Posted on 10/08/2010 9:27:09 PM PDT by sinanju
Andrew O'Hehir of Salon is a critic I admire, but he has nevertheless written a review of "Secretariat" so bizarre I cannot allow it to pass unnoticed. I don't find anywhere in "Secretariat" the ideology he discovers there. In its reasoning, his review resembles a fevered conspiracy theory.
In this example , we do not find proof that Obama is a Muslim Communist born in Kenya. No, the news is worse than that. It involves Secretariat, a horse who up until now we innocently thought of as merely very fast. We learn the horse is a carrier not merely of Ron Turcotte's 130 pounds, but of Nazism, racism, Tea Party ideology and the dark side of Christianity.
Oh, and I forgot the Ku Klux Klan: "The movie itself is ablaze with its own crazy sense of purpose," O'Hehir writes, "...as if someone just off-screen were burning a cross on the lawn."
Say what? We saw the same movie. I am a liberal who has found more than his share of the Dark Side in seemingly innocent films. But in my naïveté I attended "Secretariat" and saw a straightforward, lovingly crafted film about a great horse and the determined woman who backed him against a posse of men who thought she should get her pretty little ass off the horse farm and get back to raisin' those kids and darnin' those socks.
O'Hehir's review is a cri de coeur against evil in the shape of a film. While showing how this woman "lucks into owning a genetic freak," he says the film papers over all of the historic wrongs in American history, including those of its own period: "The year Secretariat won the Triple Crown was the year the Vietnam War ended and the Watergate hearings began."
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.suntimes.com ...
I gotta give Roger Ebert his props. He takes the Salon review apart and ridicules the hell out of it while giving his take on the movie. It is absolutely hilarious. Perhaps you've noticed in other reviews of the movie that hip reviewers feel obliged to dislike the movie and pick at it because they get instinctively uneasy and antagonistic when in the presence of anything that dares to smack of family values and is directed by a man who is an avowed Christian (Randall Wallace). In Andrew O'Hehir's case, he does the full Dracula-confronted-by-a-crucifix routine.
Continued:
“...It is “creepy, half-hilarious master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl,” he writes, about how “all right-thinking Americans are united in their adoration of a Nietzschean Überhorse.” In fact, “Big Red himself is a big, handsome MacGuffin, symbolic window dressing for a quasi-inspirational fantasia of American whiteness and power.”
I’m not making this up. How did a lifelong liberal like myself manage to leave peacefully at the end, instead of organizing the audience and leading a demonstration right then and there?
O’Hehir’s reading is wildly eccentric, and commits a logical error best outlined as: A is evil because it does not acknowledge B. Or perhaps: Although A and B are represented as separate circles, they should overlap.
True, “Secretariat” makes no overt mention of Vietnam or Watergate. The same is true of certain other films set in the 1970s, such as “Apollo 13,” “Breaking the Waves,” “Field of Dream,” “Rudy,” “When Harry Met Sally” “Zodiac,” and “Frost/Nixon”. Those films are all guilty, in that they are not about Vietnam and Watergate.
To be sure, one of Penny’s daughters stages an anti-war play at high school, and this is a primary domestic incident the film details. O’Hehir did notice this: “Penny’s eldest daughter is depicted as a teen antiwar activist, in scenes that resemble lost episodes of ‘The Brady Bunch’.” Later, the teenager calls Penny and tells her she is dedicating her life to the anti-war movement, and Penny, the O’Hehirian Riefenstahlian TeaPartyite, tells her only, “We all have to do what we feel is right.” Apparently Penny didn’t get her talking points that day.
As an admirer of Darwin, I question O’Hehir’s description of Secretariat as a “genetic freak.” Secretariat was not a lucky roll of the dice by the blind watchmaker, but the outcome of many carefully recorded generations of selective breeding. The horse can be read as one more demonstration of the survival of the fittest — a phrase that could apply to the winner of every race.
Nor did Penny Chenery, Secretariat’s owner, “luck into” the horse. As the film spells out, she won the horse by losing a coin toss, which she wanted to lose, because her understanding of horse breeding led her to hope the millionaire betting against her would “win” the wrong mare. Her reasoning was correct.
