Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd note all the subversively pro-American messaging in The Avengers (in the middle third of this installment of Poliwood):
(Via Instapundit.)
The spouse and I made it a point to see The Avengers within a week of its release, because I wanted to experience the story before people got sloppy and started letting spoilers drop all over the internet.
I have become a bit of a Joss Whedon fan lately, having discovered that the Firefly series—and Serenity—live up to their billing. Whedon and I are a good match; I am a dialogue-snob, and that is one of his several strengths. Obviously, I have a lot of pleasure ahead of me, catching up with Buffy and Dr. Horrible; how you all must envy me!
I was pretty curious about what a hybrid Whedon-blockbuster production would look like. If one looks carefully, one definitely sees where he is subordinating himself to the Marvel franchise, but that doesn’t take away the joy of seeing his work writ large, with the biggest of budgets.
What Whedon’s politics actually are remains obscure to me, and that’s a good thing. (I have been told that he is an atheist, but that makes no never-mind, either.) Recall the fundamental message that Chetwynd and Simon touch on in the Poliwood sequence, for would-be promoters of free market values in the entertainment industry: Don’t make “conservative” films: make good narrative films with a broad appeal that don’t tear down faith, family, or our national ideals. We don’t want to emulate the most didactic, annoying lefty filmmakers; we want to sweet-talk our way into enough development money to kick their asses at the box office. And when we do, we’ll be far subtler about it than George Clooney is. At least, that’s my hope.
It’s worth noting that both hardcore libertarians and the unfortunates who lived in many of the OWS encampments, protesting . . . something unexplained . . . tend to be Firefly fans. A lot of lefty would-be individualists don’t quite realize how much power they want to give to the state, and so cannot (or do not bother to) reconcile their individuality to their desire for domination by the government. But if there’s one thing Firefly was against, it was government domination.
We on the right are consistent about this, and we are willing to deal with the contradictions that must occur between that and our desire to live with some law and order, with some moral norms. The city park-usurpers don’t.
I really did love The Avengers. This was a beautiful, pro-American, elegant action film. And it used classic comic book tropes without being formulaic—but then, that’s why they hired Whedon. He has his idiosyncracies, but he wasn’t going to give us a warmed-over comic book, and then go home for dinner. He would—he did—make what was classic into something still that. But also fresh and novel.
The movie’s message was a clear one: sometimes, we all have to stand up. Everyone loves to roll their eyes at flag-waving, after all—until the Twin Towers are destroyed, and suddenly it’s cool to wear a flag pin on their lapels again. For a few years. A threat to your country—or your planet—is a time to set differences aside and . . . well, maybe even get along with people you don’t ordinarily like to work with. Including people like Tony Stark who can be real pricks.
Sequences set in the streets of New York City were hard to watch, at times, because the real New York had been the site of a genuine terrorist attack in 2001. But I’m glad that the movie stuck with the iconic city that stands for American commerce. (That’s the rule: if it’s a detective story, the default is Los Angeles. If it’s superheroes, you’ll want to start in New York. Mobsters, Chicago or Las Vegas. Know why you picked the classic location. Know why you went with something different.)
The only real “beach head” conservatives have in the entertainment industry is in action films and TV shows. It appears to be more respectable to be a star (or, in Clint Eastwood’s case, a director and producer) if one is involved in films with the classic heroic storylines that appear in action movies (and war stories, and Westerns).
It’s as if there is a school of thought within the Hollywood establishment that, “well, what can one expect? So-and-so made his money promoting this black-and-white notion that there really is some honest good in the world—and some outright evil—and he (it’s usually a he) has taken it very much to heart.” They make allowances for that “old-fashioned” idea having seeped into the poor unfortunate’s consciousness. Also, Robert Downey, Jr. has undeniable onscreen charisma. As do Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, and Tom Selleck. As did John Wayne. And on and on.
When these types of films succeed, they succeed very well. It would be lovely to see those who made their fortunes in these genres help to fund semi-conservative production companies (ones that employ people across the ideological spectrum, of course, for maximum intellectual cross-pollination). Such enterprises might create other types of narrative films that would reinforce the virtues we see denigrated in popular culture—such as the desirability of family ties, the value of the individual, the human yearning for freedom, the role that faith can sometimes play in personal development, and the need we all have to be more than part of a great machine, or servants to an almighty state.
