random cool movies validate their political views.
a movie that nobody mentioned as conservative is called 15 Minutes with Ed Burn, not a great movie but definitely leans way right
Is it so awful to simply want a movie to be entertaining? If I had AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH as my only movie on a deserted island, I think I'd hang myself from the nearest palm tree.
http://the100mostannoyingthings.blogspot.com/
Great art reflects transcendent truths, even when the NEA–or the "establishment"– doesn't approve. Challenging "received wisdom" does not result in art if the received wisdom is, in fact, true wisdom. All it really does yield is confusion. And if "great art" generates confusion (which it doesn't), what does the "art" of a hack generate? Clarity? Enlightenment? Or is confusion the new "enlightenment"?
to be fair they had a much larger catalog to choose from.
to be fair,they did have a much larger catalog to choose from
Categorizing any list of "best" movies as Liberal or Conservative is difficult, because I believe the "best" movies are those that allow the human spirit, which is inherently conservative, to shine through despite the preconceptions of the producer or the viewer. I believe the following movies all had significant liberal components, yet I loved them because despite these aspects, they embraced conservative values while playing to liberal "talking points." In no particular order:
- Saving Private Ryan
- The Green Mile (all of the best Steven King have significant conservative and spiritual components; his best books and movies are so good good simply because they evoke truth, both the highest and lowest aspects of our nature, and again are thus inherently conservative)
- Shawshanck Redemption
- Forrest Gump (Read the book! Winston Groom; book was excellent, although I preferred Better Times than These)
- Butterfly Effect (Directors cut only)
- First Blood (again, read the book to see a more conservative view)
- Cinderella Man
- Unforgiven
- Road to Perdition
- League of their Own (I know; I almost choke thinking of RO'D and Madonna, but …)
- Stand by Me
- 4 Weddings and a Funeral (have to toss in a few comedies)
- Trading Places
- Caddyshack
- La Cage au Folles (Not the English remake)
- Gallipoli
- Apocalypse Now
- Field of Dreams
- Bull Durham
- Bladerunner
- Braveheart
- Last of the Mohicans
- Full Monty
- As Good as it Gets
- The Sixth Sense
took a while to get 25:)
Concur. If in fact “In the end, right-wingers cannot excape [sic] from the fundamental fact that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes — and therefore is inherently progressive.”, then all great art in the current environment would have to be conservative, because the "assumptions and received wisdom" predominantly are:
- Western Civilization is a disaster; primitive and/or different belief systems must be superior
- There are no good soldiers. They are either rapid animals, or victims who've been forced into servitude)
- There is no God and anyone who believes is a fool
- Socialism can work
- People need to be protected from themselves
- Everybody who is successful received some special treatment unfairly, and anyone who is not successful must be a victim
- Anthropogenic Global Warming is a proven theory
- There are no facts; only relative points of view and "feelings" (i.e. I FEEL like a woman; I must be…)
According to the thesis, in order for art to be great, it must challenge one of these assumptions.
Spot on! My grandmother died from a brain tumor and when I heard the news of Kennedy's tumor diagnosis, it hit hard (even though I don't like the guy) and I headed over to LGF to witness the reaction. I was absolutely sure that it would be an outpouring of good wishes for a full and speedy recovery and heartfelt pledges of condolences for his family. I was not disappointed. Conservatives have a lot of class and are filled with human compassion.
Very nice; thanks for posting the MP3:)
The saddest part is, if you walked up to any random person on the street and ask them what happened over there after we left, they'd be more likely than not to respond the same way. It blew minds in the Vietnam class I took in college when the instructor talked about Pol Pot and his thugs and the ideological cullings going on in Vietnam that created the Boat People exodus.
To the left, there is no "truth". There is a universe of "personal truths". Hence, relativism. There are no facts: there is no black; there is no white; there is only the many shades of grey.
Moreover, the point to this site is to open an avenue for conservatives to discuss Hollywood and ultimately to re-open Hollywood to conservative values. Kind of hard to do that if we can't discuss right v. left.
Loved your rant. And your fugue. Thanks.
Sorry. Clicked the wrong Post Reply button. Was for Hucbald.
