It’s Just a Movie!: Film, Politics, and (Anti- and Over-) Intellectualism on DU

[alcibiades_mystery]

I want to respond here to the recent controversies over the film 300. Many have denounced the film as right wing propaganda. Others have defended it as “just a movie.” I find both responses somewhat limited in their understanding of politics and film, so I want to set out some categories that might expand how we think of film, politics, and productive engagement of them.

A few provisos, first:

1) Film Politics Does not Contradict Film Enjoyment – One trend I’ve seen is the defense of a political critique of film based on the notion of enjoyment. There is no conflict between the two. One can perfectly well enjoy a film at one level and criticize its politics at another.

2) Film Politics is NOT a Denunciation of YOU, Personally – I suspect the trend listed in 1) is related to a false belief: if somebody finds a film politically dangerous, that person is insulting or denouncing those who “liked the film.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Film politics shouldn’t even be about “denouncing” the film. Rather, even the most reactionary films are productive if they spur conversation. Point 2) obviously follows logically from Point 1), since the same person can even enjoy a film and find its politics suspect.

3) Film Politics Does NOT Require One to “Read Into” Anything – I suppose some will accuse me of over-intellectualizing film. It’s a fair critique, I guess, but only at one level of analysis. Of the five categories I set out below, only one really requires any interpretive work (reading into) at all, and it is the least interesting category (the “message” of the film). Even in that category, I will admit to traces of cerebral “over-intellectualizing” a film if those who cry “It’s just a movie!” will recognize something naïve and anti-intellectual in their own approach.

4) Film Politics Has Nothing to Do With Censorship – As soon as somebody has the audacity to conduct a political critique of a film, the charge of censorship, Stalinism, or some other totalitarian approach almost inevitably follows. Let me be very clear: I would never call for film censorship, even of the most reactionary or degrading films. Analyzing the politics of film is about understanding, discussion, and action, not censorship.

5) “Big P” Politics (Democrat v. Republican) is an Impoverished Approach to Politics, and to Film – When I speak about the politics of film, I’m talking about what I’ll call “small p” politics: the fundamental organization of life, labor, and self in a society. I’m not talking about “Big P” politics (the various machinations and strategies of political parties. When we stick to “Big P” politics, we get a sort of impoverished version of analysis that limits us to the first category (film as “message”), and limits our perspective. “Big P” politics, as film analysis, can only yield “messages,” “heroes,” (those who agree with “us”) and “villains” (those who disagree with “us”). It is a silly way to watch a film, but the most common form of film politics on this board.

I think all the arguments over film and politics on these boards relate to a misunderstanding on one of these five points. That said, I want to lay out how discussions of film and politics can be productive of something other than vitriol, anti-intellectualism, and denunciation.

THE CATEGORIES OF FILM POLITICS

Film Can Be Political at the Level of “Message” – This is the most uninteresting political aspect of film. The idea here is that a film’s content is roughly equivalent to some present-day political dispute. The best example of popular film criticism at this level would be V for Vendetta, widely praised on these boards as a film with a “positive” (because subversive of power) political message. In order to get there, one must walk through a number of interpretive steps: character A = real political actor B, character C = real political actor D, event F = real political event G, etc. We apportion our heroes and villains and voila!, we have a “political” film we can live with. The controversy over 300 operates in this way as well: Sparta = the US, the Persians = Islamic extremists, etc. Such criticism depends on interpretation, or representation (X represents Y), but also largely on some attribution of authorial intention (which is why such readings are often disputed by reference to what the writers or directors had to say about the film, a remarkably uninteresting rejoinder). Never mind that V for Vendetta - despite the hoopla over its supposedly subversive “message” – is almost mind-numbingly pedestrian in its replay of the common assumptions of neo-liberalism (I learned that I should dislike fascism…wow!). See my analysis of Love Actually below in Film Can Be Political at the Level of Reproduction/Subversion of Generic Categories for more on why message is uninteresting.

Another subset of this level has to do with subject matter: a film like North Country which makes an explicit argument relating to feminism and labor is thought to be a “progressive film,” and we’re meant to celebrate it. Similarly, Crash or Babel are thought to have “progressive” themes (on racism, globalization, humanism, etc.). One rarely sees a denial of the political aspect of these types of films, primarily because such an aspect is overt, even crushingly so. But again, politics as message is – in my view – the least interesting, the weakest, political aspect of film. And yet this is where discussions of film on DU tend to live or die.

Film Can Be Political at the Level of Reproduction/Subversion of Political Categories – One reason I think the level of message is uninteresting is that it usually merely reproduces political categories (like V for Vendetta). Many films that are non-political from the vantage point of Big P politics are quite political in the way they reproduce social categories.

Romantic comedies are an obvious case in point. Regardless of whether they are designed as political affirmations of social gender relations, romantic comedies almost inevitably reproduce such relations. Now, those who consider gender relationships natural or unchangeable will obviously not accept this point (they’d be wrong, and even a modest historical or cross-cultural review of gender relationships would prove them wrong). If we consider gender relations to be reproduced, in part, through cultural artifacts, however, then the gender relationships taken up in film are largely political, in that they play a part (among other factors) in the reproduction of social relations (How do I LEARN how to be a “man”? How do I learn the relationship between “men” and “women”?).

This was one of the major discoveries of feminism and other mid-Twentieth century social movements, although it has been derided as “political correctness” by the forces of reaction (if it wasn’t political, why the outrageous backlash?). Again, few would argue that the portrayal of African Americans in film wasn’t “small p” political. Gone with the Wind isn’t “just a movie.” It carries a set of social relationships with it, whether the director wants it to or not. The same would go for Red Dawn, Die Hard, or Boys N The Hood.

Film Can Be Political at the Level of Reproduction/Transformation of Generic Categories or Structure – Let’s return to romantic comedies. Obviously, they constitute a well-formed genre that most people can identify. Anyone who doesn’t know how a romantic comedy will end probably has serious problems with pattern recognition. But as Bakhtin and others have taught us, genre isn’t merely “formal.” Rather, the repetitive structures of genre are linked to social relations. There’s always the “marriage” at the end of the romantic comedy – not because life works this way, but because these generic features meet some social need, and social needs are small p political. But some works in a particular genre violate generic conventions. These violations are political in that they ask us to view both the genre and the social relations that produced that genre differently.