I question if a single American, right-thinking or left-thinking, thought even once of Secretariat as a Nietzschean Überhorse. Nor did many consider the Triple Crown victories as a demonstration of white superiority, because race horses (which seem to enjoy winning for reasons of their own) are happily unaware of race. Does a horse think of a human as belonging to another race? I speculate that a horse considers a human as a differently-abled horse. A cat, now, may belong to another race.
Penny Chenery arouses O’Hehir’s ire by being wealthy and living with her family in Colorado “in a resplendent collection of period knitwear and steel-magnolia ‘tude.” In other words, period clothing. But she cannot be held guilty of having money honestly earned. That money was secondary in her mind is demonstrated when she prevents both sides of her family from selling the farm, and refuses $7 million for Secretariat. O’Hehir admits that he loves the film’s “wonderfully varied and dazzling approaches to Secretariat’s four big races.” Chenery obviously loved those races too, and literally bet the farm in order to see them.
Wait. There is yet another sinister subtext to be exposed in the film. O’Hehir mentions that Randall Wallace, who directed the film, “is one of mainstream Hollywood’s few prominent Christians, and has spoken openly about his faith and his desire to make movies that appeal to ‘people with middle-American values’.” To which I respond: I am a person with middle-American values, and the film appealed to me. This news just in: There are probably more liberals with middle-American values than conservatives, especially if your idea of middle-American values overlaps with the Beatitudes, as mine does.
When O’Hehir says Wallace is “one of mainstream Hollywood’s few prominent Christians,” what exactly does he mean by that? That one is too many? Surely the Hollywood mainstream has room for several prominent Christians? Surely it is permitted for Wallace to speak openly about his faith? Although O’Hehir finds “Secretariat” a repository of Christianity (of the wrong sort, presumably), I found it rather secular. He finds it “Tea Party friendly;” I refuse to allow him to define this film in such a way. Sarah Palin and the Tea Party are squatting rent-free in the tent of Middle American Values and pretend we don’t belong there. But we do, and O’Hehir should not advance the TeePee agenda.
I hardly have the heart to discuss the ways he finds racism in the film. He writes of:
...Eddie (Nelsan Ellis), an African-American groom who belongs to a far more insidious tradition of movie stereotypes. Eddie dances and sings. He loves Jesus and that big ol’ horse. He is loyal and deferential to Miz Penny, and injects soul and spirit into her troubled life. I am so totally not kidding.
Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. There are any number of African-Americans, grooms and otherwise, who sing, dance, love Jesus and that big ol’ horse. Also many American of other races. Being the groom of the greatest race horse in history was the crowning glory of Eddie Sweat’s life — his claim to fame. Must you demean him for it? There are many grooms of all races who are loyal and deferential to their employers. Also a great many white-collar workers at places like Salon and large corporations who are loyal and deferential. The only place I can think of where no one is deferential to the boss is the Chicago Tribune.
Is it even possible for Eddie to defer to Penny’s judgment, when he in fact formed and guided it, and they agreed? And how much singing and dancing would you say Eddie actually does in the movie, and under what circumstances? The film sadly lacks a scene of Eddie grooming Secretariat for the Belmont while soothing him with De Camptown racetrack’s five mile long! Oh, de doo-da day!
I quote again:
...the villainous, swarthy and vaguely terrorist-flavored Pancho Martin (Nestor Serrano), trainer of Sham, Secretariat’s archrival. (Even the horse’s name is evil!)
I am so totally not kidding if I ask, must a man who does indeed look like Pancho Martin therefore be “villainous, swarthy and vaguely terrorist-flavored?” And as for the hapless Sham, the horse with the evil name, for Christ’s sake, O’Hehir, that was the horse’s damn name.
Having exhausted my reading of this inexplicable review, I choose not to continue by drawing any lessons from it. I have no theories about why it was written. No cautionary warnings to issue. My faith in Andrew O’Hehir remains — generally speaking. I am sure he will strive to do better. I myself have written insane reviews. It happens.”
