0 comment Saturday, September 27, 2014 | admin
I always suspect that the programmers at TCM have a political agenda, and as I watched the movie 'Gabriel Over the White House' yesterday, it would seem as if that movie were chosen to make some political point, although the message of the movie itself is vague, and has been read several ways depending on one's political leanings.
For those of you who haven't seen it, 'Gabriel' is an odd movie, released in 1933, apparently produced by William Randolph Hearst during the 1932 presidential campaign. Does it seem as if that particular election keeps coming up lately in the context of today's news? It seems so to me.
Controversial since the time of its release, Gabriel Over the White House is widely acknowledged to be an example of propaganda, although contention exists as to which ideology it is espousing.
Filmed during the 1932 presidential election on the orders of media magnate William Randolph Hearst, the film was intended to be an instructional guide for Franklin D. Roosevelt during his presidency. Hammond as he exists prior to his accident is an amalgamation of caricatures of Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt's immediate predecessors. After his accident, he is Hearst's idealized image of the perfect president, the president he wanted Roosevelt to be.
These facts, coupled with the film's almost chilling accuracy at predicting Roosevelt's economic programs, lead many, particularly classical liberals and conservatives, to believe that film is a sympathetic portrayal of what might be social liberalism's worst excesses, or even socialism.
Social liberals often counter these claims by declaring that the film's politics trend more toward fascism than socialism. They point out that both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini took steps similar to Roosevelt's in stabilizing their countries' economies and both men were much more like Hammond in their social and foreign policies (e.g., massive military buildup, martial law, secret police, show trials, etc.) than Roosevelt. They further point to Hearst's well-known dalliance with Nazism, including his attendance of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, as evidence of their theories.
Recently, author and history professor Robert S. McElvaine wrote an editorial for the left-wing OpEdNews.com in which he compared current President George W. Bush to Judson Hammond.''
That last comparison figures; liberals always see a likeness to their favorite ''right-wing'' bogeymen of the day.
The movie is available on DVD, for those who are interested. Or, you can watch the movie at YouTube, in segments, and this link has a talky intro in Spanish, no less, but I include the link because as of now, the comments below the clip are interesting. I suggest you check them out, while they are there. The commenters see a resemblance to today's politics, and to the coming administration. That is what struck me when I watched the movie this time around. I first saw it perhaps 15 years ago, and it impressed me simply as a quirky, odd movie with an ambiguous message. This time, however, I saw the possibilities of a presidency which might resort to authoritarian measures in the service of liberal principles.
I won't go into great detail on the plot of the movie; I am not a movie critic, obviously. The synopsis is at the Wikipedia link.
The first time I saw the movie, some of the historical references went over my head; for instance, the ''Army of the Unemployed" in the movie represented the real-life 'Bonus Army', whose story I was not familiar with previously. I've recently been reading about the 'Bonus Army' in my old 1930s newspapers.
The events depicted in the movie, with the ''Army of the Unemployed" are based on real-life events, but in real life, there was violence used toward the 'Bonus Army', who had set up a tent city in Washington, D.C. The 'army' was made up of World War I veterans who had been promised a bonus for their military service, payable in 1945. However, with the Great Depression, many veterans were unemployed and hungry, and asked for their bonuses to be paid immediately. The Senate, however, rejected a bill which would provide for an early payment.
A month later, on July 28, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the evacuation of the veterans from all government property, Entrusted with the job, the Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two marchers killed. Learning of the shooting at lunch, President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans. Infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks were dispatched with Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur in command. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower served as his liaison with Washington police and Major George Patton led the cavalry.''
Were any of you taught about this in school? I was not.
The movie President, supposedly being under the influence of the angel Gabriel, carries out his "populist" policies by establishing martial law.
When he sets up miltary tribunals and bombs gangsters into surrendering, we are to understand that this is the agenda he's been given to carry out, his 'divine mission'. So we are to cheer on this president and his authoritarian regime because he is doing it all in the name of ''the people'', the downtrodden, the little guys.
This kind of populism was very much in the air in the 30s, and it's reflected in a lot of the movies of the time, such as ''Meet John Doe'' and ''Sullivan's Travels.'' Perhaps it's natural that the country leaned in this direction then; there were obviously very real grievances against the wealthy and powerful, who did seem to exercise an influence far beyond what our system should allow, and there were egregious injustices which seemed to demand to be rectified.
I did find it ironic in the movie that 'President Hammond' calls the ambassadors of the world together and more or less threatens them into agreeing to disarm by a show of force. They all, of course, promise to stop their arms race, and thus everybody lives happily ever after, at least in the fictional world of this movie.
On my first viewing of this movie some years ago, I could not have imagined a presidency like this one, in which a president assumes dictatorial powers, meeting little resistance. Now it seems much more thinkable. And even if such a presidency showed a benign face, acting in the name of the ''people'' or the downtrodden and oppressed, it would still be a dictatorship nonetheless. I honestly believe that many ''liberals'' despite their constant braying about right-wing authoritarianism would be overjoyed to have a left-wing authoritarian in power; leftists and liberals generally believe, earnestly, that the end justifies the means. And that concerns me.
Labels: American History, Authoritarianism, Hollywood, Old Movies, Politics, Presidency, Propaganda
0 comment Tuesday, September 9, 2014 | admin
A pretty good montage of old movie scenes -- although I'd leave out the 1970s ones.
Labels: Old America, Old Movies
0 comment Friday, August 8, 2014 | admin
Mike Tuggle at Rebellion points us to this interesting piece, with the rather ponderous title How the West Was Changed: Degradation of the Townspeople After World War II in the American Western.
The obvious change in Western movies was that the townspeople were portrayed in a less and less sympathetic light, and in some cases, white American townspeople were no longer part of the storyline, as in 'The Magnificent Seven', in which the townspeople were Mexican.
The reason, per Mike Tuggle:
Simple, says the author -- the Hollywood elite, angered by Middle America's rallying around Joe McCarthy -- had declared war on the white middle class...''
The Nous American blog had an interesting series of pieces on Hollywood Westerns and the way in which they reflected the social revolution of the late 50s and early 60s. (Unfortunately the pieces are not all linked to each other, so one has to navigate through the archives to find the pieces in question.)
The blogger, GMason, describes some of the reasons why the Westerns shifted. Up until the mid-20th century the Westerns, particularly 'B Westerns' were 'morality plays', with positive values -- the chivalric code exemplified by the 'good guy' hero, and the triumph of the good and decent people, including the honest townsfolk.
B westerns operated as though they were under some special ethical directives. In fact, Bs have often been called "morality plays," and they were. Some made better use of their moral situations and portrayal than others, but none blurred the distinction between good and bad, or good and evil.
Typically in a B western, there are men who want something that is not theirs and intend to get it from the honorable persons who own what the bad guys covet. This may involve cattle, land, water, oil, gold, bearer bonds, stagecoach contracts, and so on. The baddies violate the sovreign rights of those who possess what they covet. To achieve their nefarious ends, they initiate all sorts of physical force, including fraud.
The defenders of the good must discover, then uncover, and deal with the issue and its instigators. Adding to the plot complexity are mistakes of knowledge, bad assumptions, and ignorance, which delay rectification. Invariable, however, retaliatory force, in the name of the law, of rights, of property ownership, of the good, etc., must be used to correct the situation. There are fist fights, brawls, major and minor shootouts, right on up to the cavalry arriving to restore right from might. Good always triumphs. That was standard moral fare in Bs.''
On the subject of Westerns and European culture, Cambria Will Not Yield also had a good piece, which I referenced here before. Those who missed that piece might like to read it here.
But returning to Aaron Barlow's above-linked 'How the West Was Changed', we find that he indicates that the most obvious change was in the way the townspeople were regarded. In the old 'poverty row' B Westerns, pre-1950s, the ordinary people were presented as deserving of protection from the 'bad guys' who threatened their way of life and their peace and safety. And it was such people, mostly white 'average' people, who were the audience for these Westerns. It would seem odd to present them with movies which showed their ancestors in an unfriendly light, but that is what happened after the end of the B-movie era, and as only 'A' Westerns were made.
'The movie Western had moved from "poverty row" (abetting the demise of these poor-cousin studios) and firmly into the mainstream. Along with a changing social and political climate, better production values, actors, writers, and distribution led to a Western quite different from what had been presented before. Yet, though many of the Westerns of the 1950s are among the best the genre has ever seen, something is lost whenever a change of this magnitude occurs.
In this case, it was the people. Their protection once having been the rationale behind the Western, they now played�at best�the role of oppressor in scenarios where attention is turned to other problems, or had disappeared completely from consideration while questions of individualism and personal morality began to dominate the genre.
[...]
After World War II, however, the "good" population began to disappear from sight in the Western.
Why?
Why, for example, was a cultural split added to The Magnificent Seven (John Sturgis, 1960), the Hollywood remake of Shichinin no samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)? In the original, the townspeople are simply poor and oppressed; they share a cultural background with the samurai they hire to protect them as well as with the people who are expected to see the film. In the remake the townspeople are alien�to their protectors and to most of their intended audience. Why? Why make it a Mexican town in need of protection by Americans?''
