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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 […]

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.

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