Chris, while I agree that the left talks about moral relativism, let me suggest that they very much believe in absolute truth. However, they know that most people won't accept their version of it, so they hide behind moral relativism to weaken our "truths" (trying to make them appear optional or prejudicial). They then force their own truths in as a replacement through the self-censorship of political correctness, by shouting down those who would disagree, and by legal fiat (where they can get away with it).
Of course Reagan was a win. Before Reagan, the conservative movement was for cranks and William F. Buckley. He made it acceptable to be conservative again. He restored the country's faith in it itself, in its military, in patriotism, and in capitalism. He defeated communism. He crushed the stranglehold big labor had on the country. He gave us unmatched economic prosperity that lasted literally until 9/11. He reintroduced the concept of state's rights, which had disappeared. He reshaped the Supreme Court, taking it away from the looney left and leading it toward center right.
What more could you want from one President — especially one who had to deal with a rotten Congress that set out to destroy his nominees personnally and tried to block everything he ever did.
I think you have a good point. But, I think, you are making my point about the left and the universe of truths by saying that on the one hand they believe in universal truths while on the other hand they have their own version of it. But truth doesn't have versions. Their intention is to make rational thought untenable. I get a sore neck from shaking my head in disbelief whenever I have a serious discussion with leftists because, deep down, they don't even believe in definitions of terms.
And, thank you, for adding the bit about political correctness, which, to my mind, is the greatest plague of all as it enables the "up is down" mumbo-jumbo that makes any kind of honest discourse impossible.
@Liberal Top 25 list…LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL…….>!
I actually thought they were seriously joking. The fact they're taking that list seriously… LOL!
So the one movie in the past 25 years that best represents their party and ideologies is Al Gore's propaganda? Just one of the hundreds of billions of reasons to be proud of being a conservative.
While the National Board Review's list wasn't flawless, I would as sure as hell chose to watch all 25 of their films than the ones listed on that list.
On Terry Gilliam's Brazil…definitely a great movie, can't see how anyone can see it as a liberal film.
I actually like Erin Brockovich (call me a sucker, but the scene where she tells the sick woman about the court settlement gets me every time). I thought Wag The Dog was a POS, although it was funny in it's absurdity. On the whole, I wish people would tell stories where the story actually leads them, instead of starting with an ideological agenda, then finding a way to cram a story around it.
There's no reason a Liberal shouldn't be able to write a story or direct a movie that has Conservative principles (or vice versa). Only the shallowness of the individual determines their ability to tell a good story, free of their personal bias.
Thats actually a challenging question for me, since I'm a big fan of mocking terrible cinema. I always look forward to the next Michael Moore movie just for the perverse joy of mocking it relentlessly along with the knowledge the hippies are to freaking wussy to kick me out.
That said I'd have to take the conservative movies, if just because those are actually fun to watch more that once.
Hear hear, Andrew. Reagan converted me. At the start of his Presidency I was certain that he would cause nuclear war. At the end of his Presidency, I was sure that he prevented one. Now that's a turn-around in understanding. I was 19 at the time and had been raised by a family of Canadian leftists.
Thanks for the props. Seriously. It's hard not to get depressed when you've worked at something for twenty-plus years, gotten pretty darned good at it, and you think, "Where's the love, man?" LOL!
[...] the Post’s Ombudsman emerged to embrace the Will-ful deceit . And, for whatever reason, The Lives of Other Inconvenient Truths – bighollywood.breitbart.com 02/21/2009 It comes as no surprise that the liberal blogosphere did a [...]
Actually, I don't think that's correct. The left's political views are premised on a strong authoritarian government imposing various values on the people. When you see distrust of the government on their side, it is because the "wrong" government is in power or the "wrong" people are running it. When BO fails, they won't suddenly favor limited government, they will say that he was the "wrong" guy for the job or that we somehow undermined his administration (like we did to the poor Soviet Union, poor dears).
As for Brazil, the reason the right like it is because the understory is 1984. The reason the left likes it is because it was done as an anti-Thatcher rant.