The essay ties together a number of things: the changing portrayal of the average small-town American in the 1950s and 60s, the Cold War, the McCarthy era, and the increasing media hostility to rural white America.
The Hollywood elites probably had always felt that they were outsiders in Anglo-American culture, and they, being mostly urban people, of more recent immigrant roots in many cases, were distrustful or even disdainful of the rural or small-town white culture of America. In the 50s and thereafter, in the divisive atmosphere of the 'Red Scare', small-town Americans increasingly became depicted in movies as sinister or at least as ignorant and crude and unfriendly. We saw this trend culminate in the 70s and thereafter, with many Western movies depicting bigoted whites persecuting Indians, and in the old 1970s TV series 'Kung Fu', the ''Chinese'' character Caine. Each and every episode of that series had scenes of leering, slavering bigots attacking Caine while calling him racial epithets.
Dances With Wolves, in the 90s was another movie whose depiction of whites was relentlessly disparaging, with the only exceptions being the hero, who turned his back on white civilization and went native, and his love interest, another white-gone-native.
Another way in which this manifests itself is in the negative image of Confederate soldiers or former confederate soldiers in recent movies; in the past, portrayals of Confederates or ex-Confederates were often sympathetic.
This is just one more front in the war on our past and on our ancestors. Can't Hollywood just let our forefathers rest in peace, or must they repeatedly exhume them for a posthumous flogging?
Although Barlow generally makes good points in the essay linked above, One quibble that I have with 'How the West Was Changed' is that the writer seems to presume that McCarthyism, so-called, was some kind of political witch hunt; he does not seem to credit the idea that there was substance to McCarthy's allegations, despite his personal flaws. And there is no hint that the writer believes that Communism was a real threat which should have been confronted and dealt with. The fact that some people in Hollywood were 'blacklisted' and could not find work in the industry for a while (many of them were back in the industry later) seems to be considered 'persecution' Soviet-style by many Americans. As if 'blacklisting' were morally equivalent to gulags or mass purges.
But it's an interesting piece overall. It is obvious to most people, except the most willfully blind, that Hollywood and the media in general have an ideological agenda, and that they subtly -- and sometimes not-so-subtly -- shape our ideas about the past, and about the present and about ourselves. In this sense they have enormous power, and we really ought to scrutinize the 'entertainment' media (and the news media) as much or more as we scrutinize elected officials. Politics takes many forms. 'Entertainment' these days is all too often another form of indoctrination, but it's presented to us in a shiny, attractive package rather than in the form of lectures and polemics. It's the spoonful of sugar; we watch a Hollywood movie or a TV program or a music video or even a commercial these days, and we have images and subtle messages implanted in our consciousness. And when you try to point out to someone the messages in the media, often the response is: ''it's just a movie'' or 'it's just a TV show; lighten up.' Yet it does have an effect; sometimes it's a gradual, subtle effect, but in some cases, especially among the more impressionable young, a movie or a TV program (or less frequently, a book) will profoundly affect the thinking and beliefs of the target. If my readers remember I posted a link to a thread from a liberal blog where the subject of discussion was 'what movies have changed your life?' Many of the people claimed that a movie did in fact change their lives. Sometimes, especially in this present subjective age, people are more susceptible to manipulation via visual images, especially when their emotions are aroused by the images. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the trite (but true) old saying has it.
It's been said before, but I think we need to look at our entertainment with a critical eye and point out the ways in which it is destructive to us. The politically correct, anti-white left absolutely dominates the media, including the entertainment media, and they are challenged far too infrequently on the heavy-handed propaganda they peddle. We need more voices on our side to provide some perspective on this, and to try to counteract it.
The obvious change in Western movies was that the townspeople were portrayed in a less and less sympathetic light, and in some cases, white American townspeople were no longer part of the storyline, as in 'The Magnificent Seven', in which the townspeople were Mexican.
The reason, per Mike Tuggle:
Simple, says the author -- the Hollywood elite, angered by Middle America's rallying around Joe McCarthy -- had declared war on the white middle class...''
The Nous American blog had an interesting series of pieces on Hollywood Westerns and the way in which they reflected the social revolution of the late 50s and early 60s. (Unfortunately the pieces are not all linked to each other, so one has to navigate through the archives to find the pieces in question.)
The blogger, GMason, describes some of the reasons why the Westerns shifted. Up until the mid-20th century the Westerns, particularly 'B Westerns' were 'morality plays', with positive values -- the chivalric code exemplified by the 'good guy' hero, and the triumph of the good and decent people, including the honest townsfolk.
B westerns operated as though they were under some special ethical directives. In fact, Bs have often been called "morality plays," and they were. Some made better use of their moral situations and portrayal than others, but none blurred the distinction between good and bad, or good and evil.
Typically in a B western, there are men who want something that is not theirs and intend to get it from the honorable persons who own what the bad guys covet. This may involve cattle, land, water, oil, gold, bearer bonds, stagecoach contracts, and so on. The baddies violate the sovreign rights of those who possess what they covet. To achieve their nefarious ends, they initiate all sorts of physical force, including fraud.
The defenders of the good must discover, then uncover, and deal with the issue and its instigators. Adding to the plot complexity are mistakes of knowledge, bad assumptions, and ignorance, which delay rectification. Invariable, however, retaliatory force, in the name of the law, of rights, of property ownership, of the good, etc., must be used to correct the situation. There are fist fights, brawls, major and minor shootouts, right on up to the cavalry arriving to restore right from might. Good always triumphs. That was standard moral fare in Bs.''
On the subject of Westerns and European culture, Cambria Will Not Yield also had a good piece, which I referenced here before. Those who missed that piece might like to read it here.
But returning to Aaron Barlow's above-linked 'How the West Was Changed', we find that he indicates that the most obvious change was in the way the townspeople were regarded. In the old 'poverty row' B Westerns, pre-1950s, the ordinary people were presented as deserving of protection from the 'bad guys' who threatened their way of life and their peace and safety. And it was such people, mostly white 'average' people, who were the audience for these Westerns. It would seem odd to present them with movies which showed their ancestors in an unfriendly light, but that is what happened after the end of the B-movie era, and as only 'A' Westerns were made.
'The movie Western had moved from "poverty row" (abetting the demise of these poor-cousin studios) and firmly into the mainstream. Along with a changing social and political climate, better production values, actors, writers, and distribution led to a Western quite different from what had been presented before. Yet, though many of the Westerns of the 1950s are among the best the genre has ever seen, something is lost whenever a change of this magnitude occurs.
In this case, it was the people. Their protection once having been the rationale behind the Western, they now played�at best�the role of oppressor in scenarios where attention is turned to other problems, or had disappeared completely from consideration while questions of individualism and personal morality began to dominate the genre.
[...]
After World War II, however, the "good" population began to disappear from sight in the Western.
Why?
Why, for example, was a cultural split added to The Magnificent Seven (John Sturgis, 1960), the Hollywood remake of Shichinin no samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)? In the original, the townspeople are simply poor and oppressed; they share a cultural background with the samurai they hire to protect them as well as with the people who are expected to see the film. In the remake the townspeople are alien�to their protectors and to most of their intended audience. Why? Why make it a Mexican town in need of protection by Americans?''
The essay ties together a number of things: the changing portrayal of the average small-town American in the 1950s and 60s, the Cold War, the McCarthy era, and the increasing media hostility to rural white America.
The Hollywood elites probably had always felt that they were outsiders in Anglo-American culture, and they, being mostly urban people, of more recent immigrant roots in many cases, were distrustful or even disdainful of the rural or small-town white culture of America. In the 50s and thereafter, in the divisive atmosphere of the 'Red Scare', small-town Americans increasingly became depicted in movies as sinister or at least as ignorant and crude and unfriendly. We saw this trend culminate in the 70s and thereafter, with many Western movies depicting bigoted whites persecuting Indians, and in the old 1970s TV series 'Kung Fu', the ''Chinese'' character Caine. Each and every episode of that series had scenes of leering, slavering bigots attacking Caine while calling him racial epithets.
Dances With Wolves, in the 90s was another movie whose depiction of whites was relentlessly disparaging, with the only exceptions being the hero, who turned his back on white civilization and went native, and his love interest, another white-gone-native.
Another way in which this manifests itself is in the negative image of Confederate soldiers or former confederate soldiers in recent movies; in the past, portrayals of Confederates or ex-Confederates were often sympathetic.
This is just one more front in the war on our past and on our ancestors. Can't Hollywood just let our forefathers rest in peace, or must they repeatedly exhume them for a posthumous flogging?
Although Barlow generally makes good points in the essay linked above, One quibble that I have with 'How the West Was Changed' is that the writer seems to presume that McCarthyism, so-called, was some kind of political witch hunt; he does not seem to credit the idea that there was substance to McCarthy's allegations, despite his personal flaws. And there is no hint that the writer believes that Communism was a real threat which should have been confronted and dealt with. The fact that some people in Hollywood were 'blacklisted' and could not find work in the industry for a while (many of them were back in the industry later) seems to be considered 'persecution' Soviet-style by many Americans. As if 'blacklisting' were morally equivalent to gulags or mass purges.
