Crowd-sourced funding is a brilliant concept.  People who seek funding for a project post it at Kickstarter, and regular folks can donate whatever they wish to the project — from $1 on up to thousands.  In exchange, they receive a reward for their contribution.  It may be a mention of the donor’s name in the project’s credits, copies of a movie on DVD, a limited edition of a given book or product, or a gourmet dinner at the artist’s house.  In short, it’s like pitching an idea from a soapbox in the town square.

And it is genius.

While there is an opaque pre-screening process before one may post a project, from what I can tell, there is no blatant political skew to the projects selected.  For all I know, perhaps there is one, but there’s not yet any evidence of that.  Every project is, quite simply, someone’s dream, regardless of where they stand politically.  Each project is an expression of individual ambition and exceptionalism in a certain discipline.  Each individual is given space aplenty to detail their project so that potential donors can choose of their own free will if they want to fund it or not.

In perusing all the projects that have been completed or are in the process of being funded, I am blown away by the breadth and depth of the offerings.  There truly appears to be something here for everyone.

Don’t be fooled; the arts are important.  They are particularly important to child development, and due to the financial mismanagement of public schools, they are being ignored in that regard.  They are important for any number of other reasons I’ve outlined here and here.

There’s certainly been plenty of controversy over whether or not government should be funding the arts, but Kickstarter proves that any artist has the potential to fund his project through the free market if he can give a compelling presentation why others should financially support it.  Yes, the free market exists in the arts, and Kickstarter demonstrates that it not only works well, but works like gangbusters.

In 2010, Kickstarter successfully funded almost 4000 projects and raised over $27 million for them — an average of almost $7,000 per project.  There were a staggering 386,000 pledges, meaning the average pledge was only $71.  That regular folks were willing to put up a small amount of money in this economy to help someone fund a project is really quite amazing.

And, in true American spirit, Kickstarter itself is able to stay afloat by taking a small commission on each project.

Kickstarter’s success is delivering vital and important messages to all Americans:

Pursue your dream.  Others will help.

Pursue exceptionalism.

You have a voice.  Express it.

Don’t let anybody tell you it can’t be done.

I would encourage BIG readers to check out Kickstarter and find a project to fund.

—–

“Captain America: The First Avenger” is set in the latter half of World War II.  The action begins with a scrawny Steve Rogers (a digitally depreciated Chris Evans) doing everything he can to enlist in the U.S. Army.  Rogers has all kinds of heart, but he’s gaunt and is thus 4-F.  The plot turns when an impassioned speech to a friend (“There are men laying down their lives.  I have no right to do any less than them.”) catches the ear of Dr. Abraham Erskine (a very Stanley Tucci Stanley Tucci).  Erskine is a German scientist who is working with the U.S. Army to develop a Super Solider Serum–the ultimate performance enhancing drug–and is on the lookout for a test subject.  The serum amplifies what’s inside of you, so someone of Rogers’ size and character makes him the perfect candidate for this breakthrough procedure.  Erskine and engineer Howard Stark (father of Tony) put Rogers in what looks like a retro-50s refrigerator, crank up the dials until all the power in the building short-circuits, and out comes this guy:

So what does the Army do with the most-badass solider ever to exist on earth?  They use him as a propaganda tool, of course!  Rogers goes state to state shilling war bonds in elaborate stage productions as the character Captain America.  At first, Captain America is played for laughs; the stage shows are absurd and Rogers is no more than a jingo indoctrinating the public.  The show is an acid-trip of brightly colored American flags that are starkly contrasted with an otherwise dimly-lit movie.  Not content to profiteer for the war industry, Rogers ultimate breaks away and goes off to fight his future nemesis, Johann Schmidt, aka Red Skull (played with typically villainy awesomeness by Hugo Weaving).

There are a handful of legitimately patriotic moments that were a treat to watch.  One such scene is when the under-sized yet hopeful Rogers longingly watches a recruiting video with a perfect balance of pride and jealousy; the scene will make not a few of you want to enlist on the spot.  Another moment that should give conservative viewers the warm-and-fuzzies is when one character exclaims that the success of the procedure that turned a normal young man into a Super Solider is the “first step on the path to peace.”  Imagine if that was said every-time the real military developed a new type of bomb or unmanned drone?

But, predictably, these moments are offset by a smattering of mini-sucker punches.  Clichéd racist, sexist, and stupid American soldiers abound and are constantly being outsmarted or needing their asses saved by Captain America and his personal motley crew of multi-colored troops (including a French drunk guy) you’d think he plucked out of a United Colors of Benetton ad (joke hat tip: Mr. Breitbart).  When the War is won, we see a celebration scene in the streets of the United… Kingdom.  Rogers’ love interest is sexy-feminist (not an oxymoron after-all) Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), who is an American in the comics but is British in the film.

