In the Valley of Elah was conservative?  The only reason I didn’t watch is that war-related movies aren’t my cup of tea, particularly when the real life stuff going down at the time is already awful enough.  I had to turn off Rendition several times before I could get through it, and that movie is “liberal.”

Clearly there is a conservative blacklist and these folks are being barred from employment in their chosen field and their projects heavily censored (sarcasm).

Propaganda is rarely well done, and that’s what they’re pushing.

What Blitzgal said. It seems to me that war-related movies aren’t very popular anymore, liberal or conservative. What was the last war movie this decade (excluding sci-fi and fantasy war movies; so no LOTR) that did ridiculously good at the box office?

For some reason the only movie crossing my mind is Pearl Harbor. The only bias that movie had was a stupid bias. And I don’t even remember when that movie came out.

It’s a very Stalinist conception of what constitutes ‘art’, and I say that in a precise and technical way, rather than just a ritual invocation of a Bad Guy.  These oppressed Hollywood conservatives aren’t mad that they can’t get jobs; conservative actors get plenty of jobs.  They’re mad that Hollywood keeps making ‘liberal’ movies and nobody stops them and people go to see them and nobody goes to see An American Carol.  For the modern aesthetic Stalinist, like their Soviet predecessors, the value of art is entirely in how it advances The Cause.

For being all about “personal responsibility” Republicans sure have turned into moaners and whiners in the last month.

“Oh noes! You were mean to Palin! Mean to McCain! Mean to Joe The Plumber! HOLLYWOOD IS MEAAAAAAN! WAAH!”

At least with South Korea we managed to get a stalemate and a democratic ally (eventually).

“—a couple of anti-Michael Moore documentaries and An American Carol—”

You repeat yourself.

Wait, Hollywood movies are all liberal? There are definitely some outspokenly political shows and movies with a liberal bias (Daily Show, SNL lately, 30 Rock I’d argue, all those war on terror movies that didn’t make any money, etc.), but for the most part, Hollywood strikes me as terribly conservative, or at least consciously apolitical. Take a movie like Iron Man—you could interpret it as pro- or anti-war depending on your bias, but there was no explicit political message in it. PLUS the whole superhero mythos is kind of already conservative—it’s an individual hero who has to to take over where the government has failed, and he is sort of above the law because of his individual merit.

I third Blitzgal. Why do I want to pay to watch something I am avoiding at home on the news? You couldn’t pay me to watch a movie about an election right now, and I am fascinated by this election. I go to the movies to escape and have a good time. I also often go to be educated and moved, but not usually about whatever the main subject of the news is at the time.

I don’t even want to watch older, great war movies right now.

I don’t know…300 was fairly Conservative (someone actually says “freedom isn’t free”, enemies are evil effeminate brown people, etc.) and it did insanely well.

Oh yeah, forgot about that dreck.  Yeah, Frank Miller of “Batman gets bin Laden” fame is definitely conservative, and so is “300.”  Although at the time, the fanboys drooling over that film were angrily opposed to any idea that there was anti-Muslim sentiment and other propaganda going on.

300 is pretty conservative (also, Frank Miller is a douche) but I’m tempted to put 300 in the fantasy category (war rhinos? c’mon!).

I probably should have specified, “any war movies featuring the American military”. And let’s limit it to taking place in this century, since movies like The Patriot or anything featuring the Civil War probably don’t ring as well with modern audiences.

Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Black Hawk Down… seems to me that the most popular war movies are WWII movies. Probably because that was one we actually won, and won hard?

And I have to admit, I did enjoy all the oodles of bare-chested dudes.

(Also- Black Hawk Down was NOT a WWII movie, and in fact took place in 1993. My bad. So there’s one modern-ish military movie that did well.)

Ms Kate, you really make me want to do a thesis on this sort of thing! I did research a few years ago on the opera and theatre of the French Revolution, and it’s the same thing - it’s generally crap because they put propaganda over artistic merit and executed a lot of artists along the way, and most of it hasn’t survived. (Basically the only opera from the period that’s ever performed nowadays is Fidelio, which a. escaped the French establishment b. is by Beethoven.)

Hell, there’s never any shortage of films and television shows glorifying the police or the military. Or of ass-kicking “action” in general.

Frank Miller can be a douche, but 300 is not monolithically conservative in it’s message and symbolism, and Miller’s work is usually similarly complex; Reagan does not come off well in TDKR.

Brenda’s right in that the entire superhero mythos is (and I’ll go farther here) protofascist at its core. It’s like jacking up Dirty Harry to the highest level of revenge fantasy and never once question its morals or ethics. Which is why I never ever watch them. It’s the same with television and the infallible cop or criminologist who never fucks up, never plants a gun, is always right and never ever misuses his power even once. It’s utter fantasy presented as reality and has perverted our relationship with those who have power over us. The sick, twisted CSI world is like creeping slime over our sense of right and wrong.

It’s the same with television and the infallible cop or criminologist who never fucks up, never plants a gun, is always right and never ever misuses his power even once.

You might want to watch some of the actual TV that’s been on since the 1960s.

Where to start?  On the Law and Order shows, which is a mainstream good cop/prosecutor series, they are shown as far from faultless.  They’ve been called on to the carpet for overextending their authority and skirting the rules, they’ve had cases lost or thrown out because of their actions, a large percentage of the shows have the DA’s yelling at the cops for playing free and loose with the rules and screwing up their cases, another large percentage have the DA’s doing the same and being called on it, prosecutors have been disbarred, cops penalized (not to mention the odd guest-starring dirty cop), and yes, even episodes featuring unethical forensic scientists.

CSI…all of them have dirty cops again, forensic examiners screwing up.  Hell, the very first episode of CSI had a character die because of one of the examiners not following the rules.  On the New York show, one character was fired because she was about to manipulate evidence, even against a man that actually was guilty, and even though she stopped before she actually did it, it was bad enough to let her go.

And let’s not even start on The Shield, which is all dirty cop all the time.

As hard as you might find it to believe, there actually are cops and examiners who are conscientious and do their jobs.  And yes, there are cops who are scum.  And there are those in between.

And all of them have appeared on various shows.  I don’t know what you think is on, but it’s clearly not what you really think is on.

And my wife just reminded me I should have really mentioned Law & Order: SVU, where main character Stabler has become a total psycho and is one step away from jail time himself, and one episode where a murderer got off because a cop with a grudge against the squad’s captain (due to the captain having been responsible for taking down another cop who had been dirty) unethically released confidential reports, which detailed assorted screwups the squad had made during their careers, ranging from innocent but stupid mistakes to unethical conduct.

KeithM has a point, or he makes me think of a point - the misuse of power isn’t an issue in <s>Bizarro</s>conservative-world as long as the ends are perceived as good. Look at 24.

They’re mad that Hollywood keeps making ‘liberal’ movies and nobody stops them and people go to see them and nobody goes to see An American Carol.  For the modern aesthetic Stalinist, like their Soviet predecessors, the value of art is entirely in how it advances The Cause.

And TV shows like “24” and comic strips like “Mallard Fillmore” are neo-con equivalents of what the Soviets called “tractor art,” pure and simple.

24—anti-terrorist superhero, breakin’ the rules because American lives are at stake.

Red Dawn—the Commies are coming!

Tough guy films: Rambo & Rocky, Chuck Norris, Willis, Bronson or Schwarzenneger…is it any surprise that these guys usually come out as conservatives.

Sexy war heroes in “Pearl Harbor” or “The Patriot”.  Mel Gibson martyrs the hero in Braveheart and Passion of the Christ.

Conservative-friendly films rarely venture past the violent “go ahead make my day” or revenge fantasy.  Are the rebels in “The Patriot” and “Braveheart” terrorists? or heroes?  If you’re a conservative it really only matters to you if you relate to them on a gut level.  No need to think about the political aspects.

What’s happened is a progression of world views in this country—not a stoppage of conservative films. We have progressed to the point where many so-called conservative (and let’s not pigeon hole like some people do) ideologies have been shown to be unfair and, for want of a better term, wrong. I mean, during the 50’s, films like Invasion USA and Rocket Attack USA put forth the ideas that if you don’t follow the ideologies of the government and do what they want when they want it, then the country will fall. The military almost always saves the day in a lot of 50’s monster films (or at least the military in conjunction with helpful scientists (see The Thing for that)). I mean, the simple idea that being prejudiced—especially open prejudice—is wrong is only about 40-50 years old. We’re still seeing the fallout from the change today, as the people who want the country to be like it was have to fight against the people who want it to be what it can be—the so-called ‘City on a Hill” that conservatives always take out of context. These people want the country to go “back to the good old days” of the 1950’s, which were only “good” for a certain few—the ones who want to go back there.