Another example from their list is V is for Vendetta. While this may appear to be an attack on authoritarian government, note that the authoritarian government is clearly meant to be right wing — led by a religious nut who uses Nazilike imagery for propoganda. (Not to mention that the television commentator is a thinly veiled slap at O'Reilly, and the film repeatedly makes explicit anti-American and anti-Iraq war statements.)
Completely agree on the effects of political correctness. And I think you make a very good point. Political correctness is used as a way to make rational debate impossible. It twists logic, makes facts irrelevant and, more importantly, impunes the character of anyone who would lay out an opposing position.
I think it's no accident that the same people who bring us political correctness are the same people whose ideological kin in other countries (China, East Germany, Russia, Cuba) use secret police to punish thought crimes. PC is just a more subtle way of doing the same thing.
I also agree that your average, everyday leftist found in the wild seems to believe that they believe in differing truths, but if you push hard enough you will find a set of "truths" that they not only accept but will violently defend. The more doctrinare leftists, though, usually recognize that the whole moral relativism doesn't apply to their own truths.
Shows tremendous reasoning ability.
Chris said: "…because, deep down, they don't even believe in definitions of terms."
I have to agree with Andrew on this one. Consider postmodern deconstructionism.
There are people who write books that contain words with meaning to try to convince you that words have no meaning. This is utterly self-contradictory; it is self-refuting. As I writer, I have to ask: what's the point of writing if words have no meaning? The only answer is that there is no point to writing then, so the very fact that these PoMos write PROVES that deep down they do NOT believe the nonsense they espouse.
What they espouse is merely a tool. It's a tool used for them to get their own way. It's a very pragmatic tool, and the only way they can use it is to not think about it rationally. As a Christian, I believe this is simply an outworking of Romans 1:18–They suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
I think you've nailed it, my friend: they will violently defend the one truth of leftism: might makes right! The one, absolute, universal and ultimate truth to which left adhere is that truth flows from the barrel of a gun. (Mao Zedong)
I feel your pain, to quote a president who was a pain.
I think we have two prongs of "art" today. The first prong says art is indistinguishable from marketing. This would be the pop artists, who have no creative talent but can mime pretty well. The second prong would be the anti-marketing folks, who think that putting paint in your nose and sneezing on a canvas is art precisely because it's not marketable.
In both cases I think that people have lost something that you mentioned in your comment there, Hucbald. Namely, art is work. You work at it, or it's not any good. And neither pop artists nor the random anti-marketing tripe requires much work at all. It's the lazy-man's approach to "art."
Naturally, some people have more talent so it's less work for some than others. But even Mozart, who had brilliant talent, had to do SOME work to compose music. He didn't consider wind chimes to be an instrument, ya know.
Can I both agree and disagree? Everything you say is correct except that "the very fact that these PoMos write PROVES that deep down they do NOT believe the nonsense they espouse" is not. They do believe it because they are intellectually dishonest. Maybe I should say the do believe it as much as they can believe anything.
I don't do it often, but I have argued, hard, with leftists on occasion. Frankly, I don't often undertake the exercise because it's frustrating in the extreme. But when I have done it, I get down to the basic premises of the positions (granted, this can take hours) and I use their premises of one position against the premises of other positions. Long story short, when confronted with the contradictory nature of their positions they resort to arguments from authority and resorting to force (ie: when you want people to go against their natural inclinations, you must force them to bend to your will). Force (violence) trumps reason to leftists. Always has, alway will. Doesn't make it right, though.
I think, Peter, that we're all on the same page on this one.
Thanks!
I'll preface this by saying that I understand why you think the way you do, and I don't have much of a problem with it, nor would this be any reason for us to be at logger-heads
The reason I still disagree is because of philophy and psychology.
I agree that liberals are intellectually dishonest. The philosophical problem is that reality is real, and it doesn't change to conform to anything anyone wishes, dreams, hallucinates, desires, or (to quote a new pres.) hopes for. Thus, if a lion is coming at me in the jungle, I cannot wish it away–I have to deal with it. The liberal is a subjectivist who believes that he can wish it all away, but reality always asserts itself. That means that at some point, the liberal knows that reality hasn't changed–because he's been impacted by reality.