A credits sequence that’s pure Americana leaves you with a good taste in your mouth, but I can’t help but wonder if the same one will appear in the cut of the film that is seen overseas.

The movie is typical of Hollywood in the 2011: What it lacks in deep, compelling storytelling, it makes up for with excellent production quality.  There were many appealing performances (along with a handful of caricatures), and the film has a nostalgic look that captures the era with just the right amount of modern flair.  Evans is solid as our hero; strong, charismatic, yet vulnerable, and I didn’t catch him Blue Steeling even once.  A scene where Captain America chases a car… by foot… is pure fun and the movie’s payoff sets up “The Avengers” (due out next summer) quite nicely.  Stick around until the very end for a teaser for “The Avengers,” and do take note of how Captain America’s suit has all of a sudden gone from the dull coloration that inspired our ire a few months ago to a brighter, more authentic blue.

Still, in the well-paced two hours, I can’t think of one bold decision when it comes to the plotting or the characters.

It’s also worth drawing attention to a bizarre story-line that Captain America isn’t fighting the Nazis as much as he’s fighting Schmidt/Red Skull’s extra-nasty fringe sect.  It seems unnecessary to have nuance when it comes to the Nazis in this case, considering the bad guys are supposed to be pure evil.  The Nazis were the ones that carried out the Holocaust and sought to dominate the world, and that’s who Captain America fought in the comics!  Lou Loumenick over at the New York Post thinks Paramount may have made this call so as not to piss off any German movie-goers.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to complain about how patently distracting and unnecessary this 3D experiment has been.  (Social liberals like to argue that one day we’ll look back on this time and think we all supported same-sex marriage; I think we’ll look back on it and remember hating 3D movies.)

The line that best encapsulates “Captain America: The First Avenger” came early on in the film when Dr. Erskine asks Steve Rogers, “Do you want to kill Nazis?”  Rogers replies, “I don’t want to kill anyone.  I don’t like bullies.”  I hate bullies, and all of you on the Bigs Team know that we strive to fight them every chance we get, and it was good on Hollywood to give us a hero dedicated to standing up to them.  Yet, standing up to bullies is not specifically American (think the British who fought along side us in World War II or the Iraqis who fight with us now, just to name a couple), and I think Captain America would want to kill Nazis.  It’s a decent line, it’s a decent film, it just doesn’t soar in that magical way we all hope something called “Captain America” will when the lights go down in the theater.

The IMDB description of the film states that Captain America is “a superhero dedicated to defending America’s ideals.”  Dennis Prager is keen to note that American values are best summed up on your coin: e pluribis unum (“out of many, one”), in God we trust, and liberty.  None of these ideals are seriously touched upon in Joe “Jumanji” Johnston’s film.  This Captain America is a hero of unquestioned bravery, but he’s more interested in the general and unspecific “doing the right thing” and having his friends’ backs.  That’s all well and good and makes for a very likeable lead character, but it’s just not uniquely America, and you can bet that’s by design.

Citizens United Productions will premiere a documentary film about American Exceptionalism, entitled “A City Upon A Hill,” hosted by Newt and Callista Gingrich, this Friday, April 29 in Washington, D.C. “A City Upon A Hill” is written and directed by award-winning film maker, Kevin Knoblock (“Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous With Destiny,” “Nine Days That Changed The World,” “America at Risk”).

—–

Throughout our history, the United States has risen to meet great challenges — sometimes out of necessity but often out of the determination to create a better future for the next generation. At the time of our founding, no other nation had adopted the radical ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No other nation had declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” — rights that no king or government could take away.

“A City Upon A Hill” explores the concept of American Exceptionalism from its origin to the present day. What makes our Declaration of Independence and Constitution special? Why did George Washington relinquish power? How did we climb out of the Great Depression to become the world’s greatest economic power? Why did we lead the liberation of Europe during World War II? And why was it important to be the first to land on the moon? Learn the answers to these questions and more in “A City Upon A Hill.”

In “A City Upon A Hill,” Michael Barone says, “I don’t think it’s arrogant to believe in American Exceptionalism, that we have a special role in history because when we believe that, we’re not believing that we as individuals are particularly special and good or virtuous that we’ve done so much. We’re simply acknowledging what seems to me to be the plain fact of history – that we stand on the shoulders of giants, that we are lucky enough to have inherited, or in the case of immigrants, to have chosen, the heritage that belongs to the United States of America.”

