Politicizing Art
For quite a while I have raised objections to trying to read specific political messages into film and TV, and more generally I have always been skeptical of the sub-set of conservative arguments dedicated to appropriating elements of pop culture. On the whole, I think the exercise is mostly futile, and to the extent that these assessments of pop culture products are at alll accurate they tend to dissuade conservatives from their own non-kitschy cultural production. “We don’t need to go into cinema or television–look at all the conservative movies and shows we already have!” These efforts tend to reinforce the “this is a center-right nation” complacency that assumes that some core cultural conservatism exists as a given in America and does not need to be actively cultivated. Worse than that, it causes conservatives to start to define what makes a film or television show “conservative” largely by how much it is loathed or criticized by their opponents, such that 24 receives embarrassing praise when it depicts a near-omnicompetent security state that breaks the law at will so long as the targets of its violence and lawlessness are terrorists.
I started thinking about this earlier this afternoon when I happened to be scrolling through The Corner and noticed their “25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years” series of posts. Besides all of my usual problems with this appropriation game, what struck me as odd about the list was how many war and terrorism movies there were. United 93, Team America: World Police (no, I’m not kidding), We Were Soldiers, Heartbreak Ridge, Master and Commander, Red Dawn (natch), Braveheart, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which is a sort of war movie, I suppose) are among those listed, and they still haven’t reached the top ten. The Dark Knight makes its appearance on the list with a reprise of Andrew Klavan’s surreal idea that the plot had something to do with Mr. Bush and the “war on terror.” The Lord of the Rings trilogy is framed entirely in terms of being a pro-war epic, which misunderstands the trilogy about as badly as one can:
The debates over what to do about Sauron and Saruman echoed our own disputes over the Iraq War.
Like the silly efforts to invest 300 with some contemporary political significance, this cuts both ways and could be interpreted in a way that would not suit war supporters.
[Correction in bold] John Miller cites A.O. Scott’s review of Master and Commander to give a more straightforward application of the idea of little platoons:
It imagines the [H.M.S.] Surprise as a coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty and his place. I would not have been surprised to see Edmund Burke’s name in the credits.”
Of course every man knows his duty and his place–it is set on a Royal Navy warship! Military regimentation and conscription maintained by the discipline of the lash do not seem to me to be exactly what Burke had in mind when he was thinking of a society ruled by custom and prescription. It is telling and depressing that some movement conservatives seem to think that this is supposed to be a perfect expression of Burkean ideals. Correction: It was pointed out to me that Miller was quoting Scott’s review, not making the statement himself, which was quite evident in Miller’s post and which I missed. I apologize for the error. It is still not very encouraging that Miller thought Scott’s description to be worth quoting in the context of defining the film as conservative.
It is not just that there are many war stories included on the list. If I included films from the last 30 years, I could come up with my own list, which still would not make the films that I list “conservative” movies, but I might include on my list a few war films that offer other lessons (Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, and Bang Rajan come to mind). In themselves, the stories are not the problem. There is nothing necessarily wrong with films that try to show all aspects of warfare, including the admirable virtues of the men who fight. What is troubling is the “conservative” interpretation of many of these films and the automatic identification of reasonably positive depictions of warfare with conservative themes.
it causes conservatives to start to define what makes a film or television show “conservative†largely by how much it is loathed or criticized by their opponents
American Carol comes to mind.
While We Were Soldier does offer a positive potrayal of the American soldier in Vietnam, it also does the same for the Vietnamese, and even hints at why the U.S. was not going to win ultimately. iirc, Hal Moore is critical of the war in Vietnam (and also in Iraq) — what do the ‘conservatives’ over at NR make of that?
Although not as funny as the inclusion of Red Dawn, Master And Commander seemed an odd choice to make the list. Aside from provoking the question “Is Rum, Sodomy and the Lash the new conservative tradition?”, it seemed like a slightly curious selection, given that the British Navy’s pressing of Americans was the proximate cause for the War of 1812 .
For a few years now, I’ve been making the argument that the modern Republican party (often synonymous with “conservative,” and almost certainly so in the case of this list) is a combination of violent militarism, fundamentalism, and small-government rhetoric. This was a marriage with several inconsistencies, and couldn’t really last. In the last couple of years, it’s started falling apart. With the choice of McCain as candidate, it became clear that all the Republican party stood for anymore was war and militarism.