But it's an interesting piece overall. It is obvious to most people, except the most willfully blind, that Hollywood and the media in general have an ideological agenda, and that they subtly -- and sometimes not-so-subtly -- shape our ideas about the past, and about the present and about ourselves. In this sense they have enormous power, and we really ought to scrutinize the 'entertainment' media (and the news media) as much or more as we scrutinize elected officials. Politics takes many forms. 'Entertainment' these days is all too often another form of indoctrination, but it's presented to us in a shiny, attractive package rather than in the form of lectures and polemics. It's the spoonful of sugar; we watch a Hollywood movie or a TV program or a music video or even a commercial these days, and we have images and subtle messages implanted in our consciousness. And when you try to point out to someone the messages in the media, often the response is: ''it's just a movie'' or 'it's just a TV show; lighten up.' Yet it does have an effect; sometimes it's a gradual, subtle effect, but in some cases, especially among the more impressionable young, a movie or a TV program (or less frequently, a book) will profoundly affect the thinking and beliefs of the target. If my readers remember I posted a link to a thread from a liberal blog where the subject of discussion was 'what movies have changed your life?' Many of the people claimed that a movie did in fact change their lives. Sometimes, especially in this present subjective age, people are more susceptible to manipulation via visual images, especially when their emotions are aroused by the images. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the trite (but true) old saying has it.
It's been said before, but I think we need to look at our entertainment with a critical eye and point out the ways in which it is destructive to us. The politically correct, anti-white left absolutely dominates the media, including the entertainment media, and they are challenged far too infrequently on the heavy-handed propaganda they peddle. We need more voices on our side to provide some perspective on this, and to try to counteract it.
Labels: American History, Entertainment Media, Leftism, Old Movies, Political Correctness, Popular Culture
0 comment Friday, July 18, 2014 | admin
There is a discussion going on over at VFR about the Turner Classic Movies channel, or TCM.
The discussion began with Spencer Warren's piece about the Hollywood Ten, a group of people in the movie industry of the 1950s who were investigated for Communist connections.
Warren took exception to the leftist slant of the story as presented by TCM's Robert Osborne. Warren detected a bias, and another commenter at VFR, Mark E, wrote a long and impassioned defense of Osborne and TCM, extravagantly praising TCM for being
...THE bastion of conservative/traditionalist films, views, images, sense of life, historical perspective, film aesthetics and morality, etc., simply because of what it is in its very nature, and all the movies they show.
It is the only place in the contemporary media where the un-censored, un-PC, pre-Boomer past is presented with reverence as a good thing and not the family shame that is elsewhere the common dispiriting leftoid/"progressive" narrative about America.
They do not censor the past to edit out un-PC images of race relations, smoking, drinking, sexual attitudes, relations between men and women, etc.''
I tend to agree with Warren that Osborne displays a pronounced liberal bias, as does the station, despite Mark E.'s denial.
I've blogged about the decline of TCM before, here, and here.
I happen to be a fan of TCM, and a regular watcher -- if and when they show the old classics I prefer, which is becoming more and more infrequently these days. As I said in an earlier piece
Recently I've noticed that my favorite movie channel, Turner Classic Movies, has been gradually inserting more and more recent movies, at the expense of the old films. Yes, I know the official explanation: this month it's 31 Days of the Oscars or some such theme, which offers an excuse to show many films which are much more recent than what TCM has heretofore shown.
We old movie buffs have already witnessed the trashing of the old American Movie Classics channel, which used to show actual classic movies from the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood: you know, the age before the movies became obsessively focused on the seamy, ugly side of life, full of explicit and perverse sexuality and violence, not to mention gutter language and subject matter. And more than that, the movies in the PC era invariably shove political messages down our gullets as well, making them a must to avoid, for me. I watch movies to be entertained, diverted, uplifted, or inspired. If I want a sermon, I prefer to get it from a minister of the Word, not some Hollywood nihilist.
AMC in its heyday used to show the classics, and they showed them uninterrupted. Now, in addition to the change in the quality and vintage of the movies shown, the movies are also riddled with commercials.
So scratch AMC from the worth-watching column. So, remembering the sorry fate of AMC, it's not unreasonable to suspect that TCM may be slated for the same kind of transformation. After all, sex-n-violence is a sure-fire commercial formula, and the old movies are woefully lacking in those things, so it only makes good business sense to throw in some more recent movies with the requisite amounts of 'adult' content.
[...]
I don't know that there is a plan to gradually decrease the proportion of old movies to newer ones on TCM; it would seem so. I have noticed that the old 30s movies, to which I am partial, are often shown in weird time slots only, like 3 AM local time, while the newer movies get shown in the primetime slots, such as 8 PM. It's clear the newer movies are being given the best slots.''
And since I wrote that piece, the newer movies (to me, 'newer' means anything from the post-PC era, from the late 60s onward) are becoming more and more dominant in TCM's programming; I notice as before that the old movies are relegated often to the 3 AM slot, while prime-time might have 80s and 90s movies. Now the idea seems to be that any newer movie which is set in the past is appropriate for TCM.
And TCM has begun to show 'cult' movies of rather sleazy content, rather than the more respectable fare they started out with in the past. I'm referring to movies such as 'Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!' Classic movies, indeed.
If people want to watch those kinds of movies, they can be rented from Netflix, or they might show up on some of the more eclectic movie channels, such as FLIX or RetroPlex or something, but why do they belong on a Classic Movie channel? Especially when the real classic movies are shown only on TCM, having been banished from the other channels? Every 'Faster, Pussycat' takes up a time slot that might have been given to a real classic movie.
As for Mark E.'s contention that TCM is PC-free -- are we watching the same TCM? The TCM I get on my TV observes all the PC high holydays --- Black History month being reverently presented every year. And with many of the movies about the black experience, we get a lecture by some black 'expert' who holds forth on the correct interpretation of what we are about to see.
TCM showed the ultra-controversial Birth of a Nation last year or so, but not without an accompanying exegesis by a black expert. And to think, Birth of a Nation was a mainstream movie when it was released.
Personally I think TCM is slowly departing from its classic roots and aiming for a younger, hipper more 'diverse' demographic. That will surely mean fewer of the wholesome old classics with their racially ingenuous characterizations and politically incorrect tendencies. I see fewer hours being devoted to the old movie greats, and more being given over to later movies, with their crassness, vulgarity, and politically correct unctuousness.
Maybe I am inclined to see the glass as half-empty, but I am very jealous and protective of my old movies, which are a piece of the dear, dead past I love.
The discussion began with Spencer Warren's piece about the Hollywood Ten, a group of people in the movie industry of the 1950s who were investigated for Communist connections.
Warren took exception to the leftist slant of the story as presented by TCM's Robert Osborne. Warren detected a bias, and another commenter at VFR, Mark E, wrote a long and impassioned defense of Osborne and TCM, extravagantly praising TCM for being
...THE bastion of conservative/traditionalist films, views, images, sense of life, historical perspective, film aesthetics and morality, etc., simply because of what it is in its very nature, and all the movies they show.
It is the only place in the contemporary media where the un-censored, un-PC, pre-Boomer past is presented with reverence as a good thing and not the family shame that is elsewhere the common dispiriting leftoid/"progressive" narrative about America.
They do not censor the past to edit out un-PC images of race relations, smoking, drinking, sexual attitudes, relations between men and women, etc.''
I tend to agree with Warren that Osborne displays a pronounced liberal bias, as does the station, despite Mark E.'s denial.
I've blogged about the decline of TCM before, here, and here.
I happen to be a fan of TCM, and a regular watcher -- if and when they show the old classics I prefer, which is becoming more and more infrequently these days. As I said in an earlier piece
Recently I've noticed that my favorite movie channel, Turner Classic Movies, has been gradually inserting more and more recent movies, at the expense of the old films. Yes, I know the official explanation: this month it's 31 Days of the Oscars or some such theme, which offers an excuse to show many films which are much more recent than what TCM has heretofore shown.
We old movie buffs have already witnessed the trashing of the old American Movie Classics channel, which used to show actual classic movies from the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood: you know, the age before the movies became obsessively focused on the seamy, ugly side of life, full of explicit and perverse sexuality and violence, not to mention gutter language and subject matter. And more than that, the movies in the PC era invariably shove political messages down our gullets as well, making them a must to avoid, for me. I watch movies to be entertained, diverted, uplifted, or inspired. If I want a sermon, I prefer to get it from a minister of the Word, not some Hollywood nihilist.
AMC in its heyday used to show the classics, and they showed them uninterrupted. Now, in addition to the change in the quality and vintage of the movies shown, the movies are also riddled with commercials.
So scratch AMC from the worth-watching column. So, remembering the sorry fate of AMC, it's not unreasonable to suspect that TCM may be slated for the same kind of transformation. After all, sex-n-violence is a sure-fire commercial formula, and the old movies are woefully lacking in those things, so it only makes good business sense to throw in some more recent movies with the requisite amounts of 'adult' content.