To take a very mundane example (and I haven’t worked out the details), Love Actually strikes me as a politically interesting film at this level. While some would point to the “representation” of George W Bush in Billy Bob Thornton’s character, I think that is the most politically uninteresting aspect of the film. What’s interesting is its transformation of the romantic comedy genre: its multiplication of plots violates the central love plot characteristic of the genre. Needless to say, this multiplication works with the film’s theme (“Love is all around us,” i.e., it is not scarce, or individual, or linked to the major protagonists, but takes many forms and has many stages, and this itself shows up the paucity of the genre convention, which see only ONE form of love, and only ONE way for love to develop). That is the interesting political point of Love Actually, not the message nonsense of Billy Bob as Bush.

At the level of structure, a film can shake up our ordinary ways of understanding space/time and possibility. What if we don’t think in narrative, but think rather in terms of connectivity and repetition? This is a fundamental political question that touches on our ability, for example, to think through ecological questions like global warming. Films like Run, Lola, Run or Memento force us to examine the narrative tendencies of our thought, and are thus political at this level.

Film Can Be Political at the Level of its Aesthetic Organization/ Perceptive Transformation – Now we’re into “real” film criticism. People often forget that the aesthetics of film – film’s aesthetic technique – is itself political. Much of the advances in cinematic technique, of course, came out of Soviet Russia (Vertov, Eisenstein), and aesthetic organization itself was thought to be political in the first instance. Eisenstein’s writings on the politics of montage, for example, are all about its politics, taken broadly. Or consider Deleuze’s readings of film: the center of perception removed from the locus of the human (Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera is a key example here), a virtual Copernican revolution in the way we think of perception. One might read Steven Shaviro’s arguments about affect in film (Blue Thunder, if one can believe it): here, we’re not looking at “content” as message, but rather at “form” as a political operator. The three second cut is political, as is the panning shot from on high. They both imply a means of perception that has political implications and subjective effects.
Rather than focusing on the message of 300, then, we might ask questions about the political heft of its aesthetic techniques. We need not rely on the author’s intention for such a discussion. The questions would be directed, rather, at the politics of green screen and SGI: what is the configuration of human and machine implied by such techniques? How do such techniques enjoin us to perceive things (technology, subjectivity, vision, power, the relation between different forms of labor in society)? Are we enjoined to perceive in a standard or non-standard way? These questions are – to me – political questions (Eisenstein is quite right about this, I think), not in the “agree/disagree” or “Democrat/Republican” way, but in the way they address the organization of life in a society: small “p” politics.

Film Can Be Political at the Level of the Mode of Production – Certainly, the Frankfurt School (particularly Theodor Adorno and Max Horkeimer) was all over this question with respect to the studio system, and much film criticism went precisely to this point. How is a film made? What are the productive forces and the relations of production that make up something like a film industry? What are the relationships between the film industry and, say, banking or finance capital? We apparently believe that these are crucial questions with respect to television, but beside the point when it comes to film. And yet they’ve become even more important as the culture industry meets its own limits, and as nearly every film I see today begins with some industry propaganda against so-called “piracy.” Big budget studio films are just as political as small independent films in terms of the mode of production. It may be “just a movie,” but its also a commodity, taking the commodity form in ever more outrageous and flagrant ways, and this is of the essence of small p politics.

I know I’ve been long-winded here. I apologize for that. I think this is an important question for a political message board, and so I felt the need to categorize fairly precisely. That said, my categories are suggestive rather than exclusive; I expect that there are many other ways that a film can be political: almost every film ever made is political in one of these ways. Does this mean you shouldn’t enjoy a film? No, of course not. Hell, I like Die Hard, which at a number of levels is a remarkably reactionary film. It’s not about YOU. I mean only to suggest that saying “It’s only a movie” is not a particularly productive response. Yes, I know, Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (That would be a useful response to the first category I mentioned, for it is the only one that requires something like a Freudian interpretation). I’m not saying a cigar is something else. Quite the opposite. I’m saying that one need not default to an interpretive mode to see the politics in film. Nor should one default to the mode of pure “enjoyment” to rebut those who seek to discuss such questions.

[cgrindley]

1. How about a critique of 300

based on the fact that it is a piece of craptastic self-indulgent garbage made by a barely adequate director from an unspeakably bad comic book?

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. That's a critique, certainly

I wouldn't necessarily call it a political critique on its surface, although I suspect that the various evaluations derive from political categories at some point.

[JackRiddler]

76. Well, here is a critique from someone who actually watched this movie in another thread...

Which deals with much of what is discussed here as well...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x413207

[KoKo]

2. Do you have a link to the Post about film 300? Didn't see the discussion.

thanks.

[hfojvt]

68. there have been several

but this may be the one he is thinking of
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=394179&mesg_id=395271

[geardaddy]

69. n/t

[quinnox]

3. I think there might be something to the 300 stuff

normally I would dismiss it but I have read a little bit and there may be something to the politics people are talking about. For instance, I heard the Spartans are all lily white and beautiful and the other tribes they kill are all dark skinned or not nearly as white as the Spartans. I also read there is a part where they throw the 'defective' babies away, a kind of reference to the Hitler master race thing.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. There's certainly something to it at one level

There's quite a bit to it at other levels.

My point is not to pass judgment on 300 (which I haven't seen yet, in any case), but to think through how we can talk productively about film and politics on these boards.

[MrBadExample]

15. Or..

> I also read there is a part where they throw the 'defective' babies away,
> a kind of reference to the Hitler master race thing.

Or, y'know, a reference to the fact that ancient Greeks actually exposed infants.

[Katherine Brengle]

18. That's historically accurate -- the Spartans did leave babies with disabilities

and problems to die as their way of weeding out those who would not be able to defend themselves.

It seems many people are throwing history to the wind when they critique this film - of course it's going to be brutal and ugly, so are the historical events and context.

[alcibiades_mystery]

20. Not only the Spartans

It was common practice to expose infants throughout the ancient world. Some argue that such practices didn't come under real social prohibition in the West until the emergence of modern administration in the late 18th and early 19th century (although some medievalists would dispute that).

[Katherine Brengle]

21. As brutal as it is, I can understand it in historical context --

it would have been quite an undertaking to raise a child with serious problems in that time period, and disabled persons would have slowed down the entire community when they were under attack.

That doesn't make it right by a long shot, but I can see why they might think it their only choice...

Anyway, it just bugs me how people are bitching and arguing about this film and seem not to understand the context in the slightest (not you and not everyone by any means, but some).

