“The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete,” praised by Michelle Obama, is actually quite good
As I’ve explained in this 40,000+ word post, I am no fan of President Obama. So when I recently read this article where Michelle Obama praised the recent movie “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete,” I was expecting it to be left wing propaganda.
Boy, was I wrong.
Having just watched the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is heavily critical of heroin use, prostitution, and child molestation, and that it portrays education and work in a positive light. There’s even a scene that praises a big chain, corporate supermarket as being far superior to a mom and pop grocery store.
The two lead characters are boys named Mister and Pete, who are ages 13 and 10, respectively.
Mister’s mother is a heroin addicted prostitute. One day, Mister goes to the store, buys a newspaper, brings it home, circles a bunch of help wanted ads, and shows it to his mother. He tells her that he circled the ones that she’s qualified for, and that they probably wouldn’t care about background checks. She objects, saying that those jobs are beneath her.
The point of this scene is that any legal, legitimate job, even one with low wages, is deserving of respect. Her rejection of such jobs is portrayed in a negative light. The fact that she’d rather work as a prostitute is seen through the eyes of her son as being very sad.
In the real world, the radical left hates big chain supermarkets. For example, in Chicago, radical leftist activists prevented Wal-Mart from opening a new supermarket. So, Wal-Mart opened the new supermarket one block outside the city. 24,500 people applied for the store’s 325 job openings, and 98% of them listed Chicago as their address. Clearly, these radical leftist activists do not care about those people who applied to work at Wal-Mart, or about the people who are now happily choosing to shop there. These radical leftists are acting against the interests of the people who live in Chicago.
By contract, “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete” portrays a big chain supermarket in a very positive light. In the movie, the local mom and pop grocery store has rotting fruit, and is run a guy who falsely accuses Mister of being a thief. By contrast, the big chain supermarket in the movie is shown to have an abundance of high quality food, and the employee that Mister talks with is quite friendly toward him.
In real life, a movie director named Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old girl. More than 100 people in the film industry, including Woody Allen, Terry Gilliam, John Landis, David Lynch, and Martin Scorsese, signed a petition calling for Polanski to be released from jail. This is sick, filthy, and disgusting.
By contrast, the child molestor in “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete” is portrayed in a very negative light. The devastating effects that molestation has on its victim, Pete, is revealed several times in the movie when Pete seems to have an obsession with “privacy.”
My point here is that conservatives and libertarians should not dismiss this movie just because it was praised by Michelle Obama. This is an excellent film, and it deserves to be seen.