America is a unique nation, and stands above all others because of that uniqueness. Unfortunately, President Obama wants to move America to more of a European style of Democracy. From Egypt to France, President Obama has been on an apology tour telling global leaders that America is just one of many exceptional nations.
This documentary, featuring interviews with historians, politicians, and experts, including Donald Trump, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Allen West, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Buzz Aldrin, Douglas Brinkley, Edwin Meese III, Allen Guelzo, Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, Andrew Breitbart, S.E. Cupp, Phyllis Schlafly, and many more, tells the story that America is not just one of many, but America is indeed an exceptional nation.

Please view the trailer and find out more about the American spirit and the exceptional nature of our country at http://www.cityuponahill.com/.

So I’d like to offer a tip of the derby to Disney for producing the family film “Secretariat” which comes wrapped in this positive message: It’s OK to be a winner!  Competition is good. Racehorses do it. Captains of industry do it. Even – and most importantly in the context of this story – “housewives” do it! They strive to achieve their personal best in life, settling for nothing less from themselves.

As did – thanks to the so-called housewife – the horse.

So, who is this movie about? The horse or the housewife?

The two appear as mutual reflecting pools.

It is 1973.  Penny Chenery’s daughter aspires to join the hippy anti-war movement.  She  spends two of the first three years of the promising young colt’s life fighting to put on an anti-war play at her school. Just as Big Red is about to burst forth on the professional racing scene, Penny’s daughter finally gets to perform her play. Penny¸ shepherding the burgeoning career of the horse, misses the performance because her flight home is grounded due to rain.

Diane Lane plays Chenery, the mother who must follow her own personal destiny, continue the legacy of her beloved father, and love her children with visceral commitment to the proverbial “T.”

Penny’s daughter goes to Argentina in pursuit of her anti-war dreams. During a setback in Secretariat’s advancement to the Triple Crown, Penny calls her daughter from a phone booth, rain again pouring down around her.  She needs to connect with her daughter, but the need is not reciprocated. Penny cries into the phone, “We can change our political opinions during our lives. But I want you to know that I am so proud of you for what you are doing.”

What refreshing tolerance. You don’t see much of that nowadays. Come to think of it, you didn’t see much of it when I counted myself a hippy. Once again, kudos to Disney for supporting and expressing our better instincts as parents.

Imagine the climactic scene of Secretariat winning the Triple Crown. But Instead of the winning horse and jockey taking a celebratory walk around the track, showered with roses and applause, the sweating pair being interviewed by a member of the press about what it took to get them to this historic and exhilarating point – imagine that all the horses are led back into the paddock and awarded aluminum trophies for participating in the race. And no first place necklace is bestowed.

Be careful, Americans. The spirit of winning is being crushed.

Thankfully, not so in the movie “Secretariat.”

The 1970s showed the once-invincible comic book super-heroes to be losers, in attitude and sales. Watergate had disillusioned the super-patriot Captain America with a storyline implying Nixon was the head of a terrorist group. The Captain trashes his outfit and becomes Nomad, The Man without a Country. My 11-year-old mind thought this was ridiculous, as Cap was originally a Depression-era 98-pound weakling until given a Super Soldier serum to bulk up and fight Nazis. It was unlikely that one of the “Greatest Generation” would bail on his country so readily. Even then I realized that this development merely mirrored a hippie writer’s attitude more than staying true to a character’s origins. 

Super-heroes became bleaker and even homicidal in the 1980s. The Punisher, a murderous vigilante, has become a top Marvel character. The Dark Knight Returns, a re-imagining of Batman, introduced an elderly caped crusader fighting the corrupt U.S. government represented by a stoogish Superman. Watchmen was set in a dystopic alternate reality where Nixon is still president and the super-group is made up of, among other miscreants, a rapist and mass murderer. It was a transmutation of established super-heroes from the 60s with Steve Ditko’s Objectivist hero The Question recast as the psychotic Rorschach. 

Ironically, while super-heroes have become leaders in the Hollywood box office, these films don’t help comics’ diminishing sales. In the 1940s, if a comic didn’t sell over a million copies it was cancelled. By the 80s, the cut-off point was 100,000 copies. Now companies are extremely happy selling 10,000 copies. The only time sales increase is when the publishers appeal to diehard collectors by releasing a title with multiple variant covers, and they gotta have ‘em all, or a new first issue of a popular character. Comic sales are at an all-time low and basically kept alive as merchandise-generators for film and other products. Time-Warner recently moved DC Comics from their publishing stable to the film division. Disney has bought Marvel Comics and it wasn’t for the stellar sales of their publications. 