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. I'll go you one further

It was perfectly right for them within their system of thought (and ethics). If the first principle of history is that it is the study of change over time, and if ethics is a creation in history, then we must also assume that what counts as "right" is itself historical, and changes. This is hard to grok, for many, but there it is. As Michel Foucault once said, how can there be a truth of history, when there is a history of truth...

[Pavulon]

22. Umm

Spartans were white (visit Greece), north africans and persians were "dark". They did historically abandon deformed children.

The point is you can enjoy a movie without getting all pc and wound up (not you personally).

It was a stylized movie, like sin city or kill bill. Not a documentary. FICTION

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. You can also enjoy a movie while maintaining a critical stance on its politics

Which is my point.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. Perhaps that is becuse the Spartains did throw

"defective babies" away?

At birth any baby not found to be "perfect" was thrown away and allowed to die. This has NOTHING, I repeat myself here, NOTHING to do with the Third Reich but a tad of ahem, history... am actually amused they touched on that... never mind Herodotus did touch on that

As to Spartans being pretty and beautiful, perhaps it is a comementary on the greek aesthethic...

oh brother

[Show_Me _The_Truth]

73. Herodotus is racist, hates dark people and deformed babies

B/C he romanticized the Battle of Thermopylae where the White Spartans led the charge to defend Greece from being overrun by the Brown peoples.

:sarcasm:

[intaglio]

57. The Spartans were not nice people

Babies deemed "weak" or defective were left exposed on a mountain to die

They were a military elite dominating a majority population of slaves (helots) and every so often they would declare war on their helots and slaughter some "pour l'encourage les autre"

At an early age boys were taken to live in military barracks where they were trained and, in our terms, physically ans sexually abused by other Spartiae.

The abuse led to many Spartiae being unable to perform with women unless under duress. There was a tradition of allowing the ladies to "rape" men discharged from the military who had not produced children.

They were fearsome warriors - but then they were trained to be so from early childhood and throughout their majority.

[deutsey]

6. As a philosophy instructor once told us

Underlying all "entertainment" is a particular worldview and a corresponding set of values.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. That's correct

That's my point here. I only mean to set it out in more specific terms with respect to film. Thanks.

[deutsey]

8. And you do it quite well, too

:hi:

[Hissyspit]

50. Everything everyone does or says is an ARGUMENT.

All actions or expressions - and that includes artworks and cultural productions such as film - argue that that is the action or expression that should be occurring, thus, at lest implicitly, arguing against other actions or expressions; they carry values, overt or implied. Basic stuff.

[Odin2005]

59. That sounds like meaningless Postmodernist drivel.

Then again, PoMo BS is par for the course for so-called "philosophers" now days.

[rman]

61. I say it is postmodernist /nihilist to assert that stories

have no message, no underlying values.

[deutsey]

67. That's kind of what my take on Po/Mo is

:shrug:

[alcibiades_mystery]

63. How so?

I understand that declaring something to be "meaningless Postmodern drivel" is a pretty standard way of brushing away anything we disagree with these days, but without an explanation, the declaration itself is pretty meaningless. :shrug:

[deutsey]

66. No, I think it's just a fact

(This philosophy instructor was about as far from "Po/Mo" as you can get, btw...).

Think about it: Even one of those awful teen flicks about tits and beer and partying is conveying or appealing to a particular worldview and extol certain assumptions that some find repellent and other find appealing. Even Andy Warhol setting up a camera and filming a street scene for 8 hours is emerging out of an aesthetic view that rejected certain assumptions about what movies are or should be.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Notice that the three most vigorous threads on this subject remain

on the level of "message" (the first category, and least interesting) even when they're being sarcastic:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=382893&mesg_id=382893

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=394179&mesg_id=394179

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x394294

300, it seems to me, would yield remarkable political analyses ate the level of social categories, aesthetics, and mode of production, but nobody even thinks to go there. Everyone sticks to the level of allegory, whether they are praising it, blaming it, or arguing that there is no allegory. This dust-up is a clear example of my point: the way we speak about politics and film is drearily impoverished, stuck on allegory, and generally unproductive.

[Lilith Velkor]

12. Yyyup.

I will kick this curiously refreshing thread.

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. A Concrete example of how these categories produce different questions

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=394179&mesg_id=394536

Absolutely, at one level of analyses you need to know the history of Greek antiquity. Clearly, the film is ridiculous when it comes to that.

You'd also need to know the way Sparta functions in the history of historical representation (that is, you'd have to understand historiography). That would mean that you'd have to understand the way that the history of Greek antiquity was written by different historians during different historical periods (is the historical interpretation of Sparta different among Cold War historians than among post-Cold War historians? How did Victorian archaeologists think about Sparta? How did Enlightenment Germans think about and write about Athenian democracy?).

You'd also have to understand the history of the film industry with respect to its mode of production. Most recently, you'd have to understand the economic relationships behind the cycling of graphic novels into film (clearly, 300 comes after dozens of such arrangements, which seem to have mushroomed over the last ten or fifteen years...as has the graphic novel industry and the reflective understanding of graphic novels, such as that laid out in Scott McCloud's book). You'd also have to understand the technological history of SGI and its economic development in the modern film industry.

Finally, you'd have to understand the history of the genre, how aspects of 300 are determined by that history, and ow other aspects twist or resist that history.

Each of these are legitimate historical investigations related to 300. If you want to take history and film seriously, you'd see that each of these will tell us something about the politics of the film, even if it is not an allegory. Now, let me make clear, I have no stake in whether it is an allegory for this or that. As I say in my post, I find the allegorical reading of film to be the most tedious and uninteresting. Similarly, since the debunking of the allegory relies on a similar logic, I find it similarly tedious. Much more interesting in relation to 300 - in my view - is the question of aesthetics (taken historically and politically) and the question of its relation to a change in the cinematic mode of production. These are ALL historical questions. You restrict your historical inquiry to the level of allegory (even in debunking), and that's my main concern.

[ellisonz]

41. Okay.

So if the film is entirely ridiculous in regards to historical accuracy why defend it on cinematic merit? Shouldn't professional historians and students of history have free reign to criticize the adaptation of complex historical events into comic books? Shouldn't the intellectual classes take some concern over the affairs of popular culture? The man in the ivory tower has every right to throw stones down at the plebes if they should dare to attempt to ascend the tower.

