Nite!
Posted on 03/23/2002 8:22:39 PM PST by cincinnati65
Which movie (past or present) embodies the most liberal message?
Three were quite content.
Nite!
If we go waaaaaaaaay back, " METROPOLIS " can easily fall into the lefty film group.
Your picks reminded me of a couple more. Silkwood - it hit just about every major conveivable liberal tenet.
Johnny Got His Gun -- a blacklisted commie finally got yo make his dream movie.
It takes a town, designed to portray the idealic 1950s and, or, its many sitcoms.
As the movie goes on, spots of color start to appear as the character played by Reese Witherspoon starts degenerating the high school boys. Once they "lose their virginity" or move away from a clean lifestyle, they turn to colored versions of themselves, unlike the "boring and blase" black and white, "old fashioned" individuals that they were.
Gradually, the whole town is less Pleasant, everyone is turning into color, and segregation ensues amongst the "black and whites" and the "coloreds".
This whole film has propaganda on various levels. For one, the colored versions are viewed as the liberated versions of their black and white selves. They're viewed to be free, not uptight, not conservative. They're viewed to be having sex outside of marriage, if need be. In essence, they're viewed to be acting like the typical liberal. On the other hand, the black and white figures are viewed as the villians, conservatives, individuals who are resistant to change, those who are prejudiced and "racist" against people who are different; "the coloreds". They go to show this by indicating that the black and whites are putting up "no colored" signs around town. They go further by indicating that the black and whites are hateful in that they would go so far as to go to court to outlaw "coloreds".
Another area of propaganda is the vile slanderization of the traditional mother. In the beginning of the film, when everyone is black and white, the main mother role in the film is all happy, etc. Yet, later, it becomes evident that the mother is oppressed in her housewife duties, and that she yearns to be free, to be a colored. She later goes on to have a fling with someone other than her husband, she turns to color, and she tells her husband that he can fix his own dinner. If I'm not mistaken, I believe at the end of the film she leaves her husband and goes to be with her lover. The film portrays the relationship with her "lover" (played by Jeff Daniels) as being a wonderful thing, while her marriage is viewed as an oppressive slave system of which she has to do everything for her husband at every whim. This is so pathetic, for it's not only degenerated, sick and twisted, but it's also illogical in its live for the moment, don't worry about the future, I don't care if I hurt anyone, I want what I can get episode.
So, these are the areas of propaganda:
1) Traditional Marital Roles are all Wrong, Oppressive, etc.
2) Those who are resistant to moral and social change are insane, ridiculous, etc.
3) Those who are resistant to change are akin to oppressors, racists, zealots, etc.
4) Open Sex, pre-marital sex, Adultery, etc. is okay.
While "Pleasantville" does has some nice scenes of a 1950s way of life, before it is messed up, the propaganda is easily seen, and it makes it hard to watch if you know what message the producers were trying to convey.
not that wartime govt spending ended up solving the depression.
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One thing I learned from Regarding Henry: the best way to change a lawyer for the better is to shoot him in the head.
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Yep, all that New Agey crap ruined what was an otherwise decent CGI animation film.
IMO, Dr. Strangelove makes fun of everybody.
"Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. ... The bomb , Dmitri. ... The hydrogen bomb! ... Well now, what happened is ... ah ... one of our base commanders had a sort of ... well, he went a little funny in the head ... you know ... just a little ... funny. And, ah ... he went and did a silly thing. ... Well, I'll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes ... to attack your country... "
"What kind of suit do you call that, fella?"
Captain Mandrake: "What do you mean 'suit'? This happens to be an RAF uniform, sir."
Russian ambassador about the USSR Fearless Leader: "Be careful, Mr. President. I think he's drunk."
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one 45 caliber automatic, two boxes of ammunition, four days concentrated emergency rations, one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills, one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible, one hundred dollars in rubles, one hundred in gold, nine packs of chewing gum, one issue of prophylactics, three lipsticks, three pairs of nylon stockings. Shoot! A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
By almost any definnition 1937 and certainly 1933 were before WWII government spending came along. Good of you to point that addition problem with popular cultural myths of the 20th Century.
Hearst and his caricature Kane were essentially Populists.
We all have our Rosebuds, by the way.
Well, half of us, yes, but most of them don't ride them down snowy hills in public.
"Rosebud" in the movie was of course the sled from Kane's (long lost) childhood.
"Rosebud" was alleged to have significance to Hearst too, but referring to something (actually someone) else entirely.
It's an anti-liberal movie, more than anything else.
There's some symmetry to this -- Elia Kazan, who testified and "named names" before HUAC, later made "On the Waterfront", which was about someone who was a so-called "stool pigeon" regarding union corruption, in an effort to explain why he did what he did. When Kazan got a lifetime achievement Oscar a few years ago, some in Hollywood still held a grudge against him and refused to applaud him.
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