One reason comic sales in general have dropped is because it is a one-genre medium (though there’s still Archie!). It’s as if the movie industry only made westerns and not comedies, science fiction, romance or other types of films. The industry has also ghettoized itself with the advent of the direct sales system. As sales withered on the newsstand (along with newsstands themselves), comic stores popped up with a new distribution paradigm. Copies that weren’t sold on the newsstand were sent back to the distributor for credit. With direct sales the books are non-returnable. They sell a lot less but they’re guaranteed sales. At first a supplement to newsstand distribution, like subscriptions, they are now the main source of revenue. 

Lower print runs have been blamed on the usual suspects; television, video games and the Internet. In fact publishers are marketing to the hard-core fanboy, an increasingly shrinking demographic. Stan Lee had introduced on-going storylines and continuity throughout his books. Earlier stories rarely continued and various super-heroes almost never interacted. Anyone could pick up a comic and read a self-contained story with a beginning and end. Now Stan’s continuity has mutated into ridiculous proportions with plot lines crossing over multiple issues and titles. The casual reader cannot pick up a singular issue and enjoy it, let alone understand it. One has to know the convoluted backgrounds of hundreds of characters or it won’t make any sense. There are obviously more people who might want to read comics than just comic geeks, but they can’t begin to unravel the catechism of modern super-heroes. Still more can’t find comics outside of comic book specialty shops and may not dare enter a place festooned with images of veiny, muscled goons lugging weapons and dripping blood. 

Super hero movies are popular for the same reason comics used to be attractive. They take you to a world of stunning visuals, exciting situations and heroic characters… unfortunately, the films are now beginning to fall in the same trap as comics. The most recent Batman and Spider-Man films featured the characters as darker, borderline evil, individuals and Marvel plans to introduce continuity to their movies. They will release new films with Captain America, Thor, Ant Man and others and then mush them all together with Iron Man and Hulk in an Avengers film. People who may have missed an earlier episode may not bother to see a later one where you’re expected to know all the characters’ baggage. 

Most disappointing in the superhero film trend was Superman Returns. The quintessential American super-hero becomes a metrosexual who ditches his baby mama Lois Lane for an outer space road trip to find himself and it tanked at the box office. The film pointedly refers to him fighting for truth and justice, but it’s not cool to mention the American way. Even the fabled Justice League of America is now termed the Justice League in a nod to one-worldness. 

It’s nearly impossible to find a comic that doesn’t star an angst-ridden anti-hero. The end of exceptional American super-heroes is here.

The characters we now recognize as super-heroes crystallized with the debut of Superman in 1938. Representative of the American experience, Superman was the ultimate immigrant. Not merely from another country, the Man of Steel came from a whole different planet! With his success, publishers released a myriad of titles featuring crime-fighting patriotic adventurers who all fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” That included those who were born on an all-female island (the star-spangled Wonder Woman), from Atlantis (the Sub-Mariner), robots (the Human Torch) or even dead people (the Spectre and Kid Eternity)! Gaining super powers even reformed criminals as in Plastic Man’s case. 

America hadn’t yet entered World War II and super-heroes were already bashing Nazis. There were no isolationists in comics and when the Japanese attacked America the characters leapt into the fray, punishing Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini on seemingly endless covers. Individual comic titles sold in the millions and were read by all demographics. This era of comics was rightly dubbed the Golden Age. 

Super-heroes were the epitome of American Exceptionalism; there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do. In contrast, European fiction was rife with super-criminals, from Fantômas and Dr. Mabuse, on to comics with killer protagonists, most notably Diabolik. Murderers like Kriminal, Satanik, Killing and Fatalik followed. This could be due to the fact that after centuries of strife, as well as being on the losing end of two world wars, their culture was not as optimistic as the United States. 

Sales of super hero comics peaked after the war and many publishers transitioned to other genres like teen humor, funny animals and most ominously, crime and horror. 

Psychologists and social critics looking to explain the rise of juvenile delinquency latched onto the lurid content of comic books. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who had defended cannibals and child rapists in court, wrote the book Seduction of the Innocent, which posited that comics, especially of the crime and horror ilk, caused kids to go bad. He accused super-heroes of sado-masochism and defined the innocuous relationship of Batman and Robin as homosexual. 

