Last night my wife and I watched a movie called Easy A. In short, it was very clever, well-written, and funny at times. Overall I enjoyed it despite the fact it’s riddled with some of the problems that plague most Hollywood films when it comes to the issue of Christianity. Easy A is a typical high school comedy. This is a genre that I’m obviously outgrowing. I’m turning 32 soon and besides, I was homeschool. I never went to high school. The only reason I watched the movie was because Emma Stone was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role and it has a good cast.
The film suffers greatly in its depiction of Christianity. It’s stereotypical, cringe worthy, and it’s tired. Typically this stuff doesn’t bother me, but the film was smart. It didn’t have to grasp on to the tired steroetype. In the film Emma Stone plays Olive Penderghast who becomes the center of attention because it’s rumored she’s sleeping around. It’s not true, but the rumor sets off a chain of events. And of course, the Christians at the school hold hands, sing songs, protest the school mascot (Blue Devil is changed to Woodchuck), and torment poor Olive because she’s a whore going to hell.
Now one of the reasons that many Hollywood movies fail to write about Christians is because they clearly don’t know any. That’s the only explanation I can gather from watching films like Easy A and Saved!. The same depictions are scattered all over pop culture. The most recent example is in the HBO series True Blood. In all of these examples Christians are shallow, self-righteous hypocrites.
Hollywood is proud that this type of lazy stereotype isn’t tolerated when it comes to blacks, gays, or, even worse, Muslims. Why is it tolerated when Hollywood demonizes Christians? One last point… If you look around the country at school mascots, it’s typically not Christians complaining. Duke Blue Devils anyone?
If ever there was any doubt left that Hollywood is a bastion of liberal moonbat morons, there’s none left. What else can explain the move Fair Game (no, not the William Baldwin/Cindy Crawford vehicle that ranks as one of the best films ever made, right behind Citizen Kane) starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn? The movie is based on Nadagate, better known as the Plame Affair. I would explain the details of Nadagate, but there’s nothing, or nada, if you prefer, to tell. No one was ever convicted of leaking Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent. Bob Woodward and Christopher Hitchens, who are not conservatives, concluded that it was and is a non-story. As one particularly clever pundit wrote about the supposed “outing” of Plame as an “undercover” CIA agent:
“Among the reasons we know Rove wasn’t exposing Valerie Plame as a covert agent is the fact that Plame wasn’t a covert agent. Or rather, she was the type of covert, deep-cover, top-secret spy who poses for two-page color photo spreads in Vanity Fair magazine under her real name – you know, that kind of covert… ‘Jane Bond’ was, in actuality, ‘Jane Paper Pusher Whose Husband Is a Stay-at-Home Dad Currently, Uh, Between Jobs. The closest Plame has been to ‘undercover’ in recent years was at last year’s CIA Christmas party, when she was someone’s secret Santa.”
Liberals latched on to this issue and never let go. The witch-hunt led to Lewis “Scooter” Libby going to jail for misleading prosecutors about a crime that never took place. Valerie Plame attempted a civil suit against Cheney, Rove and Libby that never went anywhere because there’s nowhere to go. However, the Wilson’s story has made it all the way to Hollywood. Evidently, it’s easier to find some liberal morons to make a movie about something that didn’t happen than to prove nada in court.
So who’s the target audience for this farce? I can’t in good conscience watch this steaming pile of lies. Where is the film about China donating money to Democrats in the ’90s while at the same time stealing weapons technology? That’s something that actually took place. How about a film about Miguel Estrada? Here’s a guy who was denied a vote in the Senate based on the color of his skin. There’s a whole list of real things Hollywood could make a film about; instead, we get Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame depicted as martyrs. As far as Fair Game is concerned you can count me out. I’d rather watch the Cindy Crawford version.
I just read at Powerline (a conservative blog) that a movie is being made about Margaret Thatcher. Unfortunately, our open-minded, tolerant friends in Hollywood have apparently decided to make Thatcher in their own image, as an imbecile.
Hollywood has a revolting habit of patting themselves on the back for their “bravery” and “speaking truth to power,” but most of what they churn out is nothing of the sort. It’s more akin to Joseph Goebbels’ role in the Nazi regime.
Hyperbolic? Maybe, but like Goebbels, Hollywood and other “mainstream” pop culture media specialize in character assassinations of those who aren’t on board with their stripe of politics; essentially, anyone to the right of Olympia Snowe.
In the topsy-turvy American leftwing media oxymoronic world, a racist, murdering homophobe is a noble and tragic figure, while the duo that brought the Soviet Union to its knees are soulless buffoons. Maybe it has something to do with Marxism and the left’s religious belief that it will bring “social justice” and Utopia to earth, all the while denying they’re Marxist.
Anyone to the left of Lenin, however, is sure to be the subject of some hagiographic memoir that makes you laugh, cry, sing and cheer (Che Guevara, Harvey Milk, Frida Kahlo, and on and on and on). I know the media’s propaganda has been quite effective, particularly over time as reality morphs with each nail the media pounds into the coffin it’s preparing for certain conservative figures year after year.
For instance, I have conservative friends who tell me that Newt Gingrich is not a viable presidential candidate. They say he’s “damaged goods,” but usually have nothing to back this up other than dredging up Gingrich’s affair. I think my friends’ negativity about Gingrich has more to do with the constant barrage of negative press Gingrich received when he was Speaker of the House, and the implication that if he wasn’t simply a lunatic, then he was “extreme”.