The Dark Knight deserves to be considered a political film in the broader sense of what politics is, but I wouldn’t say it falls under the severely constricted political understanding portrayed by NRO. Through the movie I couldn’t help but see the major themes of Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue come to light on the screen. The Neitzschean (the Joker) has come to demonstrate the ineptitude of the Weberian bureaucrats (Commissioner Gordon, the prosecutor) with his will to power. In fact the Joker’s Neitzschean power is strong enough to turn some Weberians like the prosecutor into a Neitzschean Two-face. The only tangible response to the Neitzschean is the Aristotlean citizen who seeks to live a life of virtue and engagement in the polis (the Dark Knight, who makes a decent hero as one who struggles with virtue). So, The Dark Knight deserves the label as a political movie, however, it is not “conservative” but Macintyrian.
Odd that the Lincoln lovers at NR would chose Braveheart. You suppose they were rooting for the English when they watched it?
Probably for the Scots, because they were portrayed as the heroes. But it’d have been just as doable to make a movie about suppressing vile Scots ‘terrorists’, wherein burning ‘terrorist villages’ to the ground with all in them would be proof that the War on Terror needs firm measures.
Daniel: “It is telling and depressing that some movement conservatives seem to think that this is supposed to be a perfect expression of Burkean ideals. ”
‘Some’ movement conservatives? Probably the majority. Many, if not most on the right really like the idea of military discipline and control (of course, most of the Vietnam-aged movement conservatives made d*mn sure that they stayed civies).
The Tolkien books are not “pro-war” in NRO’s sense of the term, but it’s not really the case with the movies. You had the Dorfmann (Wormtongue?) character referring to Carl Urban’s character (Eomer?) as a “warmonger”, a term that’s not in the book, IIRC. In that moment, in 2002, it felt like Jackson was classing anyone against the Iraq War with Wormtongue. It may not have been Jackson’s intent, but it had that feeling, and rather soured me a bit on an otherwise enjoyable movie.
The only tangible response to the Neitzschean is the Aristotlean citizen who seeks to live a life of virtue and engagement in the polis (the Dark Knight, who makes a decent hero as one who struggles with virtue). So, The Dark Knight deserves the label as a political movie, however, it is not “conservative†but Macintyrian.
I would have said Straussian or Platonic in that the heroic characters agree to promote a noble lie about Harvey Dent. The implicit contempt for the public behind that move undid the whole point of the prisoner’s game set up between the ferries.
“In that moment, in 2002, it felt like Jackson was classing anyone against the Iraq War with Wormtongue.”
It may have felt that way because of what was going on at the time, but I have a hard time believing that there was any attempt, implicit or otherwise, to identify the war with the fight against Mordor. It was Mordor, after all, that was launching the invasion, not the men of the West. This is the same reason I find it hard to believe that 300 serves as an effective pro-war vehicle–you have to pretend that the roles are reversed and the superpower invading the smaller, weaker country is the rugged band of heroes resisting foreign conquest.
It was Isenguard, actually, but why quibble? :)
I think it was the surreptitious nature of the attack and it’s being linked to foreign power. Like you say, Jackson probably didn’t have it in mind, but the use of the word by Wormtongue annoyed me at the time.
Re: Wormtongue/warmonger question:
I think all that’s going on is that the movie partakes of the same Churchillian rhetorical tropes that the supporters of the Iraq War favored. Whether that appropriation does violence to Tolkein is another matter, but I think that’s what lies behind the apparent connection to current events.
The best conservative movie of all time is clearly “Duck Soup.”
So we’re not arguing at cross-purposes let me make clear that I think both Daniel and Noah are probably right. But, I think we can both agree that there is some reason for a standard-issue NROnik to latch on to the film series.
Also, Breaker Morant is an awesome flick. There was a slight nod to it in the last episode of BSG. Along the same lines, I’d also suggest Farewell to the King, directed by John Milius of Red Dawn and starring Nick Nolte.
“There was a slight nod to it in the last episode of BSG.”
That’s a good point. They should have had Gaeta do Woodward’s line–”Shoot straight, you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!”
They had him singing. Wasn’t that enough?
Anyone who thinks We Were Soldiers Once, And Young is a conservative epic simply has not read the book. I highly recommend the book, the prologue of which contained the following passage:
The book is one of the most horrifying descriptions of war I have ever read, and anyone who thinks that it somehow glorifies war or somehow represents the “conservative ideal” simply isn’t following the plot. yes, there are things that I guess could be construed as “conservative” themes- duty, honor, country,etc., but there is a bigger message.
Of course, you’re right, John. That is what makes its inclusion on that list so strange, and it offers a good example of the futility of this sort of labeling exercise. Apparently what merits its place on the list is this: “Significantly, it treats soldiers not as wretched losers or pathological killers, but as regular citizens.” That seems to miss the point.