This lead to the infamous United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954, ultimately chaired by the coonskin cap wearing Senator Estes Kefauver (D-TN). The bad publicity led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority by a cadre of comic publishers to self-censor their titles, similar to what the Hays Code did with films earlier in Hollywood. 

The net result was that comic book content was lobotomized and the medium limited to children and adults with arrested development. Super-heroes had mostly left the scene except for the triumvirate of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman… and their adventures were rendered mundane under the Code. 

The genre was revitalized in the late 1950s when DC Comics revamped its older characters for a new generation. Neoteric versions of the Flash, Green Lantern and more were introduced and, noting their popularity, Marvel Comics launched a new batch of characters in the early 1960s. They had the significant characteristic of “heroes with problems…” Spider-Man couldn’t get a date, Iron Man had heart problems and the Fantastic Four were bickering with each other. 

This appealed to eggheads and college students who preferred Marvel to the staid and conservative (read “square”) heroes at DC and Marvel started receiving positive press in magazines from Esquire to Rolling Stone. Marvel writer/editor Stan Lee got a lot of credit for the success, but it can’t be denied that the innovative and dynamic artwork of Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby is what primarily dragged readers into the “Marvel Universe.” 

Comic sales were atrophying in the 1960s with the Batman comic almost cancelled until the premiere of his groundbreaking TV series. Batmania hit the world and comic sales rose to 1940s levels with every publisher doing super-heroes again though sales soon dropped off again. 

The first generation of comic fans soon became professionals, aping Stan Lee’s work without his context and adding their own political and psychological attitudes. “Social relevance” was the rage, and while award winning and noted in The New York Times, these new themes did not translate to new sales. During this period, Green Arrow’s sidekick was revealed to be a heroin addict, vigilante heroes became killers and Iron Man was ultimately revealed to be an alcoholic.

Next: The Fall of the Super-Hero

“We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama

In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President Obama has designated 9/11 as “The National Day of Service and Remembrance.” Personally, I liked the ring of “Patriot Day,” and what does “service and remembrance” mean, precisely ? The idea is to get Americans to “engage in meaningful service to create change…in four key areas”: education, health, energy/environment and community renewal. None of these seems to have anything to do with honoring 9/11, but that seems to be the point: in the Huffington Post, Muslim-American playwright Wajahat Ali wrote, “In the US, we are trying to move away from focusing on 9/11 as a day of horror, and instead make it a day to recommit ourselves to national service.” An excellent Spectator article provides a blunter translation: “Nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.” Why? ”They think it needs to be taken back from the right.”

In other words, they resent the surge of patriotism and righteous outrage stirred up by the attacks, sentiments that empower the political Right. In order to advance the leftist agenda of dismantling American exceptionalism and recasting ourselves as the villain in our history books, they need Americans to put 9/11 behind us, forget the victims, forget that our enemy danced in the streets in celebration, forget that Islamic terror plots on our very shores continue to be disrupted, and forget that our rights and freedoms are under assault by a subversive civilizational jihad.

It seems impossible to believe that that morning could be forgotten – just as it was once impossible to believe that our government could erase “jihad” and “Islamic” and “terrorism” from our national lexicon, preventing us from even naming the enemy, or that an American President could proclaim us no longer a Christian nation, but rather one of the world’s largest Muslim countries. There was a time when screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh’s extraordinary 2006 ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 was going to be shown in schools across this country and be aired every 9/11 anniversary – until the Clinton administration, wanting you to forget their flaccid response to the growing threat of Islamic extremism, and fearing the show would tarnish their political legacy, pulled out all the stops to suppress it; it very nearly wasn’t aired, and today you can’t even obtain it on DVD.  (This whole story has been related fascinatingly in John Ziegler’s must-see documentary Blocking the Path to 9/11). It’s impossible to forget that morning only if we fight to keep its memory alive.

Americans can commit themselves to public service any or every other day of the year; 9/11 should be reserved for solemn remembrance and renewed commitment to preserving American security, values and sovereignty. A day of greening your neighborhood? I’m all for planting trees, but what does “green” have to do with 9/11?  Only that it’s the color of Islam. But if the President insists, allow me to suggest some service appropriate to the day: 

Education? How about this: educate yourself and your children about 9/11 and about the continuing Islamist threat – not only of overt acts of terrorism, but the insidious dangers of “stealth jihad” and “creeping sharia.”

Environment and community renewal? Okay, beautify your block by flying the Stars and Stripes. It sends a simple but unmistakable message to the enemy and their useful idiots that, unlike our post-American President and his fawning media, you are proud to be American; you believe in American exceptionalism; you believe that making this day about installing fluorescent light bulbs trivializes the memory of 9/11’s victims; and you will never let their deaths be in vain or erased from history.

