"I have not seen Million Dollar Baby. I will not see Million Dollar Baby. I will not subsidize Million Dollar Baby. I do not need moral guidance on "life issues" from Clint Eastwood, whatever his virtues as producer, director and actor."
Ok, this is what I don't understand, and someone can explain this to me. Why dooes anyone need moral guidance, period, from films or TV shows or books? Are you not already an ethical person? Do you not know right and wrong? Are we not adults? We are not monkeys, we can discern and use our God-given reason to separate fiction from non-fiction. We gain moral guidance from non-fiction, from our beliefs about how the world *is*. Fiction is about how the world *might* be, *could* be. So what, Clint Eastwood might be a wretched human being--why is anyone trying to learn morality from him? Why do people think that Million Dollar Baby is a treatise on ethics? It's a story about how a couple of people saw the world, and they had a flawed perception of it. Why do we need the movie to make the moral judgement for us? Should movies think for us, too? Eat for us, exercise for us, do our taxes?
"I am familiar with Kurosawa, Shakespeare (within limits) and Homer but I confess to having difficulty seeing the comparison."
Because all these directors, writers didn't deal with homily stories, at least w/ all their great works. They are not C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkein. They did not provide "moral guidance". You are not going to know how to live from King Lear, or Romeo and Juliet, or the Iliad, or Kagemusha, or Anne Karenina, or Citizen Kane, or Frankenstein, or the Godfather. They did not have this checklist of guidelines they had to hit in their stories, so that the audience would know that heroes go to heaven and villains get punished.
I agree with you an things like Seabiscuit, as I noted in my earlier post, there are legitimate complaints about Hollywood being irresponsible around children and family oriented films. There is a difference, however, between films aimed at families and films aimed at adults, and I don't mean porn. I wouldn't recommend a 10 year old child read Agamemnon, Notes From the Underground, or the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldricht. However, that doesn't mean that said child should abstain from reading them when he's 17.
" Why frequent such bilge as Million Dollar Baby???? What unresolved moral conflicts? Suicide is wrong. Euthanasia is wrong."
Yes, they are wrong. Why does the film need to tell us that? Does Romeo and Juliet need an epilogue where one of the Capulets gives a soliliquy straight to the audience and preaches to them, "and don't you kill yourself or you might burn in hell like Romeo and Juliet are doing right now!" What I meant by unresolved moral conflicts is that--the answer isn't provided by the outcome of the story. The nonfiction--which is real--instead of fiction--which isn't real--must answer the questions. Fiction asks, nonfiction solves.
"Parables were a literary art form by which Jesus Christ instructed his listeners and readers as to how they ought to live. Parables are, well, stories. Do you think that J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were simply speculating, challenging, playing with the rules, and providing catharsis? I don't think so and neither did they, if you are familiar with their lives."
Since you are being snarky, I feel justified in responding in kind. No, parables *aren't* stories. Parables are *parables*. That is the category they are assigned to. They are no more a story than a poem or a song or a haiku or a painting or five seconds out of a two hour film. They have a *specific* point they are trying to convey to an audience. The argument made in the parable supercedes the form. Not every story is trying to convey a specific point to the audience. Some may, and it could be a good point, like Lord of the Rings or Spiderman 2. Fine, those are nice to have as well (I love Spidey 2, Batman Begins and the Incredibles). Some stories may have a message, and it could be a *bad* one, like Syriana or the Cider House Rules. Many however, if not most, *don't*. C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkein are *not* the standard by which all fiction must align, any more than Homer or Shakespeare. It's a logical fallacy, a strawman to hold up the thin and limited form of the parable, and suggest that's the standard by which all stories are to fall in line.
I may be lenient and say every parable is a story, but the reverse is not true. A story is an artform that involves plotting, characterization, metaphor (maybe), pace, language, imagery. Message or *theme* is not a requirement. It may have one, but doesn't have to in order to be a story. You either appreciate the artform as is and what it can offer, or you don't.
Speculation drives most great fiction. When the writer sits at his desk, he speculates. A story--whether it has a good message, a bad message, or no message at all--is based on something that should not be. A contradiction, a conflict, a challenge, and the writer takes that gem of an idea and runs with it, sometimes not sure where it's going when he seizes it! I hit speculation hard, because I am mainly a science fiction geek first, and that's what so called "speculative fiction" does--it asks, "What if?" It's a joy, the imagination, and unfortunately I see too many people whom I agree with politically attack the freedom of the imagination, and thus alienate potential "converts" to our side.
Two books I recommend are "Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from it's Cultural Capativy" by Nancy Pearcy and "The Well Educated Mind" by Susan Bauer. They are conservative Christian authors (Bauer's a homeschooler and Pearcy praises Martin Olavsky), and they challenge and refute the "only good story is that one that teaches moral guidance" philosophy.
Your distinction between fiction and non-fiction is wrong. Either can be used to convey moral and amoral or immoral messages.
Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is the obvious model for The Magnificent Seven. Fictional? Yes. Moral? Also, yes. You aren't really serious in suggesting that Shakespeare is not a purveyor of moral guidance in his dramas???? Do you really think Homer was not an author of moral guidance in The Iliad and the Odyssey???? The Godfather Trilogy, regardless of subthemes is a VERRRRRY moral tale and derives its fanatic audience from those of us who recognize that fact. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (check her biography, husband and friends) never planned to deliver a moral guidance but rather an antimoral one.
Enough of specific refutation of the authors you chose. Let us add a few others.
We agree on Seabiscuit. Good. Next is Cinderella Man, telling the very moral tale of James J. Braddock, Heavyweight Champion, played by the none too moral Russel Crowe, who is a truly professional actor nonetheless and brought to the screen a substantially forgotten morality tale of American sport. Unfortunately, we were required to witness and ponder the lowlife behavior of Max Baer lest the crassness quota remain unfilled. Barely, I would let my kids see this movie because the moral content would outweigh the unnecessary cold sores.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a committed Catholic and wrote a three volume allegory to lead his readers to the Truth. C. S. Lewis, though a close friend of Tolkien and of Charles Williams, was a committed Protestant and anti-Catholic but well worth reading for his moral guidance and his craft. They are two of the standards of fiction. Can anyone even name the author of Million Dollar Baby????? Will anyone be able to name that author five years from now???? No. And the obscurity will be no surprise. Euthanasia is one of our cultural antimoral fads. Five years from now it will be old hat. We may be pondering the WHAT IFs of sex with anti-war culturally diverse reptiles who operate abortion mills for anti-nuclear gay whales or some such abomination that may be capturing the interest of the bored culturati of that time and Hollywood will rush to the screen with cinematic portrayals of WHAT IF to make such things seem attractive to ever more jaded audiences. None dare call Hollywood related even accidentally to actual Western Civilization.
As to whether 17-year olds ought to spend their time wallowing in morally corrupt and corrupting literature, plays, movies, and other questionable works of "art", the short answer is no for seventeen-year olds and no for those younger and no for those older. You are free to frequent what we Catholics promise in the Sacrament of Penance to avoid---the near occasion of sin. You are also free to suffer the temporal and eternal consequences of doing so. A man who claims to be committed to avoid adultery is wise not to hang out at cathouses just to enjoy the humor and repartee available through the companionship of the ladies lest he find himself compelled to enjoy other aspects of their hospitality as well. If he falls, he can hardly blame the ladies when he ought not to have been in their company in the first place and could easily have avoided the temptation.
Suicide and euthanasia are wrong. WHY DOES A MOVIE NEED TO SUGGEST THAT THEY ARE RIGHT OR WISE OR PRAGMATIC OR OTHERWISE WORTH INDULGING??????
You don't think haiku or other forms of poetry carry moral guidance??????
I have spent the better part of my life acting in what was the conservative movement. It has boundaries. The idea of substituting a loyalty to "freedom of imagination" for the boundaries and principles of what was a great movement and will be a great movement again is not attractive.
To do so for the mere reason of not offending potential "converts" is positively craven. If you told me that you wanted to "convert" to Catholicism but could not believe that Jesus Christ was God, that you cold not believe that He is present Body and Blood in the Eucharist under the continued appearance of bread and wine, that you could not believe in the Resurrection, etc., I would not say welcome, convert. I would say: Get back to us when you have changed your mind on those things and any other doctrines you reject.
The conservative movement was and will be made up of, well, conservatives and not of "free thinkers." We may agree, from time to time with libertarians but it is merely coincidence. John Cornwell, who purports to write non-fiction, has delivered an antimoral message in his "Hitler's Pope" vilifying the memory of Pope Pius XII who saved more Jews than any other human being during the Holocaust and was publicly recognized for it by Golda Meir, the Israeli government, and more recently by Rabbi Dallin in Commentary, the Weekly Standard and several books on the subect. The Rabbi uses non-fiction as a moral message and moral guidance to correct the "non-fiction" lies and expressed evil of Cornwell.
Ayn Rand was no paragon of moral virtue. Hers was a life of militant atheism and serial adultery, complete with a phony "philosophy" concocted to justify both. Nonetheless, even Rand understood (The Romantic Manifesto) that it would not be a moral act to commission a great artist to paint a life-size portrait of a beautiful woman but to be sure to include a cold sore on her lip to reflect a temporary condition marring her beauty while she posed. Hollywood is in the moral cold sore business. It is not challenge. It is not speculation. It is antimoral cultural graffiti. Morality is well-settled. WHAT IF? is merely an invitation to the seduction of one's morality to place it in service to him who persuaded Eve. On matters such as euthanasia, abortion, homosexuality, there is and never will be any open questions. The questions are long-since resolved.
I know right from wrong. So do you and so does every other human courtesy of Adam and Eve saying yes to the forbidden fruit of the tree. I am an adult, whatever that has to do with frequenting the near occasion of intellectual sin. "Adult" themes in literature, photos and movies are often claimed to be those which maximize the portrayal of the maximum number of genital and eliminatory organs in various stages of mindless heat as graphically as the producer dares. As to whether "we" are adults, I cannot offer an opinion. I can only speak for myself. I am an adult and that description bears no resemblance to the warped view of adulthood expressed as various disordered forms of WHAT IF?
I am not a monkey. Darwin may well have been one. You can speak for yourself since we are not acquainted.
The question is not as to whether we "need moral guidance" from films or TV shows or books. It is whether we need antimoral conditioning conveyed through films, TV shows or books.
I am more ethical than I used to be and hope that I am less ethical than I intend to be.
The last two sentences of your second paragraph are obviously rhetorical, do not follow logically and need no answers.