Swompdonkey

Invested in Defeat

Box office defeat, that is! Brian DePalma's Redacted is another failed campaign in the Hollywood War On Terrific Filmaking (HWOT):

As usual, Mark Steyn has some very interesting insights into a subject that has exercised me a great deal lately:

What the preview crowd were telling Berg is, hey, we'd love to see one film where our guys kick serious terrorist butt — and there isn't one, and there hasn't been one for six long years. If you buy the argument that Hollywood's anti Americanism derives necessarily from its role as purveyor of entertainment to the entire planet, well, so what? Terrorists killed a bunch of people in Bali, Madrid, London. Alongside the kick-ass Americans, sign Hugh Grant as an MI6 agent and Penelope Cruz as his Spanish dolly bird and Cate Blanchett as the head of the Australian SAS and Russell Crowe as her Kiwi bit of rough. As long as the enemy's the enemy, and not a Dick Cheney subsidiary. It's fine to show the American war machine warts and all, but Hollywood is showing only the warts — and, even if you stick perky little Reese Witherspoon in the middle of it, it's still just another pustulating carbuncle.

What is it with some of these filmakers? Do they really feel morally obligated to pontificate the way they do? Do they really see their role as educating the masses on what is really going down? Just where do they derive their expertise, or their moral authority, for that matter?

I could go on at great length about some of the new "secular religions" that have arisen lately, and the self-appointed popes who would be the guardians of orthodoxy... but also I'm starting to think that the problem lies with hybridization and the breaking down of barriers between education and entertainment.

More and more, when it comes to movies, the lines are blurring between the two. How many times do you hear that it is important that people watch a certain film to "learn something", and open their eyes to this or that particular issue?

That's absolutely fine by me, as long as people remember they also have to do some reading to supplement whatever that nicely-packaged, easily-digestible, inevitably slanted movie just taught them. The movie is context --an adjunct-- not the Gospel itself. Consider the danger of watching a piece of AgitProp like Loose Change free of any context or additional information.

I think back to all those days in Grade 12 English, watching movie adaptations of famous works of litterature. What if I had just watched the films and not read the books? Would Romeo and Juliet look like Baz Luhrman's South Beach, or Zefirelli's Verona? Having read the play, my Romeo and Juliet doesn't have to look like either... I can make up my own mind! I have additional information that gives me more context.

Do you go to the monkey cage at the zoo expecting a dissertation on Schopenhauer? Do you go to university, for that matter, expecting the professor to gibber, grimace and fling feces? So why should those who entertain us also have the role of educating us?

I say to Hollywood: Never mind the message movies... dance, monkey, dance!


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Bonus: In addition to making reprehensible movies, DePalma is now torpedoing the careers of hungry young actors by allowing them to make fools of themselves and get eviscerated by critics.

Novice thespian challenged by role of improbably-obese, grotesque and ridiculous Marine caricature in Redacted