Posted on 09/09/2009 10:49:38 AM PDT by HorowitzianConservative
As if NewsReal hasn't stumbled into enough debates already, now we have John Nolte, Editor-In-Chief of the essential conservative pop culture blog Big Hollywood challenging us.
On September 1 Chris Yogerst (who also writes for Big Hollywood and Parcbench in addition to NewsReal) wrote a post here jumping into the debate about "Inglourious Basterds" and why Hollywood often employs politically correct villains:
With the politics surrounding Hollywood, one thing people have to understand is that not every filmmaker thinks he or she is a politician. They don’t all want to make political statements with their films. Quentin Tarantino is one of those people. All of his films have remained entirely apolitical. His only concern is making a great film rather than making a political statement.This was met with a friendly rebuttal from Nolte, Yogerst's boss at Big Hollywood on September 2:
Yesterday, our own Chris Yogerst weighed in on Greg Gutfeld’s criticism of Hollywood — specifically Greg’s criticism of “G.I. Joe,” Stallone’s new Rambo film and “Inglourious Basterds” — for choosing politically correct villains over the real ones we face today. Chris is correct that turning Nazis into Jihadists is not something a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino would do. If he has any, Tarantino’s politics have remained hidden in his work. Up on that screen the only thing he advocates for is overlooked 70’s B-movies and audacious entertainment. However, that doesn’t make the director’s decision to use Nazis any less politically correct or Hollywood’s moral cowardice in this area any more defensible.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
It may not be a critique of Jews, I haven't seen the film.
I will say that there was a seventies genre of film called the "rape and revenge" film where some woman (or in some rarer instances a man) is raped and then seeks cold blooded vigilante justice on her tormentors one by one.
Deliverance even fits this model.
“The Left Doesn’t Have As Tight a Stranglehold on Cinema as You Fear”
B S
Having family in the industry, you say one conservative thing and you are black-listed.
Did you even read the article before posting your response?
“Nolte challenges the idea that Hollywood is more concerned with money than ideology:
Nolte concludes:
It’s not the economy stupid, it’s the agenda.”
Yes, I did and I think I agreed that is was their ideology that they focus on and take out those that disagree with them.
Even Julie and Julia had to say something disparaging about Republicans. It has gotten to the point now where I expect it. ha
I don't know anyone in the business, but that's absolutely believable, at least to me.
I always go back to "The Passion of the Christ". That movie was made on a shoe-string budget and generated close to $800 million (perhaps more) in box office returns. If Hollywood only cared about money, and not political agendas (as was frequently repeated during the Passion controversy, and whenever the liberal charge is levied at HW), then you would have a whole host of Passion-esque movies come out since. But, we haven't - at all. However, for the last six years, the public has been treated to dozens and dozens of anti-war movies, that have all bombed at the box office. But, they keep getting made, every year.
It leaves one to only draw the conclusion that's it's not money that drives Hollywood, but political agendas that do.
I spit on Your Grave/Day of the Woman was one. Ah, memories of my teen years.
You didn’t get the point of my article. Yes Hollywood is ridiculously leftist and intolerant of conservatives. (Big revelation there! What’s the next newsflash? Did you know the media has a leftist bias too?)
But at least 85-90% of the films Hollywood puts out are apolitical. That was the point.
Liberals will politicize everything.
That is a mantra.
Some critics have said that there was no reason to put the anti-conservative rhetoric into the recent Julia Child biopic.
A project may be greenlighted and some producer who is now overseeing your project can tank it out of spite and personal grudges.
Another way this can be done is sinking a modest success by writing off the losses by a “pet” project against your project. Creative accounting.
Office politics reign even when the participants are “apolitical”.
You’re right about “Julie and Julia.” That’s one of the best films of the year and it’s too bad Nora Ephron had to spoil it with a cheap political shot.
But the fact remains: most movies aren’t politicized. Hollywood wouldn’t survive at all if they were.
“But at least 85-90% of the films Hollywood puts out are apolitical. That was the point.”
Guess we disagree - maybe of the “block busters” since most people don’t want to see their politics however of all the films made, a greater majority are political.
I believe Julia herself alluded to it in her autobiography.
I dug no further.
I’ve been a film critic for several years and usually see at least a movie a week. I keep a pretty close eye on the movies released. If you dispute my rough, guesstimated numbers what would you suggest instead and what evidence would you put forth?
You’re saying that a majority of Hollywood’s films are political? As in at least 51%?
Do you count movies that have females as commandos and elite combat troops as political? I do.
How about movies that show the 50s as some kind of backwards nightmare of oppression and hatred, and ignorance?
How about the cheesy way that they show gun shops, all of this is political, movies are almost all sending out liberal political messages in countless ways, the Hollywood culture is liberal and political and it is written into the majority of the films that they make.
Even better are commercials today portraying men (mostly white) too stupid to live - I never recall men creating women in commercials like this.
Yeah, those would count as movies with leftist political messages.
How many new release movies do you see per year? Because I’ve been seeing 50-60 per year as part of my job as a film critic for the past couple years and this is the trend that I’ve observed. Sure, there’s some leftist crap but not nearly in a majority of pictures.
If you’ve got some facts to back up how you feel then perhaps you might want to pull them out.
This describes two of Tarantino's films already, Kill Bill and Deathproof.
I have always been a movie fan and can remember when the politics got so left wing that I first remember starting to pass on some movies or dislike them for their liberal politics by the late 1960s. If you have just noticed the trend in the last couple of years then you missed the last 40 years or so, of course it goes way, way back, but for the last 40 years it has become first common and then the norm.
I have watched several hundred movies this past year.
If you’ve got some facts to back up how you feel then perhaps you might want to pull them out, because you are going against the tide on this one, since you only signed up here recently I wonder how many decades that you have been reading and subscribing to conservative sources that write so frequently on this topic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.