[...]
I don't know that there is a plan to gradually decrease the proportion of old movies to newer ones on TCM; it would seem so. I have noticed that the old 30s movies, to which I am partial, are often shown in weird time slots only, like 3 AM local time, while the newer movies get shown in the primetime slots, such as 8 PM. It's clear the newer movies are being given the best slots.''
And since I wrote that piece, the newer movies (to me, 'newer' means anything from the post-PC era, from the late 60s onward) are becoming more and more dominant in TCM's programming; I notice as before that the old movies are relegated often to the 3 AM slot, while prime-time might have 80s and 90s movies. Now the idea seems to be that any newer movie which is set in the past is appropriate for TCM.
And TCM has begun to show 'cult' movies of rather sleazy content, rather than the more respectable fare they started out with in the past. I'm referring to movies such as 'Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!' Classic movies, indeed.
If people want to watch those kinds of movies, they can be rented from Netflix, or they might show up on some of the more eclectic movie channels, such as FLIX or RetroPlex or something, but why do they belong on a Classic Movie channel? Especially when the real classic movies are shown only on TCM, having been banished from the other channels? Every 'Faster, Pussycat' takes up a time slot that might have been given to a real classic movie.
As for Mark E.'s contention that TCM is PC-free -- are we watching the same TCM? The TCM I get on my TV observes all the PC high holydays --- Black History month being reverently presented every year. And with many of the movies about the black experience, we get a lecture by some black 'expert' who holds forth on the correct interpretation of what we are about to see.
TCM showed the ultra-controversial Birth of a Nation last year or so, but not without an accompanying exegesis by a black expert. And to think, Birth of a Nation was a mainstream movie when it was released.
Personally I think TCM is slowly departing from its classic roots and aiming for a younger, hipper more 'diverse' demographic. That will surely mean fewer of the wholesome old classics with their racially ingenuous characterizations and politically incorrect tendencies. I see fewer hours being devoted to the old movie greats, and more being given over to later movies, with their crassness, vulgarity, and politically correct unctuousness.
Maybe I am inclined to see the glass as half-empty, but I am very jealous and protective of my old movies, which are a piece of the dear, dead past I love.
Labels: American Society, Old Movies, Political Correctness, Popular Culture, Tcm
0 comment Sunday, July 6, 2014 | admin
In discussing popular culture, we often identify the 1960s as the decade in which everything began to change, and countercultural (leftist) ideas began to flood the media and particularly Hollywood movies. However, thinking back on the overall picture, I think a case can be made that the Left was at work over many decades, not just circa 1960 and onward.
Today, an oversimplified view prevails in which ''the hippies'' or the baby-boomers (for many they are synonymous) were the fount and origin of all the bad trends which flowed together to form the upside-down world we inhabit today. The baby-boom generation played their part, but they were mostly just picking up the torch passed on by their elders, who, if not liberal themselves, failed to recognize the liberal incrementalism that transformed things gradually .
Karl Marx and his ideas date back to the mid-19th century, and even before Marx, we can look back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who were the forerunners of today's leftists. However the ideas that we call leftist or Marxist or socialist became more popular particularly around the time of the Great Depression. This is understandable, given the harsh economic conditions of the time; people were then more likely to listen to pseudo-populist radicals who preached redistribution of wealth.
The 'hippies' or counterculturists came along in the late 60s, not the early part of the decade. By the way, I don't remember ever hearing the word ''hippie'' until 1966, and the San Francisco 'flower child' movement appeared in earnest circa 1967.
The direct predecessors of the hippies were the beatniks, who were into Zen, existentialist philosophy and a freewheeling lifestyle. They differed somewhat from their hippie successors in being more intellectual and less interested in 'back to nature' movements.
But when both these groups were either not yet born, or wearing diapers, the Old Left was busy trying to bring on the Revolution, the uprising of the Proletariat, and usher in the socialist worker's paradise. The Communist Party had been active earlier, around the World War I years, and mass immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe brought many people with radical anarchist or communist ideas into this country, thus strengthening the leftist ranks.
During World War II, one can see how the government began to emphasize the proposition nation idea: we are all Americans if we believe in freedom and tolerance. And the war effort demanded that people of all races and creeds be united in order to win the war. There was considerable effort made towards integration of the races, and the promotion of what has become a shibboleth of our time, 'tolerance.' We can see this in some of the wartime movies and posters. We see the beginnings of multiculturalism in some of the images and rhetoric. See a video here illustrating what I mean.
While on the surface, the ideas seem benign, we can see around us the extremes which are pushed in the name of 'tolerance'. The idea that we are all the same, and differences don't matter, except to 'Nazis', is not true.
The movies of the 1940s seemed to show an increase in ethnic characters -- especially the war movies, in which every platoon or ship's crew had to be a cross-section: an Irishman, a Pole with a name ending in '-ski', an Italian, a plain generic 'American'. Optional: an American Indian talking in slang, a wisecracking Jewish character or a Southerner with a funny drawl, any of which provided 'comic relief.'
The postwar years saw movies dealing with interethnic 'prejudice,' like Gentlemen's Agreement.
The 1950s brought an increase in movies which dealt with the seamy side of life, specifically drug addiction, such as The Man With the Golden Arm, Monkey on My Back, and A Hatful of Rain, the latter two being released in 1957.
At the time, movies on such subjects were touted as 'frank, honest' or 'shocking.' Perhaps they were more reality-oriented than the relatively wholesome entertainment of the previous few decades, but this fixation on sleaze and ugliness became a permanent one in Hollywood as time went on.
Much as we think the 1950s were the decade of Sandra Dee and Doris Day, wholesomeness personified, Hollywood was leaning more towards the 'frank' type of film, with increasing portrayals of the dark side. Even teen films began to focus on illicit sex, pregnancy, and abortion, such as Blue Denim, in 1959, or A Summer Place in that same year.
Films involving bigotry became quite the vogue in the 50s. There were movies about racial deception, or ''passing for White'', films like Pinky, (which actually was a 1949 movie), Imitation of Life, and Showboat.
Other movies that explored the racial theme (from a leftist, politically correct angle, of course) were, oddly, a couple of science fiction movies, notably The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, from 1959. That movie had three survivors of a nuclear attack -- one White woman, played by Swedish actress Inger Stevens, one White man, and one black man. Dilemma: who gets the girl?
I had incorrectly remembered Sidney Poitier as the black man, but reading the IMDB page shows that it was calypso singer Harry Belafonte who played the role.
This comment from IMDB shows the typical PC reaction:
A very thought provoking movie that was not accepted at the time, but in retrospect, way way ahead of its time. In a racially charged world it put forth the premise that race, in the final analysis, is superficial and meaningless. Once you strip away the layers of conditioning and socialization, you find, at the core, good and evil and the age old struggle as to which will prevail. A simple story, told directly and honestly. On a scale of 1 to 10, its an 11.''
Yes, so even in 1959, those Hollywood writers (who were not really communists, honest) were busy little bees promoting radically different ideas, ideas which were in sharp conflict with traditional America. But it was all done with noble motives, you see, so it was for our good that our brains have been washed.
Another movie dealing with 'bigotry' was Pressure Point, in which singer/actor Bobby Darin played some kind of right-wing extremist. His performance was hailed, but the message was sledge-hammer subtle.
Stanley Kramer was kind of a one-man message-film industry in the 50s and onward, with movies like The Defiant Ones, with Sidney Poitier (or was it Belafonte again?) and Tony Curtis handcuffed together in mutual hate, but they learn to get along to survive. Very subtle symbolism there; about as subtle as Star Trek's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield."
Movies of both the 50s and the early 60s had pushed the envelope regarding sexuality, and there were early explorations not only of illicit heterosexual relationships (adultery, incest, even 'child brides' as in Baby Doll) but the subject of homosexuality was brought in in movies like Suddenly, Last Summer.
All of this was done under the guise of 'frankness' and 'honesty', and much was written and said about how the Europeans were ever so much more advanced and enlightened than the inhibited and repressed Anglo-Saxon Christian countries. The Scandinavian countries in particular were much admired by the left and the sophisticated urban set for their open and loose sexual mores.
I can remember, as a teenager, reading articles about how in Denmark and Sweden, sex crimes were few and far between, so if we adopted their free-and-easy sexual attitudes, we would have few to no sex crimes. Everybody would be so free of inhibitions and Victorian repression, and thus nobody would feel the need to commit rape or to molest anybody. We all know how that worked out.
I can't leave out the other prominent them of movies in the 50s and 60s: atomic warfare or nuclear annihilation; World War III. These were the days of 'mutually assured destruction', of talk of nuclear strikes and red phones and the possibility of a mistaken launch of nuclear missiles. Those themes were explored in movies like Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, On the Beach, and others.
Science fiction movies of the time often dealt with post-nuclear holocaust scenarios, or 'atomic mutations' with human beings exposed to radiation becoming giants ("The Amazing Colossal Man") or monsters of some sort.
