0 comment Thursday, November 13, 2014 | admin
I've been coming across a number of posts on conservative blogs or websites recently which have touched on the question of why conservatives seem underrepresented in the arts, or at least, do not seem to exert any influence in that field. Why this is so is something that might be discussed at length, having many possible causes.
However I've noticed, too, that there are precious few critics or commentators on the arts, including popular entertainment, who seem to be conservative or traditionalist or just politically incorrect. This is maddening.
I notice on Turner Classic Movies (a channel which is deteriorating slowly into another American Movie Classics) there is a newer movie called Glory being shown this evening. Now, to me, anything made after about 1960 is a 'new' movie because that time period was when political correctness became established in popular entertainment.
I know nothing about the movie Glory except that it appears to be a movie about the War Between the States, and as it stars Denzel Washington, I am certain the issue of race will figure prominently in the movie. In other words, the movie will be a morality play, and I know before watching a moment of it who will be the bad guy and who will be the sainted victim.
So I go to IMDB.com to read the comments on the movie. Knowing how firm a grip PC has on our society,I fully expect that all the reviews will be glowing and full of quasi-religious language. I was correct. Commenters speak of their 'emotional experience' watching the movies and it's clear that these movies about race issues in the Bad Old Days are to them what Foxe's Book of Martyrs is for Christians.
This comment is an example:
I find this one of my most difficult reviews to write. Even as I sit here for what must be the 206th viewing, I marvel, as acutely as I did in the very first viewing, that this tale has the compelling and overwhelming power to touch aesthetically, viscerally, profoundly and emotionally my sense of pride,injustice, soul. Even if this were not a true story, I would still recommend this movie to everyone with awe and reverence. And even as I watch, there is goose-flesh and damp eyes. As there always is...''
Political correctness, leading to what seems to be self-flagellation for white people, is a religious thing these days. Do these people who experience some kind of numinous experience watching the villainy of their ancestors, or take some form of twisted pleasure in seeing their forefathers painted as inhuman sadists or cold-blooded oppressors? Or do they comfort themselves that it was ''those other white guys'', somebody else's great-granddaddies who were the villains? Or do they accept that yes, their own forefathers were ''racists'', and do they then thank whatever gods they believe in that at least THEY are enlightened and better than their kin a few generations ago?
Is it some kind of catharsis that they experience through these movies? Do they experience some feeling that they have expiated their 'original sin' of Caucasianness by weeping over play-acted scenes of Denzel Washington being mistreated?
Who can fathom what goes through the minds of the self-castigating white people? I don't think that even in my liberal days I experienced this kind of emotion in watching these kinds of things, so I can't put myself in the place of these commenters.
I do notice that whichever movie you look up on IMDB, the comments are always uniformly liberal. I truly cannot ever recall reading any kind of dissenting conservative comment on any movie there. This leads me to wonder: does IMDB censor the comments based on PC or even political orientation? It would not be surprising or unprecedented if this were the case.
There seems to be a crying need for some kind of non-PC criticism of popular entertainment or the arts in general. There are examples like this
but this is rather mainstream 'conservatism', and mainstream conservatism tends to be politically correct.
Most of the 'conservative' blogs on movies that I've seen are politically correct.
This discussion on Free Republic about conservative movie reviews degenerates into a slanging match between some Christian social conservatives and the 'South Park' Republican types who sneer at Christian conservatives as being prudes.
Many 'conservatives' are conservative only on fiscal and military matters, and socially liberal, or perhaps libertarian on just about everything else.
So is there any hope of any politically incorrect counter-influence in the arts, even if only in the form of criticism or commentary dissecting the propaganda? Or is the answer to just 'enjoy' the low-quality tendentious garbage put out by Hollywood and MTV?
It does seem that as long as the enemy controls all the media and the subliminal and overt images our society absorbs, they will control minds and hearts. What can we do, if anything, about that?
However I've noticed, too, that there are precious few critics or commentators on the arts, including popular entertainment, who seem to be conservative or traditionalist or just politically incorrect. This is maddening.
I notice on Turner Classic Movies (a channel which is deteriorating slowly into another American Movie Classics) there is a newer movie called Glory being shown this evening. Now, to me, anything made after about 1960 is a 'new' movie because that time period was when political correctness became established in popular entertainment.
I know nothing about the movie Glory except that it appears to be a movie about the War Between the States, and as it stars Denzel Washington, I am certain the issue of race will figure prominently in the movie. In other words, the movie will be a morality play, and I know before watching a moment of it who will be the bad guy and who will be the sainted victim.
So I go to IMDB.com to read the comments on the movie. Knowing how firm a grip PC has on our society,I fully expect that all the reviews will be glowing and full of quasi-religious language. I was correct. Commenters speak of their 'emotional experience' watching the movies and it's clear that these movies about race issues in the Bad Old Days are to them what Foxe's Book of Martyrs is for Christians.
This comment is an example:
I find this one of my most difficult reviews to write. Even as I sit here for what must be the 206th viewing, I marvel, as acutely as I did in the very first viewing, that this tale has the compelling and overwhelming power to touch aesthetically, viscerally, profoundly and emotionally my sense of pride,injustice, soul. Even if this were not a true story, I would still recommend this movie to everyone with awe and reverence. And even as I watch, there is goose-flesh and damp eyes. As there always is...''
Political correctness, leading to what seems to be self-flagellation for white people, is a religious thing these days. Do these people who experience some kind of numinous experience watching the villainy of their ancestors, or take some form of twisted pleasure in seeing their forefathers painted as inhuman sadists or cold-blooded oppressors? Or do they comfort themselves that it was ''those other white guys'', somebody else's great-granddaddies who were the villains? Or do they accept that yes, their own forefathers were ''racists'', and do they then thank whatever gods they believe in that at least THEY are enlightened and better than their kin a few generations ago?
Is it some kind of catharsis that they experience through these movies? Do they experience some feeling that they have expiated their 'original sin' of Caucasianness by weeping over play-acted scenes of Denzel Washington being mistreated?
Who can fathom what goes through the minds of the self-castigating white people? I don't think that even in my liberal days I experienced this kind of emotion in watching these kinds of things, so I can't put myself in the place of these commenters.
I do notice that whichever movie you look up on IMDB, the comments are always uniformly liberal. I truly cannot ever recall reading any kind of dissenting conservative comment on any movie there. This leads me to wonder: does IMDB censor the comments based on PC or even political orientation? It would not be surprising or unprecedented if this were the case.
There seems to be a crying need for some kind of non-PC criticism of popular entertainment or the arts in general. There are examples like this
but this is rather mainstream 'conservatism', and mainstream conservatism tends to be politically correct.
Most of the 'conservative' blogs on movies that I've seen are politically correct.
This discussion on Free Republic about conservative movie reviews degenerates into a slanging match between some Christian social conservatives and the 'South Park' Republican types who sneer at Christian conservatives as being prudes.
Many 'conservatives' are conservative only on fiscal and military matters, and socially liberal, or perhaps libertarian on just about everything else.
So is there any hope of any politically incorrect counter-influence in the arts, even if only in the form of criticism or commentary dissecting the propaganda? Or is the answer to just 'enjoy' the low-quality tendentious garbage put out by Hollywood and MTV?
It does seem that as long as the enemy controls all the media and the subliminal and overt images our society absorbs, they will control minds and hearts. What can we do, if anything, about that?
Labels: Arts, Cultural Marxism, Entertainment Media, Liberalism, Movies, Popular Culture, Revisionist History