1. I've got basic and advanced undergraduate education in Greek Antiquity and the subsuquent historiography (I'm procrasting on an essay on the Whig theory of history right now.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Macaulay

Macaulay was noted as a child prodigy. As a toddler, gazing out the window from his cot at the chimneys of a local factory, he is reputed to have put the question to his mother: "Does the smoke from those chimneys come from the fires of hell?"

2. The complaint that non-Whites are dehumanized in media is nothing new, and there is truth to it, for example take the recently deceased Baudillard's claim that the 1st Gulf War did not take place because it was simply a media event for the majority of germane parties. With the breakdown of official racism I think it becomes all the more incumbent upon the intellectual classes to prevent a decline to the politics of "the other."

3. Allegory becomes a ready rhetorical device to attack the debasement of history in mass media and it is hardly a new device. I understand the complaints of someone who has been schooled in film criticism, but I think the simple fact remains that national industries service nationalistic ends. Clearly, the end of this film is the further depiction of the Persian Empire as a somehow more "uncivilized" than the population of Greece in c.500 B.C., consistent with the course of Western historiography (largely dominant) and its so called "Greek Miracle," that really never was in comparison to say Egypt or Phonecia.

Historical ends can be met with political means. I do not begrudge non-social scientists the right to dismiss Hollywood's perversion of history inuitively, especially if that intuition is correct in my humble opinion. I don't see why 300 is any better than Mel's movie and why as a Jew I should not be concerned with this decline in culture (ironically Mel's publicist is in our extended family.)

I think you might have just shot yourself in the foot, or maybe it was me, who can judge? Judgments will be made by the cinematic audience...and if Hollywood will not take responsibility, I do not see why it is wrong for such arguments to be made on, of all places, a decidely leftwards discussion board.

There is entertainment and then there is society, there is humor and then there is reality. Token historicism is repugnant. But then again I don't like fantasy because reality is frightening enough.

:-(

[alcibiades_mystery]

51. I did not defend it, on cinematic merit or otherwise

Shouldn't professional historians and students of history have free reign to criticize the adaptation of complex historical events into comic books? Yes.

Shouldn't the intellectual classes take some concern over the affairs of popular culture? There are intellectual classes? Who knew.

I think you might have just shot yourself in the foot, or maybe it was me, who can judge? Judgments will be made by the cinematic audience...and if Hollywood will not take responsibility, I do not see why it is wrong for such arguments to be made on, of all places, a decidely leftwards discussion board. Huh? I want more argument, not less. More different sorts of argument, too. Are you sure that you're addressing ME in this post?

:shrug:

[ellisonz]

52. Yes, I'm just arguing for eminence of History...

...and against its wholesale appropriation by graphic novelists for the purpose of making movies. I'll have 1 Battle of Thermopolyae, hold the cultural relativism please, what you're left with is a wholly fictionalized portrayal that is in not based in history, rather it debases History and the importance of the profession in educating the public. It may be entertainment, but I fail to see how we aren't fast nearing imitation of "Triumph of the Will" type cinema with "300." But history and film study are somewhat inimical too eachother, given academic history's aversion to fictionalization and film's love of it. That's not to say I don't admire reinterpretation, but I don't think that's what CGI is really after. "300" is basically a simulcrum of "The Alamo," and look how well that turned out for race relations.

*Steps off the bully pulpit*

You made a fine post.

[alcibiades_mystery]

53. I still don't think that you're responding to me

Since I make no claims to the contrary, really.

:shrug:

Why are you imagining a conflict when we don't have one?

[ellisonz]

54. I'm being expansive. Figured you deserved some feedback.

My basic argument is that some individuals with formal education in antiquity, given the lack of any account from the time besides Herodotus, and some without will inuitively be able to tell that there's tremendous fictionalization occuring, based on the distance between their own time and that protrayed in the movie (i.e. How do they know that?) And that the person who wonders that will condemn the film rightly as politically dangerous, even without formal education, as opposed to something not to be taken lightly, as "it's just a movie," because it is not, it is a social occurance perpetuated by a certain segment of society, targeting a certain segment of society, with the intent to profit (people tend to see movies in pairs/groups and to discuss the movie afterwards).

I'm not imagining conflict, there's inherent conflict between historical scholarship and film. It's just a movie, but it's a movie about something. I wonder who/if they brought in a historian/classicist as a technical advisor...

Edit: Locus of the basic difference in perspective: "even the most reactionary films are productive if they spur conversation." from the OP.

[alcibiades_mystery]

55. Oh, that's our difference

Yes, even the most reactionary films are productive (productive of what is another matter). I don't think that the gulf between historical scholarship and film is as great as you claim, in any case. I also think that your imagined class of film correctors is itself politically dangerous, or could be.

I certainly wouldn't claim that any film is "just a movie," as I hope my post makes clear.

"it is a social occurance perpetuated by a certain segment of society, targeting a certain segment of society, with the intent to profit" - Yes, and more than that, too.

[ellisonz]

56. I'm judgmental, can't help it.

I think my imagined class of film correctors are likely the parents picking their teenage son's up from the movie, and then filling them in hopefully on how cinema dramatizes and fictionalizes events, and how the Persian Empire is no more aggressive than the Athenians or the Spartans, and how there is such a thing as the facts, and how the facts can be distorted for present purposes. Not everyone going to see this is going to be of age (I have no idea what the MPAA rating for the film is). They should just make Herodotus into an epic movie...

So what's produced by 300 in your humble opinion? What distinctions or typologies should be made about the product? It can't be as simple as genre, given the sociological, anthropological, and psychological implications. I would imagine that your take on that question should equally significant to your take on the cinematic elements in terms of primacy in discourse. Feel free to go to sleep. ;-)

[alcibiades_mystery]

58. 1) I haven't seen 300

I was setting out some questions that might be useful for political analysis given what I already know about it.

2) Genre isn't simple. See my point on genre in the first post. Genre is bound up in social forces, so disruptions of genre actually serve as ground level disruptions of such forces. Nothing simple about it.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Kick

[JackRiddler]

13. This is an excellent set of categories and I thank you for the Aristotelian map... (but)

You bring me back to some great courses in film crit.

Nevertheless, I think we disagree on a lot of specifics, which after all is where the fun lies. Two examples:

"V for Vendetta" is well-paced, over-the-top action fare, highly entertaining to those who have a taste for the genre, and no great work of film art. It is also, as you say, an explicit message film. Thankfully its film art is preserved from its intellectual pretenses (thank you!), as these are channeled instead toward its political manifesto (forgivable, since it doesn't ruin the film).