(part 2)
To give an example, someone once asked a man who believed there was no physical reality, "If you truly believe that the physical world isn't real, why don't you stand in front of this on-coming bus and prove it?" Of course, the subjectivist didn't take up that offer, because he KNEW that the physical world did exist.
In the same way, if a liberal does not act consistent with his belief at some point (i.e., a deconstructionist writing about deconstructionism as if words had meaning), then we can take it as evidence that that person really doesn't believe what he claims to believe.
(part 3)
And that brings us to the psychological aspect. Namely, people are able to self-deceive themselves, at least on the surface level. And I think on the surface level, you and I agree. That is, on the surface these liberals really do believe there is no such thing as meaning in definitions. But a surface-level deception doesn't get to the heart of the person. Internally, a person knows that he is deceiving himself–this is the reason for the angst and the cognative dissonance that comes about. It's also why they will respond with violence (at times) when the surface-level is exposed as a lie.
Psychologically, they WANT the surface-level lie to be true. And that's why they try to act as if it is true. But since the surface-level is something they created, internally they cannot escape the fact that they've supressed the truth and exchanged it for a lie.
So there is an aspect I agree with you on, but I disagree on the deeper part. Again, not in a way that I would want to make too much of a big deal about. But my own nature is to try to be as precise as I can be
For the record, these "Your comment is too long" things are killing me!!!!
I agree with everything you have said here. Therefore, I must not be speaking (writing) clearly. My apologies. : )
Four of the top seven in the Kos list are Moore's films. Ouch.
Absolutely. I can't believe how bad the Kos list is. Even the real movies (i.e., the ones not done by Gore, Moore, etc.) aren't very good. One reason may be the general decline in the quality of movies. Over at Dirty Harry's Place it was often noted that conservatives would usually be open to liberal movies if they were well done. The problem seems to be that these days filmmakers seem to want to pound the message into you rather than let it soak in as part of a well told story. As such, many of the really good liberal movies were made well before the 1984 cutoff date (and the same can be said for several "conservative" movies).
ScottDS, Thanks for looking this up. In reply to another post I suggested that most good liberal movies didn't make the 1984 cutoff. In an effort to avoid work I took your list and added the release dates. Only two of those listed made the cutoff.
-The Simpsons Movie 2007
-Dr. Strangelove 1964
-Philadelphia 1993
-All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
-Paths of Glory 1957
-Breaker Morant 1980
-Gallipoli 1981
-To Kill a Mockingbird 1962
-High and Low 1963
-the Monty Python films 1983 (The Meaning of Life, others before that)
-Apocalypse Now 1979
-The Grapes of Wrath 1940
-Modern Times 1936
Interesting you brought up Mozart, Peter, as he's so misunderstood – mostly because of the movie Amadeus – because I found a published version of his notebooks from when he was studying counterpoint with Padre Giambattista Martini. Mozart was about fifteen at the time, and the book was full of ridiculous fugue subjects, abandoned attempts, &c. IOW, Mozart was human!
The difference was, within a couple of years, he was better at counterpoint than Martini was. LOL!
Interesting you brought up Mozart, Peter, as he's so misunderstood – mostly because of the movie Amadeus – because I found a published version of his notebooks from when he was studying counterpoint with Padre Giambattista Martini. Mozart was about fifteen at the time, and the book was full of ridiculous fugue subjects, abandoned attempts, &c. IOW, Mozart was human!
The difference was, within a couple of years, he was better at counterpoint than Martini was. LOL!
I jumped the gun and responded to part two ahead of time. I apologize.
It looks to me like we are in complete agreement. (I once had a boss who called this phenomenon "violent agreement"). Insofar as that is the case, the thing we are, forgive me if I'm putting words in your mouth, beating around the bush about is that they are evil. Deceiving someone is bad. Deceiving yourself (denying your own mind) is evil.
The Daily Kos put Thank You For Smoking on their list? Don't get me wrong. I think it's a brilliant movie and very funny. I'm just wondering if they realize who wrote the novel on which it was based.