I find it amusing that the LotR films are broadly being understood as pro-war, though I guess not wholly surprised, given the alterations to the Saruman plot that Peter Jackson made. In the novel, Saruman is explicitly said to be trying to set himself up as a rival, not a servant of Sauron. The whole thing is largely meant as a kind of warning of trying to fight evil by means of evil’s own methods. (This is usually taken these days as being a warning about the dangers of trying to use nuclear weapons. But it actually ties into a deep ambivalence that certain reactionary/Catholic types had about the alliance with Stalin – cf. Waugh’s Sword of Honour Trilogy for a more overt statement of the same). It was one of the things that struck me as a problematic misreading of the novels on the part of Peter Jackson (not as bad as the treatment of Arwen, perhaps, but it rather messes up Tolkien’s politics).
Incidentally, I wonder: are you familiar with the two famously monarchist-anarchist letters that Tolkien wrote to his son?
The NROniks really have their war boners on for this adolescent tough-guy fest. My personal favorite macho line from the review of “Heartbreak Ridgeâ€:
“Highway really gets his killing on in Grenada, even finishing off a wounded Cuban lying defenseless on the ground. Only now will Gunny smoke a Cuban stogie that he pulled out of the dead commie’s chest pocket. He earned it.â€
Conservatism… hell yeah!
FWIW, I think the Lord of the Rings is actually one of the most genuinely conservative novels of modern times. It rejects moral relativism (Sauron really is Evil-evil), it’s skeptical of the state and especially skeptical of the militarist state, it’s pro-environment and seemingly opposed to the industrial revolution, and its true heroes are gentleman-farmers whose ambitions seldom run beyond self-sufficiency.
This may be a case of a crazy clock being right once in a while.
I would agree with you that there are many themes in LOTR that are in line with traditional conservative ideas, but all of the things that you cite make the story a poor fit with what the NRO list-makers want to see in it. Conservatives can find many familiar ideas in several of these movies, but that need not define them as “conservative movies.” I could argue that Apocalypto is a story of local patriotism and the moral decadence of empire, and you and I might recognize this as a traditional conservative message, but others are liable to view the story as an exercise in voyeuristic sadism because their dislike off the director or their inability to identify with native villagers.
Right. I just meant that it is a little ironic (since I presume that he is not a rightie of any stripe) that it was specifically Peter Jackson’s changes to the plot that made the movies more open to the NRO/hawk crowd’s pro-war reading than the books are. (Though, as you say, the movies are also more complex than a reductive reading of them as “conservative films” would imply.)
Apparently what merits its place on the list is this: “Significantly, it treats soldiers not as wretched losers or pathological killers, but as regular citizens.†That seems to miss the point.
That’s yet another example of pro-war Republicans conflating militarism and respect for the military: they don’t acknowledge that it’s possible to hold American servicemen in high regard while strongly disagreeing with US foreign policy. If the stereotypical liberal condescends to soldiers by assuming that they joined up because they had no other options, the stereotypical pro-war “conservative” tends to forget (or, worse, to romanticize) the moral, emotional and psychological strains that even well-adjusted and honorable men undergo during and after combat.
The inevitable problem with something like The Lord of the Rings movies (and even a lot of non-fantasy war movies) is that they allow the audience to experience as “an adventure” what the characters would be experiencing as a horror. People who spend months or years of their lives butchering other sentient creatures, watching their friends die in front of them, etc., aren’t going to live happily ever after, even if they fought honorably and won a just war. Even adventure movies that nod toward that reality (like Return of the King) inevitably don’t give that side of things as much weight as the excitement and exhilaration of the battle sequences.
As for stuff like We Were Soldiers, my problem with it is similar to my problem with the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan. In World War II and Vietnam the United States enjoyed massive advantages in air power, artillery, etc. And yet these film dramatize rare instances in which the Americans ended up as the out-gunned underdogs. Fair enough–these are real battles in which American soldiers fought honorably and bravely in very difficult circumstances. But the relative scarcity of American films that accurately portray the US’s overwhelming military superiority throughout most of the 20th century feeds the myth, exploited by pro-war types like the people at NRO, that the United States is some sort of perpetual underdog.