I don't understand how you entirely missed that message, since it was delivered with the heaviest possible sledge-hammer, camouflaged only slightly by the ostensibly British science fiction setting. I guess people just have their blinders on sometimes. So here is the unmistakable message of "V for Vendetta" (movie version, not the comic): "9/11 was an inside job by the US government, with the design of turning society fascist. The next false-flag operation will probably involve germ warfare engineered by a pharmaceutical company. Ergo it is up to the people to mount a revolt based in a discovery of their own heroic individualism and the 'propaganda of the deed.'"

Simplistic, I know.

Although it's an even more simplistic film, the reception of "300" has been complicated beyond belief by a misconception about its "message." First, there are those who think it's some kind of adaptation of a historical event. Well, it's not. It's an adaptation of a historical legend that grew up around that event. 2500 years later, this legend is one of the founding myths of "Western civilization." And a comic book artist decided to do a treatment of the myth, not the event (otherwise the friggin' Spartans would wear heavy armor and hold on to each others backs as they advance in a phalanx). And then Hollywood adapted the comic book, not even Herodotus.

Second, there are those who falsely think, as you seem to, that, Sparta=US, Persia=modern Iran. This is nothing more than a marketing ploy, or perhaps merely an unexpected windfall for the marketers. The producers are just as thrilled that others think Xerxes=Bush, Sparta=heroic resistance of Iraq, and that we are debating this silliness here.

The real and explicit message of "300" is surely pro-war, though not necessarily pro-American: "Freedom comes solely from the mortal sacrifice of hardened men willing to die. There is no other way." In another era, the movie could star John Wayne throwing grenades from a tank, or the young Eastwood, or Yul Brynner, Robert Vaughn, Jack Palance et al. as Seven Samurai hired to defend a Mexican village.

And now I'm logging off and on my way to see it. Check in later.

(What? How is it that I speak so knowledgably about a film I haven't seen? Well, because I've watched 25-30 years worth of this silly stuff. As I like to say, it's only rocket science. If more than 10 percent of the film provides a surprise to me, then that will be the biggest surprise.)

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. I didn't miss the message of V for Vendetta at all

I just thought it was an irretrievably stupid "message," and, as I said, I really don't think the "message" business in film is particularly interesting anyway. In any case, what I said about V in my original post is sufficient: V is - at best - barely tolerable neo-liberal claptrap. That it is able to masquerade as some sort of "radical" message (reminder, message is the least interesting political aspect of any film) only demonstrates the total control of neo-liberalism over ideological space. "Heroic individualism" is not a radical proposition. It is the ideology of the investment banker, and little more. Fascism, moreover, is not the most dangerous form of political organization we face today, at least as it has been classically conceived according to the mid-20th century European model. Far more efficient is rampant global capital, its own form of soft fascism. It requires none of the machinations that call forth the "heroic individual resistor." Rather, it requires precisely the redoubling of "heroic individualism" in each of its subjects in order to more effectively control social activity and possibility.

[Cameron27]

16. Fantastic post!

Ok, now I'm going to have to read everything you write...

K&R

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. Maybe you'll change your mind once you read this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=6298054&mesg_id=6298054

;-)

[Cameron27]

32. Still fantastic,

made me want to gag, :P but I'd read it again just for the style.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

19. and this applies to the "South Park is just a cartoon" meme as well

well said

[omega minimo]

23. Nominated for new Research Forum open thread: Basic Concepts

:thumbsup:

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. And since you linked to my post

I will repeat here what I told you back there

Your first problem is that there is this incredible WILLFUL ignorance on BOTH SIDES, it is a cultural phenomena

You can study films within their historical context and analyze why they are green lighted all day long

But... your first problem, which you are not yet addressing, is this amazing willful ignorance of the most basic of history, let alone the higher functioning, deconstruction of history a la Derrida and Foucault

In fact, neither of them are read by most undergraduates... in the US.

So your first problem... yes boys and girls it is a movie based loosely on a HISTORICAL event

That is your first challenge. Once you overcome that... and telling people just does not work, then you can discuss other aspects of history (in this case of film) and other aspects of how and why movies are green lined.

Speaking of comics, when are they killing Captain America on the Screen and what does that tell you about the death of American Values?

[alcibiades_mystery]

27. I suspect you still haven't read my post

which I linked explicitly in your thread so that we could engage in fruitful discussion. You seem to prefer yelling about something or other. That's fine. It's your right.

I never mentioned deconstruction, which Foucault wanted nothing to do with in any case (I learned that as an undergraduate in the US; my undergraduates in the US learn it as well). Neither Derrida nor Foucault are read widely by undergraduates in any country if those undergraduates happen to be outside the humanities, although there has been increasing work on Foucault in management studies, though I suspect that this work doesn't filter down to the undergraduate level.

Your ranting about willful ignorance is, further, growing increasingly tedious, since you have yet to demonstrate that people aren't aware that Thermopylae was a real event (the only specific example you provided explicitly noted that it WAS), or that its reality has any bearing on a political reading of the film as allegory. Moreover, you have yet to demonstrate in any rigorously historical way even your basic assertion, that US is any more "willfully ignorant" of history than it ever was, or than other cultures are. So, your first challenge is to provide any evidence whatsoever for your assertions. You have yet to do even that. I'll deal with your rant when you've demonstrated that it has even the minimal substance.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. I have

Read the thread further on, another poster MADE THE POINT for you and me.

And I will repeat myself, before you can walk you have to crawl, we are at the crawling stage

Here, in this thread we can engage in a wonderful discussion on post modern thought, and post modern view of history and the world

Hell, I could even add a little marxist analysis if you care for that

But that thread, you are once again saying that there is no willful ignorance... for christ sake, we even had a poster say that I had no reason to believe George Lucas when George has repeatedly said in interviews that Star Wars was an allegory of the Nixon Administration. Lucas has stated that, yet a viewer of his movies is staying, no, I don't believe him since I cannot see Nixon anywhere, and this is about Bush because I want it to be about Bush. Never mind the author, the writer himself (sorry for the reflexive pronoun) said in an interview this work is about Nixon. What would the author know?

Another saying that Lord of the Rings was about Bush, never mind Peter Jackson did a work based on Token's work and has also gone out of his way to explain that Sauron is based on well Sauron of LoTR.