Eight years ago, nineteen fanatical Muslims turned hijacked aircraft carrying hundreds of terrified passengers into missiles targeting symbols of American might. Nearly 3000 innocents died horribly that day, including hundreds of courageous, selfless first responders making a superhuman effort to rescue their fellow citizens. The hijackers are regarded by their fellow Islamists as heroes and martyrs in the cosmic war against the Great Satan America. That war is by no means over, and thus, in the Faulknerian sense, neither is 9/11. We owe it to the victims to keep this day alive in our hearts and national consciousness - and not allow the Left to bury it.

Bill Maher, never one to miss an opportunity to express his contempt for anything not Bill Maher, wrote: “Yes, our so-called President wrote that people in other countries might like their countries better… I was so shocked I nearly dropped the Bible I was using to help me masturbate into my gun.”  

[click image to play video]

People like Maher use this kind of snark to cover the fact that either they have serious issues in comprehension, or, more likely, that they do not care for the lay of the intellectual battlefield and so want to move it to another, slimier, filthier one. 

The question to the President was not whether or not he believed in American Patriotism – that is, the love of one’s country. Of course other people love their countries. But the idea of American Exceptionalism is a specific political construct, much like British Colonialism. I suppose I should have cut both of them more slack, unfamiliar as both hearts are with the feel of patriotism and faced with the clear evidence of lack of intellectual exceptionalism on both their parts. 

Anyway, this has to be responded to: and never were there bigger fish in a smaller barrel. Many of the elements I used to make the case for American Exceptionalism I first used here at Big Hollywood in a piece called The Workshops of Identity. I opened those arguments up considerably, and the great thing about video [click image above to play] is the ability to include a lot of statistics and graphic elements to hammer home the point. (The list of American inventive genius in particular is a great deal of fun.) 

At 15 minutes it’s a little long for the web – I know, you are shocked… Shocked! – but that’s how much data is in there. And you really can’t end a piece like this without pining for the days when a common citizen didn’t have to explain the idea of American Exceptionalism to the President of the United States, but rather the other way around.  Hearing those words from a President who loved his country as much – if not more – than the rest of us certainly highlights just how far we have fallen and how much work remains for all of us to do.

Andy Warhol also spoke that jewel of wisdom, presumably demonstrating a sense of humor in referring to his most famous quote.  Or was it, perhaps, prescient, albeit unintended foreknowledge?  Pity he’s not around to toy with Twitter.

Bridge as visual metaphor, Media as bridge, Pittsburgh.

Looking back at Part 1, we considered a couple of insights into Andy’s Pop Life with the aim of solving some problems surrounding Mr. Breitbart’s incisive assertion that conservatives must come to terms with popular culture, and more, use it to advantage, or fail catastrophically in countering the negative effects of said culture and restoring public confidence in fundamental ideals.  Narcissism, amorality, and an attitude of entitlement, as examples, speak poorly to the future of democracy, while the virtues of valuing others, the practice of ethical discernment and choice, and the elevating ideas of individual liberty and self-reliance are greatly to be desired in the body politic, and traditionally set America apart from typical “statist” governments around the world.  Evidence abounds of the former set of attitudes in common currency as reflected in pop culture; the latter set, highly prized by conservatives, goes sorely wanting for attention in movies, TV, music, etc.

The critical problem is that even people who are taught virtuous ideals and behaviors as kids get practically no reinforcement in the entertainment media for knowing, doing, and desiring what is generally called, in classical terms, The Good, which is determined in the greater part by the transmission of culture, conscience and common sense.  The rewards of such attitudes being as self-evident as the consequences for failure to acquire them, how may they be elevated in the popular culture?

As a visionary master of the Culture of Pop, Warhol’s work invites analysis, and previously the essentials of (1) commercial appeal for profitable outcomes and (2) elimination of distinctions between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” art were mentioned.  If it’s not hip and it does not sell, even to a niche market, it’s pointless and wasteful; since the rarefied sensibilities of cultural elites are of such little consequence outside their ivory towers and cocktail parties, crank up the heavy metal and unleash the moronic slapstick teen comedies, if that’s what it takes to deal with the issues and get the points across, specifically through thematic content.