It does seem odd that their list purports to show how liberal movies are better "art", but they chose several films that are, essentially essays. I mean, sure an essay can be art, but rarely, and it certainly doesn't garner wide ranging respect. Where are the "art-art" movies? They weaken their case by citing to polemics.
I'd have had more respect for their list if they'd chosen Citizen Kane as their number one liberal movie.
Thanks, Andrew. Three places on the web I never visit: Kos, HuffPo, DU. My stomach isn't strong enough and I'd probably kill myself from smashing my head on my desk!
I think the funniest part of all is reading their comments. One guy couldn;t understand why we had Master and Commander on the list because it shows the horrible realities of war. It goes to show how little they really understand us. I'd find it interesting to see them write out what they think a Conservative really is. I was also laughing at the mindless anger in their comments. How dare we "claim" this movie or that because the director or the writer are liberal. Don't we know any better? It's like we're laying personal claim to these movies. So much ignorance of intent.
Just a response to the nitwit who asserted that "great art is inherently progressive." What nonsense! For starters, art is about emotion, not ideas. The ideas behind most– if not all– art are generally quite simple. What makes a piece of art great is its ability to make us FEEL the power of some fundamental truth of our existence.
For instance, there is the universally recognized fact that all men must die. A great work of art does not just baldly state that; instead, it makes us LIVE it. Since we are talking about movies, I put Saving Private Ryan is the category of "great movies about death." Ryan is NOT progressive, or subversive, or even particularly "new" in its ideas.
It is a fallacy (the fundamental fallacy?) of the Left that things must be "new" in order to be exciting, useful, real or true. This is the basis if their infatuation w/ "hope and change." The reality is that MOST new ideas are crap! And most art based on fads is also crap!
I put no great stock in "new," hence, my instinctive suspicion of all things "progressive."
One of the problems with the list was the limit of the past 25 years. I came up with MANY conservative films that were just too old to be included. I'm not sure, but I'd bet if we excluded the past 40 years, the conservative films would be in the majority… yes?
[...] The Lives of Other Inconvenient Truths – Big Hollywood [...]
"the fundamental fact [is] that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes."
If that were actually true, then Hollywood's biggest names would be fighting over the rights to bring back "Father Knows Best" and other shows from the 50s and movies from the 40s and 50s that portrayed America as a land of opportunity and the West's last best hope for survival. Instead we get Leftist propaganda that only reinforce the Left's view of its own superiority. How about just one movie that portrayed democratic capitalism and free enterprise as noble endeavors instead of the last refuge of greedy scoundrels.
Conservative ideas are what "challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes" these days. Not tired, worn out, politically correct liberal-left bromides.
If we were looking for "best liberal films as viewed by conservatives," I think that "Dead Man Walking" would have to be way up on the list. Yes, I'm sure Tim Robbins meant the film as an anti-death penalty film, but one can also reasonably conclude from the film that the murderer (played by Sean Penn) would not have admitted his guilt and asked for forgiveness if he wasn't about to be executed.
Who was the greater president, Lincoln or Reagan? I'm assuming Washington was the greatest.
Manowar, if you want to fight, be aware that something like 90% of Conservatives and a huge percentage of Libertarians all think Reagan was great. Your fists are going to get awful tired.
I definitely hear you. In one of my art forms I've gotten the love, but the likelihood of getting dimes on the hours invested back is only slightly better than if I were a poet. In my other art form, I'm not even there which is partially my fault, but I hope that sites like BH can break the cultural logjam.
And I was very impressed with your command of logic and detail exhibited on your site. I remember practically crying trying to make the different strains of events and logics fit together for one of my better pieces, and frankly, it was not nearly as complicated as what you've got going on.
Great points guys!! Try finding that kind of clarity of thought on HufPo.
Paragraph One: totally agree.
Graph Two: assumes (I fear falsely) that the deconstructionist will agree that words have meanings AND that those meanings are fixed.
I have several times had the lovely — and neck-pain inducing — experience of arguing with a leftist/deconstructionalist and at the end, after pointing out how my opponent's use of words is slippery (a nice way of saying dishonest), that (s)he just "loves to play with the language." This, I think, is were the problems with deconstructionists lie: the professors from whom they have learned the methods of deconstructionalism have this same love of playing with the language and, in their unquestioning naivety (thank you public education system), have never called them on it.