Go back to that thread... you will even find a poster telling me that HS students should not be expected to know the basics of history (which this battle is)

So on that thread de-constructing the film industry is not the place to do it. Sorry.

You want to engage in that? Sure... but if you are tired, please remove the link... obviously we are talking across each other since I can see where the majority are, and it is far from the intellectual heights you want to talk about... it is part of a wider anti intellectual environment we live in... and yes, I choose to recognize that reality, as sad as it may be

[alcibiades_mystery]

36. I fail to see why you keep mentioning "postmodernism" and "deconstruction"

since neither one has anything to do with my post. Unless it is merely a cheap way to supposedly make your point, whatever that point might be, given the negative associations that these words hold for many people. Since I have claimed neither of these usually misused words, your own attribution of them to my post is either itself willfully ignorant, or argumentatively dishonest. I can't tell which, because your point is increasingly mystifying (and mystified). I'd be happy to see a Marxist analysis from you(as if my categories above don't already suggest one! as if Eisenstein, Vertov, Bakhtin, Adorno, and Horkheimer weren't openly Marxists! s if I didn't mention the mode of production, forces of production, or relations of production!, yes, please provide a Marxist analysis!), if only to see any kind of analysis whatsoever.

Now, I;'ve asked you to clarify three points:

1) That people are unaware of the real historical events portrayed in this film. This would seem to be the easiest to demonstrate, since certainly many people ARE unaware of them. In this very thread, there is an anachronistic understanding of the practice of exposure in Greek antiquity. That would have served as evidence, although fairly weak evidence given your grand claims. Instead, you list some business having to do with Star Wars. Now, I did read your comments on that in the other thread. You seem to believe that an author's retrospective statements about a piece of writing are primary sources, and therefore above reproach (a theoretical notion that you support with a personal anecdote). Needless to say, nobody trained in historical research in the last hundred years would find that idea anything other than laughable. But that's neither here nor there. You've yet to demonstrate this basic claim.

2) That the reality of the events have any bearing on an allegorical reading. I've already given you one example - the function and circulation of the Battle of Agincourt in early modern drama - that would suggest that historical facticity does not rule out allegorical deployment. So, let's hear an argument for the opposite? What do we know about 300 when we know that it is based loosely on historical events. You keep shouting that we SHOULD know this. Why?

3) That current understandings of history are any worse than they ever were, or any worse than they are elsewhere. Again, this would presumably be an easy claim to demonstrate, so why you haven't bothered to provide any evidence at all for your fundamental assertion is a great mystery.

Now, you talk about crawling before we walk. I'll have to admit that I have no idea what you're talking about. The categories I mentioned are for people to take up, use, and discuss. I have no pretensions that they will magically change the world in one swoop. My goals are somewhat more modest: to get people to think differently about film. All people? No. The people on this board. That's why I posted it here.

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. What you did in your categories

is straight out of Derrida and Foucalt.

That is where Deconstruction comes from.

I assume you've read them

Also as a TRAINED historian we are taught to see the person who writes a piece or reflects on seething they wrote or did as a primary source, at least that was in my writing of history course and it has been long, but not that long, aka 20 versus 100 years.

Now to a marxist analysis.

Classically you would have to see this movie from the POV of society and how you transmit the messages of society to the populous

I will plead ignorance as to the full message, since I have yet to see the movie so will concentrate this to one thing, the previews

This is sparta and we die, the way of the Spartans, death for freedom is a clear message that if you want to live in this society you should be willing to die

It is a message from those who control the means, aka the studio, that death is acceptable in order to defend the state

Of course you would also have to look at it as an effort to make death heroic to advance the goals of the state... which in the current environment are clearly the current ethos that the bourgeoisie requires in order to maintain itself.

In some ways this movie is not different in message or goal from Peter the Great or the Teutonic Knights...

Alas we are back to allegory and propaganda messages, aren't we?

But in order to do that, I need to know a little history of both film and recent history (as well as classical history)

[alcibiades_mystery]

42. Since I actually named the thinkers I was referring to each category

You would be, er, wrong about that.

My discussion of genre is based on Bakhtin, as I stated openly. It has nothing to do with Derrida's project, though - yes - I have read Derrida extensively (and Foucault, for that matter: they're two different people, by the way). My discussion of aesthetics relies on Vertov, Eisenstein, Deleuze, and, less so, Shaviro. If I wanted to bring in either Derrida or Foucault there, I would have. My discussion of the mode of production relies on the work of the Frankfurt School (Adorno and Horkheimer, as I said). It is a Marxist analysis, as the vocabulary should tell you.

Yes, the author's words are a primary source. But one doesn't jump from identifying a primary source to "believing" a primary source BECAUSE it is a primary source, anymore than one takes the word of a witness without significant corroboration. The writer or speaker of the primary source material might be lying, or mistaken, or misremembering, or shifting positions, or involved in a new debate that requires him or her to take a different rhetorical tack, or a hundred other things that make witness testimony suspect. This is basic historiography. To not understand it calls your training into question.

I suppose I'll wait in vain for your evidence.

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. I suppose[pose you will since I will not continue to play your game

yes you mentioned the people you took it from

And I can tell you I see both the ideas of Derrida and Foucault in there, sorry, perhaps my readying bothof them over the years has colored my view of this.

Oh never mind, after all you just assumed that I had no clue they were TWO people... gosh darn it, they were even French.

And for those who have no clue here you go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

And yes they influenced the Chicago School extensively...but I am sure you will assume I got this from Wiki and not laerned this in Graduate School.

Are you this dismissive of people all the time or just tonight since I still believe that the Ameican people are not ready for these kinds of discusions. I wish they were... but gosh darn it, not even having people ignorant of some aspects of Sparta portrayed in the film makes you go, perhaps there is something to this willfull ignorance of history

But here are some articles for you to chew on that cover several subjets and sorry they are nto academic... ergo probably not good for you

http://pandagon.net/2007/01/12/american-willful-ignorance-marches-on/

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?hl=en&sa=X&resnum=0&q=willful+ignorance+of+by+the+American+People&um=1&scoring=t&oi=archive&ct=title

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2006/12/11/112521/68

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/01/21/rnc/

And as to primary sources, taking their works does not mean believing them, that said, I do happen to believe Lucas who has said for many years that Star Wars was about Nixon... it did not start yesterday

And as to the willful ignorance of the American people, if you cannot see it, I can't help you there.

and with that, good night... and good life. We seem to be talking across each other... and quite frankly I do not like to be talked down to... which you have done.