Gingrich was targeted by the media, Alinsky style. The media created a hobgoblin image of him that even conservatives bought into following years of unrelenting negative press. The “news” media use innuendo while the pop media bolster the innuendo with lies and distortions. Today’s news cycle is very predictable: CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, The Washington Post, NPR, etc., etc., yada yada, imply through their reporting that the Tea Party is full of racist homophobes, then the bulk of Law & Order‘s episodes are devoted to bringing the white male Christian serial killer to justice, Jon Stewart devotes half his show to smirkily deriding the Tea Party, Janeane Garofalo prattles on and on about how it’s all about “hating a black man” and so on and so forth until the American public is duped into believing it’s all true.
So, while the news media in the ’80s subtly portrayed Thatcher and Reagan, for instance, as heartless demagogues by placing greater emphasis on certain aspects of society that have always been with us (homelessness), the pop media characterize them as doddering old fools who end up regretting their role as monsters.
16 year old Canadian Justin Bieber wears a dog tag because it’s apparently cool
I don’t know who Justin Bieber is, I wouldn’t know him if I ran into him at a Gamestop store, and it doesn’t really matter. Bieber fits perfectly into the David Cassidy pop circuit. There’s nothing wrong with that. The only reason I’m writing about Justin Bieber is because the title of his latest album reminds me of everything wrong with corporate marketing.
Bieber’s debut album was titled My World. What clever title did the brilliant marketers come up with for his second album release only one year after his debut? The answer: My World 2.0. They pulled this straight from the marketing jargon bin. Damn you marketing nonsense! Can we kill this trend once and for all? They might as well have called the album iBeiber, but I’m sure Apple would have sued them.
2.0 is the jargon that won’t go away. It cranked into high gear with the idea of Web 2.0. Now it seems like when every marketing department of ad agency runs out of ideas they trot out a 2.0 at the end of the product. There’s Classroom 2.0, Business 2.0, Gas 2.0, Green 2.0, Domino’s Pizza 2.0, Marketing 2.0… the list goes on and on and on. How about Originality 2.0? Instead of just beating a term to death why not come up with a new idea? Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the seemingly endless reboots of movies.
Movie reboots used to mean “remakes.” This kind of made sense. A movie made in 1938 could be remade because the audience wasn’t familiar with the story. A more cynical person might even argue that the modern audience isn’t even aware that the 1938 version of the film is far superior than the pale imitation. Unfortunately, it’s becoming common place to “remake”, or reboot, movies less than a decade old.
The last Spiderman movie came out in 2007, and there’s already a plan to “reboot” the franchise. I guess this kind of makes sense if the franchise is terrible (see: Batman and Robin), but the three recent Spiderman movies were very well received. Large corporations suffer from the same fate as all large bureaucracies. They’re unable to innovate, they’re stuck in the past, and they’re reluctant to change.
The main reason this type of marketing bothers me is because it’s lazy. Coming up with new ideas is difficult. Many times it’s just easy to slap on a My World 2.0 sticker and call it a day. It didn’t matter what Justin Bieber called his second album; it was always going to be a success. The title suggests that type of thinking is exactly behind the uninspired name.
“Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they’ll roar.”
-Gracchus in Gladiator
I absolutely resent the news media’s round-the-clock coverage of Michael Jackson’s death. I was hoping he would continue to fade into obscurity, become less crazy and die of old age at Nevemind Ranch. Why his death matters so much to the media is beyond me, but I also wonder why the media pays attention to what anyone in Hollywood has to say about politics or anything else of importance.
I’ll admit to a certain bias here: I hate Celebrity and the worship of Celebrity in America. Celebrity, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. But I suppose Celebrity is a religion in its own right with its own rites, altars and priesthoods, not to be confused with Jason Priestly, formerly of Beverly Hills 90210 fame.
The rise of Celebrity in America coincides with the willingness of the American people to cede their liberties to the state. Americans believe all kinds of myths because the celebrity culture anesthetizes them to the truth. Celebrity offers easy, pre-packaged answers that require little intellectual effort. Why look into an issue on my own when I’ve got Oprah, George Clooney, Pamela Anderson and Michael J. Fox doing the research for me?
For instance, it has become a truism via the Celebrity culture that embryonic stem cell research, of course funded by the taxpayer, is the only way to cure diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In reality, the most successful research and actual progress has been made with adult stem cells. But let’s not let facts get in the way when said “facts” have already been cherry-picked for us, and when they happen to coincide with one of Celebrity’s favorite causes, abortion. Yeah for the death of those that are inconvenient to us!
“The science is settled” on any number of topics, according to Celebrity and its minions in Congress. All of the bad weather anywhere in the world is caused by man’s selfish consumption, and must be stopped. Of course, as a Celebrity (or a member of Congress), and because I’m so important, I cannot possibly curb my consumption. “Let them eat cake” has been replaced with, “Let them drive clown cars!”
That is why our spoiled aristocracy – the 21st Century Marie Antoinette – is in favor of the supremacy of the state over the individual. It’s very similar to the feeling a lot of Coloradoans have about their state, best summarized by the bumper sticker fashioned like a Colorado license plate that says, “No Vacancy“. I freely admit to feeling the same way. Now that I’m here, I’d like to fence off the state and not allow another person to darken its borders.
In the same way, celebrities and other hyper-rich, powerful people (such as Avon’s Andrea Jung mentioned in a previous Club Soda post) want to fence off the American Dream and keep the bounty and freedom of America to themselves. It’s a form of arrogance that says they’re individuals while the rest of us are simply numbers in a census (conducted by ACORN, of course).
So, while the media devotes itself to non-stop coverage and posthumous tributes to the King of Pop, Americans are being screwed by another unreadable, voluminous, multi-trillion-dollar bill that will finally defeat climate change and the American economy in one fell swoop.
The media, once again, is asleep at the wheel, celebrating celebrity and accepting at face value the pronouncements of the aristocracy that something “must be done.” Bread and circuses, if you will. When this monstrosity of a bill passes, Denver’s weather better be like San Diego’s year-round, or I’m going to be pissed.
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