O’Hehir sounds like he has some serious “issues”. The boy needs to see a shrink. IMHO.
The review in Slate.com was pretty much the same, only less hystrionic.
Truly amazing, if it’s not full of sex, violence and existential despair it must be sneaky propaganda by those damn Christian fundies.
I don’t go to the theater that often. I was planning to go see this today but didn’t quite make it. I will be seeing it sometime this weekend.
It’s reviews like this that make me wish Ebert was a man of the Right.
You have to look really hard for libs who have any integrity, but I guess Ebert hasn’t completely lost his common sense. Ditto for Christopher Hitchens and Camilla Paglia.
The point of the exercise is that even Roger Ebert has limits to his knee-jerk leftoidism. He still appreciates a good movie and doesn’t hesitate to poke fun at people who see absolutely everything through a political lens—like this Andrew O’Hehir nutter whose review in Salon he takes apart.
After reading the review on www.pluggedin.com, I can’t wait to see it.
I am amazed by how sane and humorous Ebert is in this review. I may have misjudged him.
In token of this, I’ll stop calling him the jawless wonder.
Of course, Ebert stops short at that point, he would have to reevaluate his prejudices if he was to start thinking along those lines.
Andrew O'hehir
I’ve been waiting for this movie. I’m not surprised uberlibs are out against it, it has the same director as “Miracle” - which is about that dark period in history when Carter was president, and how “Morning in America” came back when Americans started to reject the self hate that comes with liberalism and be proud of America again.
They are waiting to hate this movie. But I will bet you anything the box office will confound them. Oh, how they hate pride in country and accomplishments.
I have to come back and read this article tomorrow, when I have more time.
I remember what 30 something lengths looked like on my TV. I had tears in my eyes just seeing the beauty of Secretariat’s joy in running. Man oh man, I absolutely loved that horse! What a heart he had!
What else should we expect from a bunch of leftist bedwetters?
Ebert is a smart guy and great writer and reviewer when he doesn’t talk about politics. Sadly, the last 5 years or so he’s gotten soooo political.
He’s basically a marxist and is very annoying politically and it’s almost hard to believe sometimes just how bad politically he can get.
It was a delightful movie. It was clean, no smut, bad language or innuendo of any sort, and thoroughly enjoyable.
"SECRETARIAT" SPOOKS REVIEWERS
October 8, 2010
The movie "Secretariat" is the subject of Catholic League president Bill Donohue's news release:
Kudos to movie critic Roger Ebert, as well as to John Nolte at Breitbart.com, for lampooning Salon.com film reviewer Andrew O'Hehir's feverish take on "Secretariat." It's not just the movie's Christian overtones that upset O'Hehir, it's the alleged racism—even Nazi-driven—aspects of this "honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past" that gets his goat. Indeed, he says, "it's legitimate to wonder exactly what Christian-friendly and 'middle-American' inspirational values are being conveyed here." All this paranoia about a horse.
While O'Hehir's review is the most apoplectic, there are others who at least share his uneasiness with all matters Christian. The Sarasota Herald is not happy with the movies' "barely concealed religiosity" and "all the talk about 'lifting up.'" The New York Times notes its "Bible-thumping" elements, while nj.com says, "the film is bookended by quotes from the book of Job, interrupted by mystical shots of clouds and sunbeams, and even has a scene where the horse gets a rubdown scored to a gospel song." Newsday goes so far as to claim that the director "insists on turning the horse into Christ himself," and New York 1 opines "it's a bit much" to endure "passages from the Bible and playing gospel music." Similarly, Hollywood.com complains the film "reeks" of "grandiosity," even to the extent of "using Old Testament quotations and gospel music."
By contrast, CNN.com and the Los Angeles Times both noted the Christian aspects of the movie, but were wholly free of the condescending and scornful commentary that marked these other reviews.
No doubt about it, Christianity clearly spooks many of our elites.
She was gorgeous as a young teen in that movie with Laurence Olivier.
Read it again, Roger was critical of another writer...
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