Who did Batman vote for?
The truth is, as film historian Jeanine Basinger always tells her students, when we go to the movies, "we see who we are," meaning we project ourselves and our values onto the screen. A liberal can watch "Juno," a movie in which the pregnant teen heroine carries the baby to term and gives it up for adoption, and call it "pro-choice." A conservative can watch the same scenario and call it "pro-life." A liberal can watch "The Dark Knight" and see in it a condemnation of George W. Bush's surveillance technology that invades privacy. A conservative can watch it and see it as a defense of same policy. Many of the most popular films are those that speak with forked tongue, i.e., confirm the beliefs of those at either end of the ideological spectrum.
Still, this list got me thinking: Is it possible to identify a Conservative film? A Liberal one? Is it the political affiliation of the filmmaker? If so, the right-leaning Clint Eastwood slaughtered a Conservative sacred cow in "Million Dollar Baby." Is it the ideology of the hero? If so, the populist James Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life" might be deemed anti-Capitalist because of his ongoing fight with banker Lionel Barrymore. The movie "To Kill a Mockingbird," released a few years before the Civil Rights Act, was in its day progressive. After the Civil Rights act, its plea for equal rights is less easy to place ideologically.
Any thoughts?
Movies are entertainment. Those that claim to be based on true stories are often fiction. Those that claim to be fiction are often really based on true stories, but they don't want to assert such. Though by Oliver Stone, his "Nixon" and "W" each seemed -for the most part- to be fair to their subjects. Entertainment.— HowardBHaas- I usually think that the more simplistic and propagandistic a movie is, the easier it is to discern the film maker's political bias. I think it's pretty clear that The Bourne Ultimatum, Iron Man, and The Day The Earth Stood Still, with their tiresome and distracting anti-Bush allegory elements (although I enjoyed parts of each movie) were certainly Liberal films. I guess I regard The Passion Of The Christ, Apocalypto and the Dirty Harry series as basically Conservative, although I don't think any of those movies are simplistic and propagandistic. Usually, in good art, there's enough complexity that political labels seem inappropriate, but how can you deal seriously with Russian Constructivist art without coming to terms with the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism (perfectly appropriate historical labels to attach) or consider Jacques-Louis David without considering the French Revolution? Maybe it's the corporate nature of most film making that makes this difficult and confusing, e.g., what are actual politics of The Third Man and to what degree do they reflect either Graham Greene's or Carol Reed's beliefs? Then you have really confusing people like Marcel Duchamp and Bob Dylan. Even when Dylan makes straightforward political comments (such as his praise for Obama), I still find it confusing because he kind of traffics in confusion. Perhaps HowardBHaas has it right, i.e., "Movies are entertainment". Airplane!, a movie made by what we know was a mixed team including Liberals and Conservatives, is a good example.— ccjroberts
- One problem I have with discussing the politics of a movie is that we tend to use the word "conservative" when it doesn't really apply. My understanding of that term is that it describes a person who believes in protecting the best of the past - be it in politics, art, social customs, you name it - while looking with healthy skepticism at new ideas until those ideas have been tested and proven worthwhile. Under that definition, a person who believes in preserving the Fourth Amendment would be conservative, while a person who believed in decreasing its applicability would be radical. The fact that the former might very well be from the left and the latter might very well be from the right only confuses matters more. By the same token, a person supported campus speech codes could be seen as radical, and one who opposed them because they contradict the First Amendment would be conservative - this despite the possibility that both people might very well see thmselves as liberal. So our tendency to mix up the meanings and uses of words like "liberal," "conservative, "right wing," and "left wing" tends to muddle us up when we talk politics. And, speaking of muddles, the politics of "The Dark Knight" are certainly that. On the one hand, there's a passionate cult of personality built up around Batman, a cult that not only includes many of the movies' characters, but also its makers, it seems clear to me. Cults of personality are always reactionary in the sense that civil liberties are invariably sacrificed to the person around whom the cult is built. On the other hand, however, there is a great deal of hand-wringing in "The Dark Knight" about the sacrificing of those very same civil liberties. Is this the filmmakers trying to have it both ways? Or are they simply uninterested in, or unable to, think their way through the implications of what they're showing us? My guess is, some of the former and a lot of the latter.— wwolfe
- Reading through the list by the National Review, I realized that people will see what they want in films. I never thought of most of those movies as "conservative," just as I often don't label movies "liberal." What I find interesting though is that we watch things to reaffirm our beliefs. For instance, conservatives will watch Fox News and I guess liberals watch...everything else? But with movies it's harder to distinguish. I guess conservatives don't go to see Michael Moore documentaries, but what if a film is not so conveniently labeled? I guess that is where personal interpretation steps in and people find a way to make a film fit their ideology...I think that most films never fully fit into either category. For me, I was blown away that they ranked The Dark Knight as conservative. I think that a film as brilliantly complex as The Dark Knight is not definable by such terms. I think part of why I loved it so much was because it presents so many different ideas and ultimately leaves us with more questions than answers. The questions especially about authority and justice and who has the right to control either.— allison811
Comment removed.- Unless the fillmaker is explicitly saying, "My movie is this ideology" like David Zucker's silly anti-Michael Moore comedy whose title escapes me, I think it's dumb to try to label a movie politically. For me, a movie is either good, bad or somewhere in between. For me, a prime example is how many otherwise smart people I know who hated Forrest Gump because they saw in it some subversive pro-conservative message which I never understood. I think reviewing a film because it doesn't agree with your ideology is as bad as letting your bias slip into normal reporting. Your artistic bias is what should be in a review, not your political one.— edwardcopeland
- The Dark Knight is denitely a Republican.They beleive in unlimited waspons of all kinds, no background checks, no gun control laws. They want this country to go back to the days of the Wild West. They love vigilantes to take the law onto their own hands.Dick Cheney wishes he could be the Dark Knight. Sorry, Dick, The Dark Knight is Tom Selleck. The democrats are just as riduculous. They have all kinds of excuses, are responsible for the revolving door policy of criminals repeating the same violent crime over and over,spend 3 weeks in jail, and believe that they will be rehabilitated. In this city people are getting fed up with the violence. It wouldn't surperise me if a Rizzo type of Republican wins the election next time and turns Democrats into Republicans.the FBI says the recent crime is due to poverty. We don't have welfare anymore-unless you are Wall Street, the banks,or the mortgage companies. A pox on all their houses!— footballguru
7 comments
- VIEWED
- Commented
Playing at a theater near you
Be the first in line! Find local theaters, view listings and purchase tickets.
Philly.com Promotions
- News | Sports | Business | What's Happening | Restaurants & Food | Entertainment | Living | Marketplace | Jobs
Site Services:
Classifieds:
Partners:
Local Services:
