None of this is better evidenced than when Freepers confront the idea of certain High Schools watching and discussing Best Picture Oscar awardee '12 Years a Slave.'
Sherman Logan makes no distinction between the historical slave class and American chattel slavery.
This is fine and dandy, except that it will be presented without historical context, which is that every civilization in history practiced slavery.Kinda like how a heroin user can take the unprecedented step of kicking the habit, showing how much moral he is than all you smokers and drinkers!
Western Civ of the 19th century, however, ended it. No other previous civilization had apparently even considered such a step.
yldstrk ignores the confederates:
white people fought and died to end slaveryWait, I thought the Civil War was about States Rights?
zeestephen wonders if the movie might be a based on a box:
I’m a bit skeptical about this story.pepsionice has decided slavery id a really minor part of the American experience:
There were several hundred thousand free Black people living in the South when this guy was kidnapped in New York.
I mean, what was the legal mechanism that protected all those Southern free Blacks, but completely failed to protect this guy from New York?
Being a amatuer historian....I’d stay there are roughly forty “lessons” in American history which ought to be strongly emphasized. To sit and waste weeks and weeks....on just one single lesson...is short sighted.kearnyirish2 knows liberals keep blacks away from the mainstream...
What makes the primary and election of 1860 so special? Why did Jackson take down national bank? Why was the Louisiana Purchase so significant? Why was Andrew Carnegie significant? What was the real trigger of WW I? Why was the Depression of 1920-1921 a greater depression than the 1930s?
Maybe showing this ‘12 Years a Slave’ movie has some context to the Civil War discussion, but there are so many great lessons to be taught.
Saw a bit of a program last night on ID (Investigation Discovery?); this black guy was driving through Illinois & Indianna researching “sundown towns” (where blacks were supposed to be out of the town by sundown). From what I could gather, this was to ensure that northern states kicked into the racial grievance till as well. These were little rural places they visited; they used the low percentage of blacks there today to bolster their “grievance”. The Klan couldn’t have done a better job of removing blacks from mainstream America than today’s liberals do...Aevery_Freeman makes up tings to feel oppressed over:
The history curriculum in middle and high schools has been reduced to:Flintlock knows teaching about slavery just makes blacks hate whitey:
a) slavery,
b) genocide of Native Americans
c) the holocaust,
d) Seneca Falls Convention and
e) Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire if there is time.
The common thread is the evil nature of oppressive white men.
Ever wonder where the game “knockout” comes from??zeestephen's historical revisionism leads us to this amazing extreme:
IT’S TAUGHT IN OUR (BLEEPING) SCHOOLS!! BY OUR (BLEEPING) “EDUCATION” SYSTEM.
Native Americans also owned and sold Black slaves.
And, before the 1800’s, several Native American tribes are documented to have enslaved other Native Americans from different tribes.
Perhaps a sequel to this film is in order?
“12 Years A Slave Owner”
It's about a cruel Black slave owner who is shamed in to freeing his slaves by a kind and loving white abolitionist.
I love movies-the raunchier the better, not a freeper.
ReplyDeleteHollywood pushes pc crap but they do not follow what they preach...nearly all the best movie/best director/producer/animation/visual graphic/music awards were won by white males.
The creme rises to the top in Hollywood.. Picking out 6 people so they can have one example of every PC wish list is not what made Hollywood or America great...it only leads to mediocre results.
BTW Conservative movies tank? Like Passion of the Christ, Forrest Gump with it's conservative message??
ReplyDeleteAnd in terms of Free Market that is why Hollywood does what it does best..the creme rises to the top (see above). There is no affirmative action in Hollywood...it is one of the greatest examples of capitalism.
Forrest Gump was a conservative movie?? Who knew??
ReplyDeleteYes it had a very conservative message..especially the role of his love interest who messed up much of her life by drugs, sleeping around etc. She died of aids.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you saw what you wanted to see in Forrest Gump, anon1. I'm not sure how that makes it a conservative movie.
ReplyDelete"It sounds like you saw what you wanted to see in Forrest Gump, anon1. I'm not sure how that makes it a conservative movie."
ReplyDeleteYou must have not seen Gump.. he was pro capitalism with his Bubba Gump co, Lt Dan found God, The Vietnam protestors were portrayed as drugged out girlfriend beaters, pro vietnam vet message, strong pro family stance etc.
Yes, because anyone who starts a business is automatically conservative. Also, conservatives are the only ones who believe in God or have families.
DeleteLike I said, you saw what you wanted to see in Forrest Gump.
Where did I say only conservatives start a business? It was all the points in FG I mentioned as a these which makes the movie a conservative statement
DeleteI addressed the other points as well. You saw what you wanted to see in FG.
DeleteAs did you, euph.