The Day the Earth Stood Still, a favorite of liberal peaceniks, has a benevolent and wise alien coming to teach erring humanity to behave themselves, and stop all that fighting, or else -- or else the benevolent, peaceful aliens will blast us all to smithereens, which is no more than what we human warmongers deserve. There is a little irony in the message of that film which seems to escape the lefties. Actually, I enjoy the movie, despite its odd message.
Most of the trends and ideas which have come together to make our present-day world the crazy place that it is are present and very visible by the 1950s, and in fact had their origins much further back than that.
1960, however, is sort of an identifiable turning point for popular culture, in which we see things taking shape much more clearly, and by the mid-60s, around the time of the JFK assassination and the emergence of the Beatles, we see the budding counterculture coming into position.
When it comes to watching movies, I find the 1960s, if not the latter 1950s, as being the time when the old America truly began to vanish, bit by bit, and the new 'America' began to take its place.
I tend to avoid movies made from the 1960s onward. I often find it hard to understand how anyone who is not a dedicated leftist multiculturalist can endure watching much of what has been produced in recent decades. I admit to being a purist, but too often I detect the scent of decay about popular culture after the early 1960s.
Today, an oversimplified view prevails in which ''the hippies'' or the baby-boomers (for many they are synonymous) were the fount and origin of all the bad trends which flowed together to form the upside-down world we inhabit today. The baby-boom generation played their part, but they were mostly just picking up the torch passed on by their elders, who, if not liberal themselves, failed to recognize the liberal incrementalism that transformed things gradually .
Karl Marx and his ideas date back to the mid-19th century, and even before Marx, we can look back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who were the forerunners of today's leftists. However the ideas that we call leftist or Marxist or socialist became more popular particularly around the time of the Great Depression. This is understandable, given the harsh economic conditions of the time; people were then more likely to listen to pseudo-populist radicals who preached redistribution of wealth.
The 'hippies' or counterculturists came along in the late 60s, not the early part of the decade. By the way, I don't remember ever hearing the word ''hippie'' until 1966, and the San Francisco 'flower child' movement appeared in earnest circa 1967.
The direct predecessors of the hippies were the beatniks, who were into Zen, existentialist philosophy and a freewheeling lifestyle. They differed somewhat from their hippie successors in being more intellectual and less interested in 'back to nature' movements.
But when both these groups were either not yet born, or wearing diapers, the Old Left was busy trying to bring on the Revolution, the uprising of the Proletariat, and usher in the socialist worker's paradise. The Communist Party had been active earlier, around the World War I years, and mass immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe brought many people with radical anarchist or communist ideas into this country, thus strengthening the leftist ranks.
During World War II, one can see how the government began to emphasize the proposition nation idea: we are all Americans if we believe in freedom and tolerance. And the war effort demanded that people of all races and creeds be united in order to win the war. There was considerable effort made towards integration of the races, and the promotion of what has become a shibboleth of our time, 'tolerance.' We can see this in some of the wartime movies and posters. We see the beginnings of multiculturalism in some of the images and rhetoric. See a video here illustrating what I mean.
While on the surface, the ideas seem benign, we can see around us the extremes which are pushed in the name of 'tolerance'. The idea that we are all the same, and differences don't matter, except to 'Nazis', is not true.
The movies of the 1940s seemed to show an increase in ethnic characters -- especially the war movies, in which every platoon or ship's crew had to be a cross-section: an Irishman, a Pole with a name ending in '-ski', an Italian, a plain generic 'American'. Optional: an American Indian talking in slang, a wisecracking Jewish character or a Southerner with a funny drawl, any of which provided 'comic relief.'
The postwar years saw movies dealing with interethnic 'prejudice,' like Gentlemen's Agreement.
The 1950s brought an increase in movies which dealt with the seamy side of life, specifically drug addiction, such as The Man With the Golden Arm, Monkey on My Back, and A Hatful of Rain, the latter two being released in 1957.
At the time, movies on such subjects were touted as 'frank, honest' or 'shocking.' Perhaps they were more reality-oriented than the relatively wholesome entertainment of the previous few decades, but this fixation on sleaze and ugliness became a permanent one in Hollywood as time went on.
Much as we think the 1950s were the decade of Sandra Dee and Doris Day, wholesomeness personified, Hollywood was leaning more towards the 'frank' type of film, with increasing portrayals of the dark side. Even teen films began to focus on illicit sex, pregnancy, and abortion, such as Blue Denim, in 1959, or A Summer Place in that same year.
Films involving bigotry became quite the vogue in the 50s. There were movies about racial deception, or ''passing for White'', films like Pinky, (which actually was a 1949 movie), Imitation of Life, and Showboat.
Other movies that explored the racial theme (from a leftist, politically correct angle, of course) were, oddly, a couple of science fiction movies, notably The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, from 1959. That movie had three survivors of a nuclear attack -- one White woman, played by Swedish actress Inger Stevens, one White man, and one black man. Dilemma: who gets the girl?
I had incorrectly remembered Sidney Poitier as the black man, but reading the IMDB page shows that it was calypso singer Harry Belafonte who played the role.
This comment from IMDB shows the typical PC reaction:
A very thought provoking movie that was not accepted at the time, but in retrospect, way way ahead of its time. In a racially charged world it put forth the premise that race, in the final analysis, is superficial and meaningless. Once you strip away the layers of conditioning and socialization, you find, at the core, good and evil and the age old struggle as to which will prevail. A simple story, told directly and honestly. On a scale of 1 to 10, its an 11.''
Yes, so even in 1959, those Hollywood writers (who were not really communists, honest) were busy little bees promoting radically different ideas, ideas which were in sharp conflict with traditional America. But it was all done with noble motives, you see, so it was for our good that our brains have been washed.
Another movie dealing with 'bigotry' was Pressure Point, in which singer/actor Bobby Darin played some kind of right-wing extremist. His performance was hailed, but the message was sledge-hammer subtle.
Stanley Kramer was kind of a one-man message-film industry in the 50s and onward, with movies like The Defiant Ones, with Sidney Poitier (or was it Belafonte again?) and Tony Curtis handcuffed together in mutual hate, but they learn to get along to survive. Very subtle symbolism there; about as subtle as Star Trek's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield."
Movies of both the 50s and the early 60s had pushed the envelope regarding sexuality, and there were early explorations not only of illicit heterosexual relationships (adultery, incest, even 'child brides' as in Baby Doll) but the subject of homosexuality was brought in in movies like Suddenly, Last Summer.
All of this was done under the guise of 'frankness' and 'honesty', and much was written and said about how the Europeans were ever so much more advanced and enlightened than the inhibited and repressed Anglo-Saxon Christian countries. The Scandinavian countries in particular were much admired by the left and the sophisticated urban set for their open and loose sexual mores.
I can remember, as a teenager, reading articles about how in Denmark and Sweden, sex crimes were few and far between, so if we adopted their free-and-easy sexual attitudes, we would have few to no sex crimes. Everybody would be so free of inhibitions and Victorian repression, and thus nobody would feel the need to commit rape or to molest anybody. We all know how that worked out.
I can't leave out the other prominent them of movies in the 50s and 60s: atomic warfare or nuclear annihilation; World War III. These were the days of 'mutually assured destruction', of talk of nuclear strikes and red phones and the possibility of a mistaken launch of nuclear missiles. Those themes were explored in movies like Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, On the Beach, and others.
Science fiction movies of the time often dealt with post-nuclear holocaust scenarios, or 'atomic mutations' with human beings exposed to radiation becoming giants ("The Amazing Colossal Man") or monsters of some sort.
The Day the Earth Stood Still, a favorite of liberal peaceniks, has a benevolent and wise alien coming to teach erring humanity to behave themselves, and stop all that fighting, or else -- or else the benevolent, peaceful aliens will blast us all to smithereens, which is no more than what we human warmongers deserve. There is a little irony in the message of that film which seems to escape the lefties. Actually, I enjoy the movie, despite its odd message.
Most of the trends and ideas which have come together to make our present-day world the crazy place that it is are present and very visible by the 1950s, and in fact had their origins much further back than that.
1960, however, is sort of an identifiable turning point for popular culture, in which we see things taking shape much more clearly, and by the mid-60s, around the time of the JFK assassination and the emergence of the Beatles, we see the budding counterculture coming into position.
When it comes to watching movies, I find the 1960s, if not the latter 1950s, as being the time when the old America truly began to vanish, bit by bit, and the new 'America' began to take its place.
I tend to avoid movies made from the 1960s onward. I often find it hard to understand how anyone who is not a dedicated leftist multiculturalist can endure watching much of what has been produced in recent decades. I admit to being a purist, but too often I detect the scent of decay about popular culture after the early 1960s.
Labels: Classic Movies, Cultural Marxism, Hollywood, Media Bias, Old Movies, Popular Culture, Propaganda
0 comment Monday, June 30, 2014 | admin
I hope my readers don't mind if I take a brief break from posting about the usual subjects until after Christmas. It seems only appropriate to have a Christmas cessation of hostilities, though our adversaries don't take a break from their relentless warfare.