In our next look at the Warhol canon, consider the obvious:

“It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. Everybody has their own America, and then they have the pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.”  —Andy Warhol

It takes actors and actresses, musicians and filmmakers, media mavens and individuals of charismatic character to thrust themselves and their ideas into the forefront of pop cultural awareness.  Jerks, nitwits, dirtbags and phonies do it every day, as Big Hollywood attests daily, because the template is cut for them and the infrastructure is in place to launch their downhill course.  Warhol, credited with coining the term “Superstar” which he applied—ironically, perhaps—to the loose troupe of lunatics, drag queens, and hangers-on who appeared in his films, parodied Hollywood culture with his Factory’s unstable stable of “sex symbols” and “celebrities,” growing all the while into a true media icon in his own right, ultimately hobnobbing with the genuine idols of stage and screen as a superstar himself.

Filmmaker John Waters followed much the same path, unfazed, as was Warhol, by the lack of blockbuster budgets, and has written and directed numerous crossover and mainstream movies in addition to his early, “underground” flicks.  For underground, read unsavory, demented, filthy, what you will, (and particularly offensive to conservative sensibilities) in both Waters’ and Warhol’s oeuvres.  The point, however, is about realized potential, not content, and about the degree to which anybody can do it.

Content which reflects The Good is the desired outcome in delivering a product for widespread Pop consumption; in its creation, contemporary technology goes a long way to minimize budget obstacles which would have been insurmountable in even the recent past.  “The Blair Witch Project” was made a decade ago for about thirty-five grand.  “Fireproof” was made for around a half-million.  Somewhere between those two budgets there is enough money, in the right hands, to build the beginnings of an alternate Pop universe, as Warhol did in a wide range of media.  Conservative hands, libertarian and independent hands, any like-minded people who want to get together—and get a grip—can, and should, give it a shot.  (Perhaps needless to say, in promotion and manipulation of image, such works should never be promoted as “conservative,” etc., any more than the others are promoted as “progressive.”  Let the critics and the Democratic Media Complex complain about that.)

The more such alternate worlds, the better, because audiences embrace the pleasures of participating, however briefly, in fully realized, well-defined imaginative realities, such as the “Star Wars” films, the “Mad Max” and “Lord of the Rings” trilogies, the “Seinfeld” and “X-Files” TV productions, and, for that matter, the entirety of the imaginary ”country” American society and landscape created by country music artists.  Rock and pop music create similar imaginary worlds, though the music industry as a whole continues in decline.

For a time it was said, “The Rolling Stones are not a band.  They are a way of life.”  That way of life is a continuum in the world of rock and roll, which is blasted all night followed by partying every day, to paraphrase KISS.  For party, read “indulge.”  Anyone can play.  Especially with karaoke or the Guitar Hero game, which provides just the imaginary setting for your rock and roll fantasy.

The degree to which anyone can do it: low-budget media-generated alternate universe by your correspondent. In Warhol's day, such an image would have involved considerable time, expertise and expense. Note subtle product placement of the famous Marshall Amplifier.

Video games—which currently surpass the movie industry in sales—put the players in such worlds, contending with or even surpassing the experiences of “real life” activities.  Individuals create such worlds with shameless self-promoting personal websites, Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites.  You can take high school kids on a field trip to Mount Rushmore or Auschwitz, but if you don’t keep them away from their phones or iPods, they might miss the whole thing.  That is the power of immersive digital media, which now means everyone can play.

Erstwhile film student Jim Morrison may have had no idea of what was coming when he expanded on Marshall McLuhan’s statement:  “Everyone should say, the media is the message, and the message is me,” but that is what is possible now, and that’s the message, in every form imaginable.  Camera held at arm’s length, snapping self.

The fifteen minutes Warhol mentioned have elapsed—everyone is famous.

Now what?  Pop culture demands glamour.  But it needs The Good.  It needs character, courage, and vision.

Tomorrow: Do The Warhol— Part 3 of 4: The Velvet (Underground) Revolution ]]> http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sgraves/2009/07/24/do-the-warhol%e2%80%94-part-2-the-culture-of-personality/feed/ 23 http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mdanziger/2009/07/04/july-4-2009what-are-we-celebrating-today-exactly/ http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mdanziger/2009/07/04/july-4-2009what-are-we-celebrating-today-exactly/#comments Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:27:16 +0000 Marc Danziger http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/?p=176802 I’m one of the last liberal believers in American Exceptionalism, and as I look around the political and media landscapes around me, I’m damn lonely. Not just liberals, but conservatives – like Andrew Bacevitch – seem to be shedding any idea that America is more than just another country with bigger shopping malls than most.

I don’t agree, and I think it matters that I be right and they be wrong.

