Movies as Art? Whatever
Given the recent hoopla surrounding the movie 300 and it's obvious political overtones, obvious to those who also see the violence inherent in the system in a Monet, I decided to do a review of some popular movies of the last few years and see what political messages were being inserted by those nasty Hollywood people.
Independence Day: This is soooo obviously an anti-immigrant film. The "aliens" are described as invaders and locusts who use up all the resources and then move on. This isn't even subtle. This is blatantly about the Mexican undocumented workers who come here seeking a better life. What's even more infuriating is that they send the black man to break into the aliens home in order to destroy it. This kind of racial stereotyping has go to go. Who wrote the screenplay for this? David Duke? Pat Buchanan? The only thing missing in this was a Jew pissed off that someone was using his property without permission. Oh wait, we had that in Jeff Goldblum's character. Yup, this movie was all propaganda and probably underwritten by the Minutemen Group and various white supremacist groups as well.
The Last Samurai: Yet another film designed to make white males appear superior to all other humans. The Japanese are either greedy, weak, or pig-headed and none of them can do anything until The Great White Hope arrives to show them the way. Cruise's character even references Thermopylae so it's even more obvious that Hollywood was prepping us for the release of 300 even back when this came out.
V for Vendetta: Most people took this as a slam on the Bush Administration but it really was just the opposite. Think about it. All the people working for the government were rabidly anti-American. They also happened to be involved in human experimentation, plots to kill their own citizens, and violent oppression of the masses. They were also all killed for their sins by the honorable protagonist. So, to sum up, enemies of America are vicious, brutal creatures involved in the most heinous of crimes and they must all be killed. I sense the hand of Karl Rove.
Shrek: What could possible be more innocent than a comic children's movie? No one would stoop so low as to use this genre for political indoctrination. How wrong you are. Let's start with the Lord, a white male again, ordering all magical creatures to be cast out of the kingdom. Yes I know the Lord was height-challenged but that was simply an attempt to muddy the waters. His edict to force all the magical creatures into the swamp was a poorly veiled attempt to show children that we should get rid of anyone who's different from us. The fact that they used an ogre, an ugly, smelly ogre, as the hero is more proof that the writers wanted children to empathize with Lord Farquaad and be scared of the ogre and the multi-cultural diversity he represented.
As you can see, the blatant politicization of films is nothing new. 300 is just the most recent example, albeit a bit more over the top, of the shameless depths to which Hollywood has stooped in order to indoctrinate our populace and, even more frightening, our children with "traditional" values. Everyone should be up in arms over such attempts at brainwashing our young into a modern day version of the Hitler Youth supporting George W. Bush. Write your Senators and Rep's. Legislation needs passed. Call the UN. We need a Food-for-Movies program. I volunteer to oversee the project and I promise that corruption will be less than half of that which plagued the Food-for-Oil program. I'm not greedy after all.