My fondness for old movies is something that I blog about occasionally here, and I've mentioned Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and the movies based on that story as favorites. Among all the versions of the familiar Dickens story, I like the old black-and-white versions, such as the one with Alistair Sim and the one with Reginald Owen, but my real favorite is the 1970 musical version, Scrooge with Albert Finney as the title character.
I love the way the film seems to capture the feel of the time and place, and I enjoy the songs. Many people these days dislike movie musicals, and the musical seems to be a dead genre, but I think this one works well, and the tunes are memorable. It seems it isn't Christmas until I see this movie.
Everybody has seen the Frank Capra Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life. For a while, in the 1980s, that movie was so frequently shown on so many channels that I think many of us became weary of it but despite its overexposure, it endures as a favorite for many of us. By today's cynical standards, Capra tugs at the heart-strings a little too obviously but nonetheless, it works, and I am usually misty-eyed by the time the final scene plays out. Capra's movies are by today's lights probably too sentimental and 'corny' but that only tells us how jaded we've become. Many conservatives are suspicious of populism, which was usually at the heart of Capra's messages, but there is the populist streak in me which is cheering for the 'little guy', the everyman, like George Bailey.
Likewise, the Capra movie 'Meet John Doe', which I've written about here before, shows how the underdog everyman, 'John Doe' (Gary Cooper) can prevail against the seemingly invincible 'elites' who are attempting to use and manipulate him from behind the scenes.
I mention this as a Christmas movie, although it is not that specifically, because of the memorable climactic scene on a snowy Christmas Eve, with Gary Cooper planning to jump to his death from a tall building.
There are other movies which are not necessarily about Christmas but which have Christmas scenes, movies which I always think of at Christmastime. Meet John Doe is one of them; another is 'The Man Who Came to Dinner', a comedy with Monte Woolley as the title character. It's not exactly a movie with a Capraesque sentimental quality, but it has its moments.
Another movie with a Christmas background is a rather obscure one called Remember the Night, with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck.
It's a movie which I only discovered about five or six years ago, and it's become a favorite of mine. In the movie, MacMurray is a young assistant district attorney in New York, who prosecutes a young woman (Stanwyck) who is accused of shoplifting a diamond bracelet.
In a rather complicated set of events, MacMurray, feeling sorry for the young woman as Christmas finds her in jail, has her bailed out, and ends up offering her a ride to her family's home, which is not far from his hometown in Indiana. Implausible, but it's a nice, heartwarming story, as both rather hard-bitten characters soften as they interact in the idyllic setting of MacMurray's hometown and family hearth.
There's one scene, with the family singing 'When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day' around the piano, by the fire; it's classic Americana, in a Norman Rockwell kind of way.
Another rather quirky movie I often think of at Christmas is The World of Henry Orient, a movie from 1964. Again, not a well-known movie, and I don't actually like many movies from that era, because it was on the cusp of all the change that was about to overtake society. But it is a film about two very naïve young girls with an innocent crush on a celebrity, an avant-garde pianist, a very inept pianist actually, played by Peter Sellers.
Such a movie couldn't be made today; first, there are few 13 or 14-year-old girls with such naivete and innocence, and their behavior in following their unlikely idol would be called 'stalking' today. But in the context, it was perfectly innocent.
It's really about adolescence and friendship, as well as family ties, and again, there are Christmas scenes. It's very interesting to see New York City as it was half a century ago.
One more film in which the opening scene is on Christmas Eve is an oddity called Beyond Tomorrow' or alternatively, Beyond Christmas.The plot is hard to sum up, but it involves three wealthy old gents who invite a couple of young strangers into their shared home for Christmas dinner. The plot has the three old gentlemen dying in a plane crash, and coming back as ghosts to help the young couple. The theology is questionable, but still, it's possible to suspend disbelief and enjoy it. The message is uplifting, as was the case with so many of the old movies.
Today, the world has forgotten how to envision happy endings or even personal redemption, as so many of these old movies did. Now these movies may be derided as childish or fatuous but it's good, if only at Christmas, to take off the jaundiced spectacles with which we see this world (and heaven knows, the world in itself is corrupt enough) and try to remember a time when things were not as dark as they are today.
Most of us have some favorite Christmas-themed movie which has many associations of Christmases past, or which causes us to think beyond the limitations of this present darkness, and it's well worth it to put aside 'the world' for these brief moments of Christmas each year.
Labels: Christmas, Old America, Old Movies
0 comment Thursday, May 29, 2014 | admin
I just came across this post, which is from several months back, on Stuff Black People Don't Like. The subject is Turner Classic Movies.
Pre-Obama America (POA) is gone, dead for the ages. Acting as celluloid mausoleums interning and memorializing a long dead nation, movies depict this era that has passed into the pages of history, haunting all those who view the images and forever taunting them with a glimpse of stability and an uncompromising belief that tomorrow would be better than the next day.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a channel devoted to showcasing the glories of Pre-Obama America, as chronicled in film. Timeless classics that still resonate with viewers who watch them today (look over the American Film Institute�s Top 100 Films ever made and notice this startling truth � that POA is immortalized in motion pictures and they will forever plague those who bemoan that era for wanton cruelty) realize all that has been lost in the span of a few generations by the vivid reminder that John Wayne, Cary Grant and James Stewart provide.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies represents a window into a past that few could ever believe existed, were it not for films starring such men such as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Charles Bronson among others.
No, these films remain vestiges of a time that taunt us with simplicity, reminders of a greatest generation that dies daily and would rather cling to memories of a past then remain agitated by glimpses of a horrific future broadcast on the nightly news.
And that, is the most potent weapon that Disingenuous White Liberals and those who find employment and promotion thanks to BRA fear. Memory, remembrance of things past and that could be once again.''
Overall it's a very good piece, with the comments being the weak point, degenerating into arguments and straying off topic, unfortunately. It should have been a good discussion, sadly.
The blogger implies that because of the nature of the films shown on TCM, and because of the fact that old movies keep alive the memory of a vanished era, it would be subversive to today's powers-that-be. It is too ''hideously White'', and it shows a past that is greatly at variance with today's moral dictates as delineated in politically correct dogma.
Regular readers here know that I am an old movie fan, and that I was a watcher of TCM since the 1980s, and in more recent times, a frustrated observer of the changes that have been taking place at TCM over the last several years.
I am not sure if the blogger is aware that TCM is doing its own little PC soft shoe, with a great to-do about 'Black History Month' every February, and occasional marathons of old movies with all-black casts, those movies being made for black movie theaters way back when. And TCM has also prominently featured the black movie critic, Elvis Mitchell, probably to fulfill the 'diversity' mandate and avoid charges of being 'racist.'
One way in which TCM seems to be trying to evade the 'subversive' charge from blacks and the PC left is by showing increasing numbers of newer movies, those from the era when political correctness and 'diversity' became mandates. Starting in the late 60s, or even the earlier 60s, suddenly it became de rigueur to have a certain number of black characters in movies. Movies of that era, overall, began to carry counterculture messages and leftist themes, as well as sexually explicit and profane content.
Was this just a reflection of a changing America? It should be evident to anybody who pays attention that the movies from the 60s onward depict an America, or a world, that bears little resemblance to the old America as seen in the true classic movies. Someone who had never seen America might think that the post-1960s movies depicted another country altogether. Yet to my surprise few people born after the start of the PC era seem to notice the sharp divide between the old movies and the later post-60s movies.
I often wonder if TCM will slowly phase out the old movies altogether, or show them occasionally as museum pieces, for historical interest. I've noticed when certain very politically incorrect movies have been shown in the past, especially movies which involve blacks, there will be some sort of interpreter from the 'African-American community', who will tell us in professorial tones how the movie was racist, and how such unfortunate attitudes were extant in those day. We apparently need to be lectured and given warnings about the violations of taboos with certain movies.
TCM has also made a great show of having 'gay and lesbian' themed movies, with similar sermonettes by some guest representing the GLBT (did I get that right?) ''community.''
In other words, TCM, instead of just showing us some wonderful old movies, feels the necessity of telling us what to think about the movies, or issuing caveats about the naughty content.
I think it's well to remember the example of American Movie Classics, or AMC, which once showed uncut, no-commercials, old movies, most of which were from the 30s through the 60s. Slowly AMC morphed into a commercial-ridden channel which shows third-rate movies from the 70s and 80s, along with their own series like 'Mad Men' which seems to be highly popular. But it is no longer the home of the classic old movies, as its name once indicated.
TCM, with its increasing emphasis on post-70s movies, is in danger of becoming AMC's twin.
TCM is, I think, subversive in a good way, a necessary way. Just as I've written in other posts, I think that we are being manipulated to forget the past, the old America which was not shackled by political correctness and contrived 'diversity.' It's vital that we keep some visual reminder of that past, or we will lose our moorings, and become more and more an amnesic people.
I asked a few paragraphs ago if the movies merely reflected a spontaneously changing society, or if they actually played a part in engineering those changes. Obviously I think the answer is the latter. The movies -- and the other arts -- have given birth to this upside-down world in which we live. Life comes to resemble art, not vice versa. As people become dumbed-down and passive they become something resembling blank slates on which the manipulators can write what they choose.