DeleteSort of the hallmark of a good movie, wouldn't you say?
Sure, that's why I think it can't really be categorized as a conservative movie.
Deleteanon1 thinks conservatives should be given a special achievement Oscar at the Academy Awards ... a special Oscar for the most bitching about the Academy Awards.
ReplyDeleteWhere did i say that? I just mentioned white males rule Hollywood and make things happen..not artificial PC groups to make the presenters look hip.
ReplyDeleteThe message of Forrest Gump was that you can be a complete moron and still be happy as long as you don't try to think too hard. It was the perfect conservative message movie.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but I said "explicitly conservative," not "hailed as having a conservative message by certain conservatives." That list would include Juno, The Incredibles and basically any other movie that a schmuck like Jonah Goldberg can somehow torture into agreeing with his worldview and therefore having artistic validity.
ReplyDeleteThe Passion of the Christ is conservative primarily in its rather old-fashioned view of Teh Jews, but I don't think most conservatives embraced that message. At least, I hope they didn't. Beyond that, it's conservative only in the idiotic culture-war sense that movies about Jesus are supposed to be inherently conservative because conservatives officially own the Bible because fuck you, that's why.
Forrest Gump is also not explicitly conservative in the sense I'm talking about (cf. Atlas Shrugged, The Christmas Candle). Although it's certainly possible to interpret it that way, plenty of people didn't, and it also wasn't an example of right-wing "thought leaders" trying to compete with or form an alternative to Hollywood, as far as I know.
In any case, it's possible to detect a conservative outlook in lots of popular movies, so I think the entire right-wing bitchfest about Hollywood is utter bullshit. I think it shows a basic hostility to the idea that art can be valuable even if it challenges your point of view, and I also think it infantilizes American audiences by presuming to "protect" them from dangerous images like women kissing. (Like a lot of lefties, I think vigilante justice and capital punishment are stupid and brutal and cause more problems than they solve, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying movies that depict them in a positive light...which is just as well, because there are an awful, awful lot of them.) But the fact remains that when explicitly right-wing movies get made as an explicit challenge to Hollywood liberalism, they tend not to do very well at all. Which is why, in the absence of a functional artistic culture that would allow ideological opponents to be portrayed as anything other than strawmen, so many of these culture critics are reduced to imagining that some stupid blockbuster is secretly conservative at its core.
TL;DR: You're still a complete fucking idiot.
I'd also add that explicitly liberal movies usually tank, too. Like Sam Goldwyn used to say, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union."
DeleteI'd also add that explicitly liberal movies usually tank, too.
DeleteI don't think that's really accurate. If you look at a movie like Erin Brockovitch, that was both explicitly liberal and a box-office hit. The same goes for Good Night and Good Luck, Elysium and arguably Brokeback Mountain, just to name a few recent films. Even relatively marginal liberal-interest films like Milk stomped Atlas Shrugged at the box office. And that's without getting into explicit left-wing agitprop like Bowling for Columbine, which also did a lot better than its conservative competitors.
That said, the attempt to make any comparison is complicated by the fact that for conservatives today, as we've seen in this very thread, a message like "slavery was bad" or "pollution is dangerous" or "gays are not necessarily bad or unhappy people" automatically qualifies as "liberal" -- outrageously so, to hear them tell it. Worse, if a movie is made by someone who "talks and looks like a faggot," it's apparently failed some kind of crucial litmus test.
My theory is that making good movies requires a level of empathy and understanding -- even for people you don't like -- that far too many modern conservatives have failed to reach. Not to say that people on the left don't also trade in cartoonish stereotypes of their opponents, but I think that statistically, they're a bit more tolerant of ambiguity and therefore a bit more likely to explore complex characters and motivations in a satisfying way.
Still, I'd argue that American movies tend to contain a weird mishmash of very liberal and very conservative ideas, both largely unexamined and often conflicting in clumsy ways. And I think this reflects the population's outlook pretty well. Political hacks may get furious about the message of Wall-E or Django Unchained or some stupid Muppet movie, but most moviegoers don't care about any of that nonsense, in my experience. And not even necessarily because they're liberal, but because perpetual outrage is not an attractive lifestyle choice for normal people.
Apparently anon1 has never had an enchilada. That bums me out a little.
ReplyDeleteanon1, I am really, really not surprised that that's what your only take-away from Forrest Gump is.
ReplyDeleteI just want to say that I love conservative cinema. Last Ounce of Courage was the funniest comedy of 2012.
ReplyDeleteYou can argue all you want about conservative vs. liberal cinema and that's fine. But it misses the larger point that the freeper jackasses would like to diminish the scourge of slavery. It was a nasty institution that all of folks should say "fuck that shit" no matter what party they are affiliated with.
ReplyDelete