Liberal gall at the box office

I had planned to write complain about the latest attempt by liberals to convince the American public that the Iraq War is awful by crapping several anti-war films into theaters. When I heard about these films, I was really pissed off that anyone would even want to make a film slamming US soldiers while the war is still being fought. That takes a lot of nerve, and is probably treason:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Instead of doing my own writing, I collected excerpts:

USA Today:

Hollywood has been churning out anti-war movies at a blistering pace of late, with more to come. We've already had Rendition, a tendentious, plodding assault on the war on terror, seemingly as-told-to by the ACLU, starring Reese Witherspoon, Peter Sarsgaard, Meryl Streep and Jake Gyllenhaal. There's the meandering In the Valley of Elah, written and directed by Paul Haggis, about a family dealing with a cover-up of their soldier-son's death in an unnecessary war. The Kingdom, more exciting than most, deals with an FBI team's attempt to investigate a terrorist attack on Americans in Saudi Arabia. Its anti-war credentials come from suggesting that the sworn lawmen (and women) investigating the slaughter of families playing softball are no better than the murderers.

Coming next month: Lions for Lambs, starring Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep — which gives every indication of being a theatrical version of a loaded question from Helen Thomas at a White House briefing — and Redacted, a fake documentary directed by Brian De Palma, in which U.S. troops are depicted as dehumanized rapists. Next spring comes Stop Loss, starring Ryan Phillippe, the supposedly heroic soldier who refuses to fight. And there are a whole slew of anti-war books being adapted for the screen as well.

And this isn't surprising:

When Peter Berg tested The Kingdom on Americans, he was horrified when the audience cheered when the FBI killed the terrorists at the end. "Am I experiencing American bloodlust?" the director agonized. Berg's contemptuous reaction toward American audiences may point to a few of the reasons these movies are faring poorly at American box offices.

Berg must be surprised to learn the public doesn't hate the America, as he does.

Pajamas Media:

The truth is Hollywood people are massively uninformed. They live in a bubble and, outside what they read in the New York Times and hear on NPR, they know almost nothing about what is really going on in the Middle East. And very few of them are curious to find out, because they assume what they already know is true and they have no impetus to investigate further.

But there is deeper reason for this than mere convenience and received conventional wisdom. These are not curious people because they are highly self-protective. They live a hugely privileged lifestyle, often based to a great degree on luck (and they know it), and this existence could only be threatened by contradictory information. Who wants that – particularly when it would alienate your colleagues, hurt your reputation and cause work problems?

Reuters:

Two Hollywood directors who are part of a wave of films about the war in Iraq and the broader fallout from the September 11, 2001 attacks have said they were only doing what media failed to do -- telling the truth.

Brian De Palma's "Redacted," arguably the most shocking feature yet about events in Iraq, hits theatres on Friday, using a documentary style to tell the true story of the gang rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by U.S. troops in 2006.

And this movie comes out while the troops are still fighting. When will Hollywood go back to entertaining us, and not re-educating us in socialist doctrine?

He told reporters: "It's all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it's not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment."

Nearly all stories from Iraq are negative. CNN and the New York Times, among other outlets, are 100% against the war and have been ramming that view down our throats for years. When DePalma says the media is now "part of the corporate establishment", he's using the same slogans found at socialist sites like Socialist Worker and DailyKos. Will these box office failures clue him in, that the mainstream American public does not think our soldiers are baby killers?

Variety has an interview with two of the stars of Redford's Lions for Lambs. This is from Andrew Garfield:

I don’t think it has any specific political leaning. I think it’s more about trying to show people how dangerous it is to be apathetic and how important it is they be engaged – not encouraging more left or right wing thinking, just be more engaged and read a paper and have an opinion and get more educated.

He must not have seen the movie he starred in.

San Francisco Chronicle:

The standard line on anti-war movies is that Hollywood starts making them six or seven years after a war, never during one. "Redacted," the latest from director Brian De Palma, not only goes against that pattern but also is a new type of anti-war film, one that could have been made only during wartime. It isn't elegiac, but enraged. It doesn't look back with sorrow, but forward in dread. And it's made with a clear intention - to stop the Iraq war.

Its historical significance can be summed up in a sentence: "Redacted" is the angriest, most vehemently pacifist film ever made by a major American filmmaker in a time of war. It's a movie devoid of any reflexive sentimentality about the troops or the mission, and it doesn't even bother pretending. If a foreign filmmaker made it, it would seem an unpleasant provocation. But coming from the man who made "Carrie," "Scarface," "The Untouchables" and "Carlito's Way," it has to go down as one of the bravest and most unambiguous cinematic statements of the decade.

The Toronto Star:

Eighteen years ago, and 14 after the American war in Vietnam came to its dismal, impotent conclusion, director Brian De Palma imagined that conflict as nagging nightmare. Based on a controversial account of the 1966 rape and murder of a Vietnamese girl by a group of American soldiers, Casualties of War was framed by the haunted dreaming of the single grunt (played by Michael J. Fox) who refused to participate in the horror but was condemned to keep reliving it.

DePalma probably couldn't wait for another war to come along, so he could, once again, show the world that US soldiers are brutal murderers.

I grew up hearing about the McCarthy era and the blacklisting of Hollywood commies. I wondered how America could find itself in a position where that would be acceptable. Now I know.