Mindless, sensationalistic, shocking entertainment dulls the sensibilities and creates a jaded, cynical populace. What we take in through our senses while we passively watch entertainment can have a real impact on us. This is why many billions are spent on advertising and media: it works. It leads and shapes our attitudes and preferences and wants.
As long as TCM still does its innately subversive thing in showing old America in enjoyable and well-made movies, it is or can be a force for good. I hope it is not censored off the air, or given the death of a thousand cuts like AMC, making it a shell of its former self.
One last thing: there are always the cynics and curmudgeons who say, of old movies, that ''the world was never like that. It's all fantasy. It's a whitewash.'' I say no, there once was an America much like that in the movies. Of course some things are prettied up, as with all movies, but the movies for the most part captured the old America as I know it from experience and from the stories told by my elder relatives. It did exist. The naysayers simply want to have us believe that it never existed because they want people to think there is no alternative to this dystopian world in which we now find ourselves.
Don't believe them.
Pre-Obama America (POA) is gone, dead for the ages. Acting as celluloid mausoleums interning and memorializing a long dead nation, movies depict this era that has passed into the pages of history, haunting all those who view the images and forever taunting them with a glimpse of stability and an uncompromising belief that tomorrow would be better than the next day.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a channel devoted to showcasing the glories of Pre-Obama America, as chronicled in film. Timeless classics that still resonate with viewers who watch them today (look over the American Film Institute�s Top 100 Films ever made and notice this startling truth � that POA is immortalized in motion pictures and they will forever plague those who bemoan that era for wanton cruelty) realize all that has been lost in the span of a few generations by the vivid reminder that John Wayne, Cary Grant and James Stewart provide.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies represents a window into a past that few could ever believe existed, were it not for films starring such men such as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Charles Bronson among others.
No, these films remain vestiges of a time that taunt us with simplicity, reminders of a greatest generation that dies daily and would rather cling to memories of a past then remain agitated by glimpses of a horrific future broadcast on the nightly news.
And that, is the most potent weapon that Disingenuous White Liberals and those who find employment and promotion thanks to BRA fear. Memory, remembrance of things past and that could be once again.''
Overall it's a very good piece, with the comments being the weak point, degenerating into arguments and straying off topic, unfortunately. It should have been a good discussion, sadly.
The blogger implies that because of the nature of the films shown on TCM, and because of the fact that old movies keep alive the memory of a vanished era, it would be subversive to today's powers-that-be. It is too ''hideously White'', and it shows a past that is greatly at variance with today's moral dictates as delineated in politically correct dogma.
Regular readers here know that I am an old movie fan, and that I was a watcher of TCM since the 1980s, and in more recent times, a frustrated observer of the changes that have been taking place at TCM over the last several years.
I am not sure if the blogger is aware that TCM is doing its own little PC soft shoe, with a great to-do about 'Black History Month' every February, and occasional marathons of old movies with all-black casts, those movies being made for black movie theaters way back when. And TCM has also prominently featured the black movie critic, Elvis Mitchell, probably to fulfill the 'diversity' mandate and avoid charges of being 'racist.'
One way in which TCM seems to be trying to evade the 'subversive' charge from blacks and the PC left is by showing increasing numbers of newer movies, those from the era when political correctness and 'diversity' became mandates. Starting in the late 60s, or even the earlier 60s, suddenly it became de rigueur to have a certain number of black characters in movies. Movies of that era, overall, began to carry counterculture messages and leftist themes, as well as sexually explicit and profane content.
Was this just a reflection of a changing America? It should be evident to anybody who pays attention that the movies from the 60s onward depict an America, or a world, that bears little resemblance to the old America as seen in the true classic movies. Someone who had never seen America might think that the post-1960s movies depicted another country altogether. Yet to my surprise few people born after the start of the PC era seem to notice the sharp divide between the old movies and the later post-60s movies.
I often wonder if TCM will slowly phase out the old movies altogether, or show them occasionally as museum pieces, for historical interest. I've noticed when certain very politically incorrect movies have been shown in the past, especially movies which involve blacks, there will be some sort of interpreter from the 'African-American community', who will tell us in professorial tones how the movie was racist, and how such unfortunate attitudes were extant in those day. We apparently need to be lectured and given warnings about the violations of taboos with certain movies.
TCM has also made a great show of having 'gay and lesbian' themed movies, with similar sermonettes by some guest representing the GLBT (did I get that right?) ''community.''
In other words, TCM, instead of just showing us some wonderful old movies, feels the necessity of telling us what to think about the movies, or issuing caveats about the naughty content.
I think it's well to remember the example of American Movie Classics, or AMC, which once showed uncut, no-commercials, old movies, most of which were from the 30s through the 60s. Slowly AMC morphed into a commercial-ridden channel which shows third-rate movies from the 70s and 80s, along with their own series like 'Mad Men' which seems to be highly popular. But it is no longer the home of the classic old movies, as its name once indicated.
TCM, with its increasing emphasis on post-70s movies, is in danger of becoming AMC's twin.
TCM is, I think, subversive in a good way, a necessary way. Just as I've written in other posts, I think that we are being manipulated to forget the past, the old America which was not shackled by political correctness and contrived 'diversity.' It's vital that we keep some visual reminder of that past, or we will lose our moorings, and become more and more an amnesic people.
I asked a few paragraphs ago if the movies merely reflected a spontaneously changing society, or if they actually played a part in engineering those changes. Obviously I think the answer is the latter. The movies -- and the other arts -- have given birth to this upside-down world in which we live. Life comes to resemble art, not vice versa. As people become dumbed-down and passive they become something resembling blank slates on which the manipulators can write what they choose.
Mindless, sensationalistic, shocking entertainment dulls the sensibilities and creates a jaded, cynical populace. What we take in through our senses while we passively watch entertainment can have a real impact on us. This is why many billions are spent on advertising and media: it works. It leads and shapes our attitudes and preferences and wants.
As long as TCM still does its innately subversive thing in showing old America in enjoyable and well-made movies, it is or can be a force for good. I hope it is not censored off the air, or given the death of a thousand cuts like AMC, making it a shell of its former self.
One last thing: there are always the cynics and curmudgeons who say, of old movies, that ''the world was never like that. It's all fantasy. It's a whitewash.'' I say no, there once was an America much like that in the movies. Of course some things are prettied up, as with all movies, but the movies for the most part captured the old America as I know it from experience and from the stories told by my elder relatives. It did exist. The naysayers simply want to have us believe that it never existed because they want people to think there is no alternative to this dystopian world in which we now find ourselves.
Don't believe them.
Labels: Cultural Marxism, Diversity, Old America, Old Movies, Political Correctness
0 comment Wednesday, May 7, 2014 | admin
Despite the skepticism toward Takuan Seiyo which I expressed in an earlier post, I found his latest installment of the 'Meccania to Atlantis' series a worthwhile read. It's called The True Horrors in Hitchcock Films.
He uses the dramatic changes in San Francisco since the mid-20th century as an illustration of the changes in all of America since then, and I think it's apt. Granted, San Francisco is not what I would call 'typical' traditional America; it may well have been closer to that at an earlier time in its existence, but by the time I first visited it in the late 60s, at a time of my youthful naivete, it was already rather a law unto itself, with topless bars and men dressed as women, and of course Haight-Ashbury, with its bizarre display.
Seiyo, however, contrasts the San Francisco of Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' with the sci-fi version of San Francisco in the 21st century, with its air of brazen decadence. I had to smile at his mention of the Chinese-American lesbian police chief, who has been conspicuous in TV news coverage of San Francisco, dressed in a uniform which looks as though it was designed for a male of considerably larger proportions. That itself is rather appropriate in an ironic way, and it's a testament to how insanely devoted to political correctness our age has become.
I've written on several occasions about my love for old movies, by which I really mean old, not five years old, but real old relics of the pre-PC era. I've written about how watching such movies often leaves me with a wistful feeling, evoking my childhood memories of real America, traditional America, before we were forcibly 'enriched' with 'diversity', and before we were taught to speak and think in that quaintly sinister language of euphemisms and lies called 'political correctness.'
Sometimes old movies cause a feeling of nostalgia and longing for the past, but sometimes they inspire a fierce, smoldering indignation at what has been done to my country, and at what is still being done.
Old movies can be an educational experience for those who have enough common sense to notice the jarring disconnect between the old America on the screen and the 'new' America which they see around them. The new and 'improved', diverse America is graffiti-defaced, crowded, often squalid, full of people who are strangers to each other in every possible way.
Whenever I speak about the lost world of the old movies, somebody, usually someone of the liberal or leftist persuasion, will bluntly claim that 'that world never existed. The movies whitewashed things and censored things, covering up the injustices and hatreds that were really there.' And the leftist or liberal is always adept at finding some flaw or failing in the old America: ''people were sexist and misogynist! There were no African-Americans in these movies except in subservient roles!"