With that, have a good day, and enjoy discussing this from the height of the academic towers

In the meantime, not succesfully, I'll continue to try to get some interest in people to crawl... out of that willful ignorance

[alcibiades_mystery]

47. Since you conflated the two continuously, I felt the need to correct you

For the record, Foucault did not like the project of deconstruction, which was Derrida's project, and openly feuded with Derrida for many years. Since you are an expert, you obviously knew this, and your constant references to Foucault and deconstruction were just a slip. I understand.

I think your portrayal of me is dishonest, and even downright nasty. I read non-academic stuff and hang out with non-academics. With the exception of "Man with a Movie Camera," every example I used was of a popular film. So your portrayal of me as some ivory tower snob doesn't hold water. I see what it buys you rhetorically, but it's a dirty tactic, and not one that speaks well to graduate training.

Now this is a new one: you accuse the American public of willful ignorance of history, but object to being "talked down to" from the "academic towers." You never provide evidence that the American people are "willfully ignorant" until this post (which would presumably be a sort of book-larnin' academic operation); you finally decided to provide evidence for your claims here. Congratulations. Now we can deal with it:

1) Pandagon. Love the blog. It's truly great. Love Amanda Marcotte. Good. That said, the evidence you point to is specific to evolution. Are people "willfully ignorant" of evolution? Maybe.

2) Google search - You're kidding, right? That's your evidence? Your google search for "willful ignorance of the American people." You can do better than that. Remember, your claim was fairly specific. You know that's not reasonable evidence for your specific claim, right? Right?

3) Boonman Tribune - Demonstrates ignorance about Muslim culture, even among Representatives. Gotcha. OK, I'll buy that. It's not good evidence for your entire claim, but at least it's some evidence.

4) Salon Article - I see why you posted this one last, as it's thoroughly unrelated to your point.

OK, what am I supposed to be convinced about again? That the American people are ignorant of history, and therefore one shouldn't read 300 as an allegory for the contemporary situation? Huh? I know I'm a snooty ivory tower snob, but I am now - having reviewed your evidence - thoroughly flummoxed by your point.

[Odin2005]

64. PoMo Deconstructionist BS has, unfortunately, infected public discourse.

I see this on DU when posters try to deconstruct everything in terms of patriarchy or some such nonsense.

[alcibiades_mystery]

65. "Deconstruct something in terms of patriarchy"

Huh?

[1932]

40. What do you teach?

[alcibiades_mystery]

43. I'll PM that

I like to retain some level of anonymity. :-)

[The Straight Story]

28. Is it really this much of a mess????

it's a fucking movie. Why do we have to read so much into movies????

I remember a time in my teens when I went and saw flicks for what they were - entertainment. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, Star wars, etc - I went and saw them to be entertained. I did not care then - and I sure as hell don't now - care about what anyone sees as the politics behind em.

My life is not so dull that I need to read something into everything - unless maybe I was a fundie.... ;)

[alcibiades_mystery]

29. Anticipated and answered

From the OP:


"3) Film Politics Does NOT Require One to 'Read Into' Anything – I suppose some will accuse me of over-intellectualizing film. It’s a fair critique, I guess, but only at one level of analysis. Of the five categories I set out below, only one really requires any interpretive work (reading into) at all, and it is the least interesting category (the 'message' of the film). Even in that category, I will admit to traces of cerebral “over-intellectualizing” a film if those who cry 'It’s just a movie!' will recognize something naïve and anti-intellectual in their own approach."

[The Straight Story]

33. That really doesn't say jack

In the end - sometimes, many times, a movie is just a movie.

If you/OP cannot simply enjoy it for that (or other people) sorry about your luck :)

[alcibiades_mystery]

37. Actually, it responds directly to your post, in advance

Moreover, I say in the OP the following:

"Film Politics Does not Contradict Film Enjoyment"

AND

"One can perfectly well enjoy a film at one level and criticize its politics at another."

AND

"Point 2) obviously follows logically from Point 1), since the same person can even enjoy a film and find its politics suspect."

AND

"Does this mean you shouldn’t enjoy a film? No, of course not. Hell, I like Die Hard, which at a number of levels is a remarkably reactionary film."

It helps to actually read the post that you're supposedly criticizing, you know?

[The Straight Story]

45. If it wasn't so long maybe I might :)

overall, it all comes back down to - it is just a movie.

[alcibiades_mystery]

49. Overall, it does not

I'll prepare the Cliff Notes for you tomorrow.

Or the day after.

:-)

[Hissyspit]

48. "My life is not so dull that I need to read something into everything"

Wow. You do realize that that is rather insulting to scholars, philosphers, critical thinkers, academics and intellectuals throughout history?

Yeah, clearly George W. Bush's speeches are "just fucking" speeches. They are designed to make us feel good about our country and ourselves. What's wrong with that!? All those people over the past six years who have been reading between the lines and interpreting the subtext were just boring, dull people.

The reason some of us don't read and experience things COMPLETELY as we did when we were teens is because we grew up? Just a thought.

[rman]

60. Sure, there are movies with no message

And then there are movies with a message.

[alcibiades_mystery]

62. One of my points in this thread

Is that "message" isn't the only political element of a film. We're stuck on "message," for sure, but it is a limited, and limiting, approach.

Of course, nothing can be said to people who say "Whatever, it's just a movie," even after a reasoned exposition of the different approaches. I don't really begrudge people when they filter out (at least consciously) all that is political in film (including its status as entertainment). What I don't understand is why they are so aggressive towards people with different interests and filters.

I think the answer goes something like this: they're fanboys. So, any critique of the film is a critique of THEM personally. If THEY like the film, and the film has a dangerous politics, then THEY have a dangerous politics, which CANNOT be allowed! Or, they feel like you're accusing them of having been duped, and therefore you are calling them stupid. I don't know. These are speculations. Clearly, many people seem to have a deep political stake in making sure that no reading of film as political go unanswered and unmocked. That such answers and mockery are deeply political in their own right is obvious to anyone but the "Just a movie!" crowd.

[Lisa]

31. at last! I don't have to be ashamed about having enjoyed "DC 9/11" anymore!

Thank you for your excellent discussion of film politics, alcibiades_mystery. I might end up lifting some of your examples for my cultural studies class (my motto being, "if you're going to steal other people's ideas, go for the quality stuff").