No Americans were “caught up in” the Iraq and Afganistan invasions. This wasn’t Vietnam. There’s no draft. They volunteered. I have not the slightest bit of pity for them and their families. Only for the Iraqi and Afgan peoples they mercilessly slaughtered.

“Liberal Hollywood” is a figure of Republican whining. Nothing more. Warren Beatty is one of the few genuine Hollywood liberals. His best film, “Bulworth,” was made as the result of a settlement with Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch had promised financing for Beatty’s “Reds” and the renegged. Beatty was planning to sue. But at the last minute he proposed to Murdoch that he make a film at Fox for the money Murdoch owed him. Murdoch agreed, but didn’t bother to give Beatty a unit publicist. As a result when the film started shooting reports began to circulate that Beaty was making some “secret” movoe or other—simply because the official announcement hadn’t been made.

“Bulworth” flopped at the box office. But it’s the greatest film ever made about political campaigning.
Get the DVD.

I’d love to see a movie about a republican president, relentlessly hounded by a whacko multi-millionaire, who trolls the president’s backwater home state for any sort of salacious scandal:

Kelsey Grammer, as “Henry Peach-Pitt,” Harvard-educated scion of a midwest publishing empire; with a burning hatred—and a bankroll big enough to plug a python;

Ron Silver, as The President, a complex man, with an activist political agenda, and a troubled past;

Patricia Heaton, as his spunky, yet adoring wife.  With a closet-full of italian shoes—and secrets of her own, in a Payless shoebox beneath a worn stack of granny panties;

And Fred Thompson, reprising his role as grumpy old Joe, the president’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted brother, who speaks to his now-divorced wife on the toy telephone that is his constant companion.

No Americans were “caught up in” the Iraq and Afganistan invasions. This wasn’t Vietnam. There’s no draft. They volunteered. I have not the slightest bit of pity for them and their families. Only for the Iraqi and Afgan peoples they mercilessly slaughtered.

Well, okay, we have a ‘volunteer’ army, if by volunteer you actually mean “join up, desperate children of poor people and minorities, and maybe if you survive getting shot at for 4 years you might be able to get a job or qualify for some student loans”.

Yes, there were many who were caught up in the patriotic fervor after 9/11.  The European newspapers, including the French, had headlines, “Now, we are all Americans.”  And al Quaeda and their Taliban in Afghanistani hosts were in the sites of a coalition of nations.  Even the, later reviled, French and Germans were in the invasion of Afghanistan.  And an America who had been thinking that they were duped into accepting an idiot President, now wanted to get behind him with the MSM echoing the words of the VP that we don’t need to understand who are enemies are, just to get “them” and let us define “them,” their motives and ends.  Only liberal wusses, wanted to know that and “real” Americans just wanted to be pointed at whoever they were told were the enemies.

And so, we were pointed at Sadam and Iraq.  The Europeans mostly balked because they examined the evidence of collusion and WMD and thought it was extremely weak, at best.  Now the French and Germans were presented as false friends and weak losers because they didn’t go along, even though they were still in Afghanistan.

Hollywood and the MSM love wars, at least at the beginning.  They are myth makers who know that waving the flag and wagging the dog are sure winners at the box office and with Nielsen ratings.  Violent movies about fighting an unreasoning enemy don’t need to be well-written as long as the there are enough pyrotechnics, blood and evidence of a vile enemy against whom any extreme action is necessary in order to save the hostages in a highly muscular and patriotic manner.  As “24” teaches, torture, mutilation and death of “suspected terrorists and terrorist sympathisers” are justified because if you torture long enough you will get the truth that saves the day by the end of the hour.  And “they” do it, or would do it or could do it and so we should use it. 

Outspoken liberal questioners of the war have been deemed unpatriotic and opposed to our troops out there fighting the enemy.  Did any of them lose possible jobs or positions for speaking out during a time of elective war?

The war (occupation) in Iraq is now unpopular and when conservative actors speak about their support of the people who got us into that war using lies and deception, they are intimidated because not as many people agree with them as a few years before and will disagree with them. 

And all because those people aren’t afraid anymore by taunts of “you don’t want us to win” and “you must hate our troops” and being branded as unAmerican and unPatriotic in the Daily News.

There’s always an exception to prove the rule - Independence Day was a Republican wet dream, and it did pretty well.  Mediocre, yes, but I found it went well with my popcorn…