Daniel:
I hammered those NRO philistines for their last such list, here:
They Blew it: The Secret of Easy Rider
It was a bizarre list for anyone with any wide knowledge of the art and influence of movies. To start with a third of them would be unrecognizable to most people, then there were movies which is anything had liberal themes, of course there was the unconscious irony of Brazil and Grand Torino, but worst of all there are many more genuinely conservative that we’re left off the list. Where was Dirty Harry or She Wore A Yellow Ribbon for example. The obsession with militarism is really a reflexion of who activist conservatives are today. These folks are in the main fundamentalist, simplistic nationalists that can be found in any society and were alas all too familiar in Europe in the thirties. The attraction of Gibson is interesting since the bad guys in his belief system the Jews (not the usual conservative thing) or the English (depends on the day for conservatives). In fact the English seem to have taken the place of the Nazis in Gibson’s canon: either burning down churches full of women and children (the patriot..a real bummer of a movie if ever there was one); sending innocent Australian boys to their deaths (Gallipoli….wasn’t the great conservative hero Churchill principally responsible for that?); or raining arrows down on their hapless Irish allies (Braveheart…..Edward I Breaker of the Scots…”but we have more Irish”)
Rowan:
“For a few years now, I’ve been making the argument that the modern Republican party (often synonymous with “conservative,†and almost certainly so in the case of this list) is a combination of violent militarism, fundamentalism, and small-government rhetoric. This was a marriage with several inconsistencies, and couldn’t really last. In the last couple of years, it’s started falling apart. With the choice of McCain as candidate, it became clear that all the Republican party stood for anymore was war and militarism.”
Actually, it still seems to be holding – remember, the small-government rehetoric only applies to the government doing certain things for certain non-elites. When the government helps out the elites, the base doesn’t object too strongly (compare Wall St hundreds of billions with a few dozen billions for the auto industry); when the government helps out the core non-elites, they love it.
I’m trying to imagine a similarly hamfisted attempt to contrive a “best 25 liberal films” using the same criteria. I’m coming up with such gems as “Crash” and “Bulworth”. Anyone want to chip in?
I wish NR would stop using the word “conservative” to describe its ideology. They don’t have any idea what the word means. Back when NR came up with their list of 100 top “conservative” movies of all time, they listed “Casablanca,” which is truly a great movie, but the fact that they listed it as “conservative” proves that they are playing Humpty Dumpty with words. If there was a political message in that film, it was one blasting conservatives like Robert A. Taft for wanting to stay out of the war. (The reference to Franco’s Nationalists as “the fascists in Spain” is a dead giveaway. Back when I was growing up, conservatives simply didn’t call the Nationalists “fascists.” That was the Left’s game.)
Agreed. I enjoy Casablanca very much, but it is pretty heavy-handed in its politics and, as you say, they are not remotely conservative as anyone at the time would have understood that word or as many postwar conservatives understood it, either. It’s not just that Rick helps Laszlo, the noble communist, get out of town, but the writers even stuck in that awful line, “Isolationism is no longer a viable policy.” This buys into two bogus claims–that the U.S. was “isolationist” in the interwar period, and that entry into the war was essential.
The change in the postwar American right’s attitude towards the Spanish Civil War would be worth an essay all in itself.
Give the boys at NRO time enough and Mission to Moscow will make the list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_to_Moscow
They’ll say something like,
“That Ambassador Davies was clear sighted enough to understand the threat implied by wreckers and counter-revolutionary saboteurs shows that Walter Huston would have been with us in this our War on Terror! Also, Davies’ refusal to buy into the apologies for Finland remind us of the importance of holding seemingly non-involved regimes like Iraq equally responsible for their involvement with Al Qaeda.”
What would be some of the movies on the list of top 25 paleocon movies of the past 25 years?
Easy Rider, because of its optimistic ending.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Derek:
You jest, but if you read my essay, you’ll see that you aren’t that far from the truth.
taxman:
Paleocons actually could make a list of films that that had artistic merit and thematic depth. George McCartney at Chronicles is fine film critic.
I wasn’t jesting. I would hope that people here could name a few. The NR list is pathetic. Most of the movies are blockbusters and for a list comprising the past 25 years most movies on the list are fairly recent. And since presumably we are speaking of American conservatism, I found it odd that their list contained none of the movies about the Civil War that came out in the past 25 years or any Westerns. Looking through my Netflix queue I’d throw these onto a list:
Falling Down
Gettysburg along with Gods & Generals (as one since they were part I and II of a trilogy that never saw completion)
Bright Young Things
Shadowlands
taxman:
Oh! “Falling Down” is a most excellent choice.
For a Western, I’d suggest “Young Guns” as the most accurate portrayal of Big Government in league with Capital destroying the small freeholder-agrarian way.