I was trying to articulate why I liked the film I mentioned above (which was panned by the critics, and not just because it seemed to be an attempt at pro-Bush propaganda). I think I was fascinated by the unintentional messages it was sending -- I'm still digesting your commentary on the various categories you identified, but there does seem to be room in a few of them for inadvertent slips. I'm still trying to figure out which of those messages were due to jarring differences between what the filmmakers thought they were seeing, and what pretty much everyone seems to think is really going on (a nod to Suskind's "reality-based community" here) ... and which ones were due to their resources and imaginations falling short of what would be required for a really effective propaganda movie.

[Alcibiades]

34. K&R Great post

Though I do think you're a bit dismissive of things that are stupid, such as V. Things that are stupid are usually far more important than we would imagine. Once you get to things that are smart, i.e. words and ideas that cannot be made plain, you are dealing with an ever smaller number of people who can understand you, and these folks, in order to feel better about dismissing you, will dismiss you as too highfalutin' or book-learned.

"the least interesting, the weakest, political aspect of film."

To you, who are, as we have established, a smart person, quite possibly one who instructs undergraduates, or even graduates, in one of the humanities, one would suspect.

"And yet this is where discussions of film on DU tend to live or die."

If you think the level of discussion of film on DU is anti-intellectual, you should see the discussion of politics. Everybody who watches a little CNN is suddenly an expert on public opinion. This is, perhaps, a healthy attitude in a democracy, but folks here really take it to an extreme, which, as a genuine, academically credentialed expert on politics, I find amusing, and predictable, based on what we know empirically about people's political beliefs.

[alcibiades_mystery]

38. Yes, all of what you say is true

I was careful to use terms like "interesting" (i.e., to me) for just this reason. You certainly picked up on that (academic credentials help with reading comprehension and critical reading skills, I think...:-)).

[Hissyspit]

46. THANK YOU. Some of the anti-intellectualism in the earlier posts would make

George W. Bush proud. He is fervently anti-intellectual.

[Cerridwen]

70. K & R for a good read.

Your post and the responses have been very informative.

I was especially interested when I came across the part of your post in which you discuss the "little 'p'" politics concerning the mode of production. I recently found some information about the history of the film industry which I'd been trying to hunt down for months and "tripped over" a couple of days ago.

The early history, noted by these particular film historians, researchers and scholars, is portrayed as one in which a "community" created film in a "collectivist" manner. The advent of "talkies" and their requisite technology required an infusion of money into the industry which then changed the cooperative and creative focus of the industry. The distribution of finances combined with the ideologies of the "new," to the film industry, power brokers contributed to a hierarchical industry that had, until that point, not existed. The focus on creating art became one of making profit.

Interestingly, this particular aspect of the early film industry had been all but erased from the historical "archive" and subsequently, from the collective "conventional wisdom" known about the history of film.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

71. Nope. It Is In Fact Just A Movie. It Is For Entertainment Purposes Only.

You can try and intellectualize through deep logical analysis the concept to the nth degree but it still doesn't make the exercise any less ridiculous and silly.

It's a movie. 99% of all people who see the movie will not give any substantial thought whatsoever to its political ramifications. Instead, they will just simply watch the movie and either like it or not like it based on the entertainment value of the movie, not the politics of it. Now the 1% left who actually do like to overthink everything to find a political angle will definitely be able to pick some out here. But they are their own little niche group and significantly minor in numbers compared to the others watching the movie as if it's just, well, a movie.

Just a movie dude. Just a movie.

[alcibiades_mystery]

72. Does one need to analyze a political commercial for it to have a political effect?

Your argument seems to be that if people aren't doing the analysis themselves, then there's nothing political about the object. That's silly. The whole point of doing a political analysis of film (and my post is about ANY film whatsoever, if you'd bothered to read it, which you clearly didn't) is to understand the way it works politically even and especially on those who don't notice, register, or analyze its political construction. So the fact that most people don't view these movies as political is no answer at all. A film may have political effects (in all the ways I detail in the post you didn't read) simply by people "enjoying" it as some non-political "entertainment." The portrayal of African Americans in film throughout most of the 20th century reproduced social relations just as surely as did Jim Crow laws and de facto segregation. The fact that few (white) people noticed that such social relations were being reproduced is immaterial to this point. On these very boards people take great pains to demonstrate how the news is biased. Why bother, according to your view! If "most people" don't experience the news as biased, then aren't they watching it just as if it were, well, the news? That's not merely an analogy to your point, it is the exact sam operation. So, next time somebody demonstrates that MSNBC has skewed some coverage on something or other, I expect to see OMC jumping on that thread squawking "It's only the news, dude! It's only the news!" Right?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

74. Sorry, But I Consider That To Be Hogwash.

People go to the movie to see the movie. When they leave, the only thing they're generally thinking about is whether or not they liked the movie. They are not going through some subliminal change of political perception. To give the movie such power as to say that it has some greater political impact even on those that didn't think of it in such ways at all, is completely exaggerated in my opinion. Sure, maybe on a select few, but those are exceptions. The overwhelming majority of moviegoers will not have any adverse political effects brought onto them just from watching the movie. Like I said, we can analyze it to the nth friggin degree and nitpick it all we want to say "but on a subliminal level it is reinforcing their beliefs in blah blah friggin blah etc" but under 99% of circumstances that would be just quite simply looking into it wayyyyyyyy too deeply. It is just a movie. It doesn't have any legitimate mind altering power on those going to see it. Those who see it simply leave thinking they liked it or they didn't. Those that would leave with any different political perceptions than previously, or a mentality of 'See? It IS ok to attack people in such ways!" are few in number and too ignorant and impressionable to really care about to begin with. I understand you or others want to attribute some deeper meaning and effect to these movies and as stated previously undoubtedly when searched hard enough they can always be found, but they are insignificant in the course of our lives and in reality wield no such power or control. They're just movies. They're just entertainment. It matters not to me how deep of an analysis someone wants to perform and dig up to try and state otherwise, I will still find such deep digging to be exaggerated and silly.

And as far as your analogy to the news goes; forgive me for finding it to be amazingly misguided and non related. People watch the news to be educated. People go to the movies to be entertained in a mindless fashion. HUGE difference pal.

[1932]

75. I disagree with you.

I think most forms of representation are making an argument about something on some level, and people walk away from them persuaded by the argument or not. If they are persuaded, they incorporate the argument the form of representation they viewed into the way they understand the world.