My response is that while the movies may have presented a slightly manicured and polished version of reality, the underlying truth of old America was presented as it was. So when we see the well-dressed, presentable, civilized citizens of San Francisco, we are seeing the America that truly existed then, which was an America of mostly clean, well-behaved people, a place where order and common sense and civility still prevailed.
Seiyo mentions the role played by mass immigration in the drastic transformation of California, from the images seen in Vertigo and in 'North by Northwest'. This goes without saying. but it's amazing how few people seem to want to see a connection; many people act as if what is happening to California or to their own towns is some kind of fluke, due to blind forces of nature, rather than a conscious, malicious policy.
I know I have visited these themes repeatedly, but I will pose the same questions again, even if I am only asking myself: what happened to the people who inhabited the old America, the people who are seen as the extras in the Hitchcock movies? Are they all dead and six feet under now? Some, obviously, are still with us, but how did the good, common-sense inhabitants of the old America become the docile, vacant, 'pod people' as Seiyo calls them, of today? How did they go from sanity to becoming PC pod people, acquiescing meekly and passively to this grotesque experiment that is being carried out on our country and our people?
We can revisit the same explanations: brainwashing, due to leftist control of the media and the educational system; the fall of organized Christianity to the same pernicious influences, the culture of passivity reinforced by TV and video-game addictions, the therapeutic culture, which accentuates narcissism and neurotic self-obsession, the hedonism which diverts the attention and the energy of many young people who should be exercising leadership. We could go on and on. Some focus on the Jewish role in all this; some say Christianity is to blame (although Christianity's influence is waning), some say it's feminism and the destruction of the family. Some even suggest that the fluoride in our water supply induces passivity.
There are elements of truth, I think, in all of these.
If we believe any of these, or all of these, does heredity hold the power that I believe it does? Certainly heredity is not all, but neither is its influence negligible or nil, as leftists and tabula rasa believers insist. Are we merely passive products of our environment? Can we go from being self-respecting, self-confident, assertive, sensible people to being vacant receptacles for propaganda in such a short time, as the deterioration of our society suggests?
If the former is true, if environment is paramount and people can be shaped or re-shaped by the manipulative elites, then there seems little hope, since they hold all the cards, it appears. But if there is such a thing as hereditary influence on temperament and character, then perhaps we might hope that our ancestors' strength will re-assert itself.
I have not mentioned the idea that our problem is in large part a spiritual deficit; we've abandoned the faith of our fathers and we've made ourselves idols, among them self and pleasure and power. Many of us place our faith in flawed human beings or institutions, which is not what our forefathers counseled, and not what Christianity teaches.
Many of those who call themselves Christians are being led astray by 'wolves in sheep's clothing', either church leaders or popular writers of 'religious' books. Some are being led astray by political wolves in sheeps's clothing, or political parties and personages (Republicans, mainly) which become idols for some Christians. In any case, we are in need of a spiritual awakening as well as a political one.
I get the sense that things are accelerating, and being moved along very fast now; it's evident in some of the news stories that are being discussed here and elsewhere. Are they testing the waters? Trying to provoke a response from the few holdouts who haven't fully submitted?
Whether the 'elites' are intending it or not, they are showing their hand; it's obvious now that there is an agenda, a 'new world order' plan, and that all Western countries are on the same track. Their brazenness can help things for us; it might alert some of the somnolent ones among us, and it might also show us just how passive most people have become.
I say as I've always said that it's always the few who bring about real changes; the question is, will it be the few who are truly driving this multicult madness, or will it be the few on our side, the patriots, the people who love their kin and honor their fathers?
He uses the dramatic changes in San Francisco since the mid-20th century as an illustration of the changes in all of America since then, and I think it's apt. Granted, San Francisco is not what I would call 'typical' traditional America; it may well have been closer to that at an earlier time in its existence, but by the time I first visited it in the late 60s, at a time of my youthful naivete, it was already rather a law unto itself, with topless bars and men dressed as women, and of course Haight-Ashbury, with its bizarre display.
Seiyo, however, contrasts the San Francisco of Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' with the sci-fi version of San Francisco in the 21st century, with its air of brazen decadence. I had to smile at his mention of the Chinese-American lesbian police chief, who has been conspicuous in TV news coverage of San Francisco, dressed in a uniform which looks as though it was designed for a male of considerably larger proportions. That itself is rather appropriate in an ironic way, and it's a testament to how insanely devoted to political correctness our age has become.
I've written on several occasions about my love for old movies, by which I really mean old, not five years old, but real old relics of the pre-PC era. I've written about how watching such movies often leaves me with a wistful feeling, evoking my childhood memories of real America, traditional America, before we were forcibly 'enriched' with 'diversity', and before we were taught to speak and think in that quaintly sinister language of euphemisms and lies called 'political correctness.'
Sometimes old movies cause a feeling of nostalgia and longing for the past, but sometimes they inspire a fierce, smoldering indignation at what has been done to my country, and at what is still being done.
Old movies can be an educational experience for those who have enough common sense to notice the jarring disconnect between the old America on the screen and the 'new' America which they see around them. The new and 'improved', diverse America is graffiti-defaced, crowded, often squalid, full of people who are strangers to each other in every possible way.
Whenever I speak about the lost world of the old movies, somebody, usually someone of the liberal or leftist persuasion, will bluntly claim that 'that world never existed. The movies whitewashed things and censored things, covering up the injustices and hatreds that were really there.' And the leftist or liberal is always adept at finding some flaw or failing in the old America: ''people were sexist and misogynist! There were no African-Americans in these movies except in subservient roles!"
My response is that while the movies may have presented a slightly manicured and polished version of reality, the underlying truth of old America was presented as it was. So when we see the well-dressed, presentable, civilized citizens of San Francisco, we are seeing the America that truly existed then, which was an America of mostly clean, well-behaved people, a place where order and common sense and civility still prevailed.
Seiyo mentions the role played by mass immigration in the drastic transformation of California, from the images seen in Vertigo and in 'North by Northwest'. This goes without saying. but it's amazing how few people seem to want to see a connection; many people act as if what is happening to California or to their own towns is some kind of fluke, due to blind forces of nature, rather than a conscious, malicious policy.
I know I have visited these themes repeatedly, but I will pose the same questions again, even if I am only asking myself: what happened to the people who inhabited the old America, the people who are seen as the extras in the Hitchcock movies? Are they all dead and six feet under now? Some, obviously, are still with us, but how did the good, common-sense inhabitants of the old America become the docile, vacant, 'pod people' as Seiyo calls them, of today? How did they go from sanity to becoming PC pod people, acquiescing meekly and passively to this grotesque experiment that is being carried out on our country and our people?
We can revisit the same explanations: brainwashing, due to leftist control of the media and the educational system; the fall of organized Christianity to the same pernicious influences, the culture of passivity reinforced by TV and video-game addictions, the therapeutic culture, which accentuates narcissism and neurotic self-obsession, the hedonism which diverts the attention and the energy of many young people who should be exercising leadership. We could go on and on. Some focus on the Jewish role in all this; some say Christianity is to blame (although Christianity's influence is waning), some say it's feminism and the destruction of the family. Some even suggest that the fluoride in our water supply induces passivity.
There are elements of truth, I think, in all of these.
If we believe any of these, or all of these, does heredity hold the power that I believe it does? Certainly heredity is not all, but neither is its influence negligible or nil, as leftists and tabula rasa believers insist. Are we merely passive products of our environment? Can we go from being self-respecting, self-confident, assertive, sensible people to being vacant receptacles for propaganda in such a short time, as the deterioration of our society suggests?
If the former is true, if environment is paramount and people can be shaped or re-shaped by the manipulative elites, then there seems little hope, since they hold all the cards, it appears. But if there is such a thing as hereditary influence on temperament and character, then perhaps we might hope that our ancestors' strength will re-assert itself.
I have not mentioned the idea that our problem is in large part a spiritual deficit; we've abandoned the faith of our fathers and we've made ourselves idols, among them self and pleasure and power. Many of us place our faith in flawed human beings or institutions, which is not what our forefathers counseled, and not what Christianity teaches.
Many of those who call themselves Christians are being led astray by 'wolves in sheep's clothing', either church leaders or popular writers of 'religious' books. Some are being led astray by political wolves in sheeps's clothing, or political parties and personages (Republicans, mainly) which become idols for some Christians. In any case, we are in need of a spiritual awakening as well as a political one.
I get the sense that things are accelerating, and being moved along very fast now; it's evident in some of the news stories that are being discussed here and elsewhere. Are they testing the waters? Trying to provoke a response from the few holdouts who haven't fully submitted?
Whether the 'elites' are intending it or not, they are showing their hand; it's obvious now that there is an agenda, a 'new world order' plan, and that all Western countries are on the same track. Their brazenness can help things for us; it might alert some of the somnolent ones among us, and it might also show us just how passive most people have become.
I say as I've always said that it's always the few who bring about real changes; the question is, will it be the few who are truly driving this multicult madness, or will it be the few on our side, the patriots, the people who love their kin and honor their fathers?
Labels: Demographics, Old America, Old Movies, Political Correctness, Race Replacement, Societal Decay, Vanishing America