It matters because in a world where the power of images and ideas is becoming stronger every day – where people defend themselves against men with guns by using cellphone cameras – we seem to be fresh out of ideas.

There’s a physical war going on out in the world with us on one side – and on the other a group allied in large part by their rejection of our beliefs as much as their rejection of our power. They are fighting us with bullets and bombs – and with YouTube videos, discussion forums, and impassioned manifestos. They believe, alright. If you ask them, they will clearly tell you that they do and tell you in what.

So as a counterbalance, what do we believe in? On this 4th of July, it’s worth asking – is it just baseball, hot dogs, and light beer?

It’s not, you say – it’s much more than our prosperity – it’s…our freedom. It’s…and then the words run out. Why can’t we say it? Why is it that the people who shape our culture can’t talk about whatever it is that culture is defined by, and instead talk endlessly and with pleasure about those whose only joy is transgressing the culture they can’t express?

Expressing our culture matters. Look, at the end of the day, this war won’t just be won killing those who would kill us. It will be won by converting those who would join them to join us instead. But what do we offer to make it worth joining us, exactly? What makes our side worth joining? Who are we, and what are we trying to do in the world? Why can’t we talk about that?

That’s not a new question. I read a lot – my wife would roll her eyes and say “only a lot?” – and in the course of reading, I tripped over an interesting and little-known book…a political think piece commissioned by Time Magazine founder Henry Luce in 1959 called Beyond Survival. In the first chapter, author Max Ways (a Time political correspondent) talks about the inability of the United States to formulate policies that were not responses to crises from the outside, and what that would mean as the Cold War drifted to deadlock. What would happen to America as its foreign policy drifted into a dead end?

That, precisely, is the question. For if the fault in our national policy-making process is not to be found in the government itself nor in the public itself, it must be in the way these two are connected. Are the people being asked the right questions by their leaders? Is it possible under present circumstances for leaders to ask the right questions or for the people to answer? Can the great public issues that affect our destiny be framed in a way that allows helpful public participation?

Every citizen feels free and easy in expressing his opinion about specifics of what the government does or proposes to do; but we have become timid about discussing the ends and the fundamental beliefs that condition political action. This reticence shuts off the public from that part of political life with which it is most capable of dealing, the moral part. What can the citizen be expected to contribute to a discussion of how many aircraft carriers we should build or how we should handle the technical diplomatic problems of the Berlin crisis? Topics such as these are unprofitably kicked around in public argument while a near silence prevails upon the larger questions of what we are trying to do and the moral relations between our goals and the means we choose.

The only people breaking that near silence today are those on the left who seem to believe that our national goal should be to provide redress to the masses of the world who have been wronged by the power relationships in the past century, and those on the right who simply seem to believe that national power – in and of itself – ought to be our goal. And that, having kicked down opposing powers and established our primacy, that the people of the world would simply stand with us.

Both of these dangerous delusions seem to be based on the postmodern interpretation that power relationships are all, and that highlighting them, and where possible inverting them, is man’s noblest goal (note that I think there’s more to postmodernism than this – but not a lot more to postmodern politics).

The people who matter in this are, more than anything, the mythmakers – the Hollywood folks who this site is supposedly about. Because what we have misplaced somehow are the American myths that matter. I can’t lay them out here – I can’t even find my car keys, much less missing myths. But I think I know just a bit what they look like and can set out a post office sketch in case you happen to trip over them and care to bring them back to our attention.

But if instinctive patriotism and the patriotism of the city cannot be ours, what can be? Is there a type of patriotism peculiarly American: if so, is it anything more than patriotism’s violent relative nationalism? Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we.”[emphasis added]

That’s leftist professor John Schaar, from his essay on patriotism – ‘The Case For Patriotism.’ Schaar was one of my professors in college – sadly, on that I didn’t pay enough attention to back then – and one thing about his teaching was that it was largely based not only in texts – the Federalist Papers and Mill and Locke – but in novels that he felt encapsulated a greater truth about America and American politics – novels like Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby.

Because he understood that what it takes to understand America is to understand myths.

And I’ve got to tell you that everywhere I look in popular culture – movies, television, books, music – the only myths I see are ones that define themselves in opposition to this unstated myth, and leave it to be defined as a negative – defined by where it isn’t.

Where are our American myths today? How can we prevail in this conflict, except by brute power, without them? How can we refashion them, with proper reverence to the myths that brought us to this place and with relevance to a wider world that suddenly connects us to cultures far outside our own? What American myth can a young Palestinian child find to compete with the hateful death-embracing myths that he is being force-fed today?