Again: I don’t care what Whedon’s intellectual underpinnings are. He can be right or left. The important thing is that he is a good writer who is excellent at touching on the themes of loyalty, faith, equality that isn’t sameness, and the need to decide, from time to time, which authorities should be obeyed—and which should be resisted.
That’s the model, Hollywood. Are you ready? Now get going.
“Politics are downstream from culture.”
—Andrew Breitbart
(X-posted at Little Miss Attila)
Dan Collins on May 18, 2012 at 7:32 pm said:
First, try not to insult your target audience is a very good piece of advice.
John on May 19, 2012 at 10:39 am said:
I once worked in a school cafeteria, and after the students had eaten and gone, the kitchen staff took their own lunch break, eating the same food they had just served.
The pizza we served was typical school pizza (bland crust and sauce, cheese that was half artificial), and one day we attempted to improve it by adding toppings. The result was no better than if we had not tried. No amount of toppings could save that stuff.
Hollywood has only been told many billions of times (in the form of ticket purchases) which films we like and which films we don’t.
* We admire heroes and despise cowards.
* Drunkards and philanderers are, at best, objects of ridicule.
* Good and evil are real, and while evil appears powerful at the start, it is ultimately impotent.
* Any compromise with evil is a victory for evil.
The world-view that a movie projects is like unto the crust of a pizza. If the crust is bland, no amount of toppings (ie, explosions and and sex) can salvage the situation.
Hollywood has failed to act on this, not because of any lack of knowledge, but because it has already rejected the world-view that predominates outside of its sphere. The propaganda is deliberate, not in that there is necessarily some master plan to transform the viewing audience, but deliberate in that they already know what values system they are going to project. Their question is not “How can we make good movies?” or even, “How can we make movies that make money?” but, “How can we make money selling this particular product?”
richard mcenroe on May 19, 2012 at 8:48 pm said:
Joy, you may not know or care what Whedon’s politics are, but they matter. Joe Johnston, the director of the Captain America movie, had a serious bug up his ass about not portraying a guy dressed as a flag as a flag-waver. His unsubtle parodying of that position, turning Cap into a recycled Tyrone Power and War Bonds hustler, did not, in my opinion, sit comfortably with the audience (Remember, even in LA they cheered the Marines in Battle: Los Angeles. A little flagwaving is welcome if properly done.) Whedon’s introduction of Cap to the fight, when he stands between the old man and Loki, is much more what Cap and America at its best are about. But scuttlebutt is, Whedon had to be told to cut back on his politics in the Avengers script, with the only truly irrelevant and noticeably fragment being Fury’s fatuous “We’ve made some mistakes; some quite recently.” It’s got nuthin ta do wit nuthin else in da conversation, it sticks out like a sore tumb, yaknowwatImean?
The other lead characters are much more in line with Hollywood’s worldview and self-image, and thus easier for Whedon to get a handle on. Tony Stark for example is the Hollywood dream, wealthy enough to insouciantly dismiss speed limits and subpoenae alike, an undeniable genius who can tell other people he’s an undeniable genius and get away with it. The guy everyone calls first no matter how big an ass he is, because he has the goods.
The Hulk is every Hollywood celebrity who can endorse their pet cause as holy writ and feels not the least hesitation at unloading his anger at anyone who disagrees with him (and Whedon used to work for Roseanne Barr way back when, which gives him a direct experiential feel for the character).
The other characters don’t fare as well, for reasons both of Joss’ own storytelling tropes and his character. Natasha doesn’t come across as much more than a fitter Buffy, because Joss won’t challenge himself to write a flawed woman. Remember, this is a guy who used to run his scripts past one of his woman professors to make sure he was treating his women characters “properly.” This is a guy who HUGE BUFFY SPOILER DELETED and thus reduced HUGE BUFFY SPOILER DELETED to a pointless tantrum rather than a genuine dramatic tragedy in the Aristotelian sense. As for Coulson, well, Whedon always has to have his Wash, his HUGE BUFFY SPOILER DELETED; he goes for the cheap kill.
Thor is perhaps the least accessible character to the Hollywood worldview, as he has literally nothing to do with it (unless you want to compare him and Loki to Tom and Dick Smothers, maybe, or the Sheens). Even Cap relates to it more closely in that they hate him and the white horse he road in on, so at least they can relate that far. But Thor is basically just there to hit shit and Hawkeye’s just there.
Mr. Bingley on May 21, 2012 at 5:39 am said:
My Bride and Daughter really liked this movie; I reckon I’ll let them take me to it sometime this week.