To be truthful, there is no academic advantage to it as to do so is to invite lower marks. The same is true in arguing against Keynes in most university econ faculties (I know of what I speak, here). Sadly, most people do not value the integrity of their own rational mind. The leftist gangs that rule academe rely on this fact and by the time a person has emerged at the other end of a post-secondary education they have had their minds so contorted by the pretzel-logic of the dons that it is easier to not think lest cognitive dissonance blows the tops of their heads off. And the left wins because having a populace that is unwilling to think for themselves is a populace easily led.
Three from Steven King? Okay. No problem with me.
"And I was very impressed with your command of logic and detail exhibited on your site."
Mega thanks!
I'll tell you what, starting up that little MMM "vanity blog" – I get 100-150 hits per day after nearly five years LULZ!!! – has been one of the best things for my composing ever, precisely because I use it to explain the logic behind the music I write as if I was a professor teaching a class.
I'm betting artists and writers of all stripes could benefit from a weblog that they use to explain some of the thinking behind their work. Now, if we'd only band together to create our own alternate university system where we could share our understanding – which I'm happy to find I'm not the only one who slaved and sweat for.
One of my favorite old saws about art goes, "Art is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Whoever came up with that saying was a genius, because it's so right that it rises to the level of a truism.
I think the criteria was "in the last 25 years". Some folks bring up movies that are 50 years old here. One movie NRO forgot was "The Aviator", the story of Howard Hughes. That scene Howard has lunch with the Hepburns in the Hamptons was priceless.
Yeah, I wouldn't exactly call Pol Pot a shining moment in the history of the left.
Dude, what was so liberal about the Abyss, unless you mean the TWENTY MINUTE TIRADE at the end about nuclear weapons? Bitter, no, not at all, why do you ask…
That's actually a difficult question to answer because I've only known the US since Lincoln did his thing. I suppose if I were alive in 1840-1880, I would have been pretty upset at what Lincoln did. Under him, the Republic that we were died and was replaced by the more centralized United States we became. Yet, in the long run, those changes seem to have worked out for the better. BUT from my perspective, those changes aren't a big deal because they were already in place long before I was born.
The things Reagan did changed the country that I lived in. So to me, Reagan's accomplishments FEEL greater. In fact, I'll tell you, I closed my office so we could watch his funeral. Everyone of us cried. That was when I realized how personally, he'd affected me (and how many millions more felt that way).
(continued)
Agreed. If the rising see level didn't kill you first ; )
Great Art = Art that sells, whether it's in the artist's lifetime or not doesn't matter…
Was he perfect? No, but no one was. But I think it comes down to this. If Lincoln had failed, the US would have split into two similar nations, which I think would have soon developed a relationship like the US and Canada have today. I also think slavery would eventually have ended. On the other hand, if Reagan failed, we (and the world) would be much more socialist today (and much poorer for it) and I think we would have lost the cold war (or would still be fighting it). In effect, the American century would have ended in failure. On that basis, I think Reagan's achievements are more important.
"Animal House" and the scene in which Belushi trashes the hippy weanie's guitar ranks among my favorite movie scenes depicting my brand of conservatism – fun conservatism with babes, booze, and hormones.
"The Life of Brian's" coliseum scene during the argument over the PLO, the LPO, the OPL, etc., and which of those "liberation" organizations had legitimate claim to liberation leadership – a great poke in the progressive eye.
"Serial's" many scenes satirizing "lifestyle" trendiness among the limo libs: Sally Kellerman's wedding vows: "I-ness, You-ness, We-ness, Us-ness, Happiness" followed by Martin Mull's aside, "Sickness."
There are so many wonderful scenes in what some might otherwise call liberal movies in which it seems that the writers have to subscribe to Hollywood's liberal formula to get funding, but in which writers appear occasionally to insert lines revealing their true feelings on the subject. I enjoy them immensely.
Great art, IMHO, not only informs, reveals, challenges, it also elicits a smile or a laugh.
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