i wrote a video for it and acted out each part
To update that old saw about lies, damn lies, and statistics, go ahead and add what cable television news chooses to believe: Though I can only bear so much of the pseudo serious posturing and line-reciting that passes for journalistic concern, regardless of the station (though it takes CNN longer to get to me than Fox, and MSNBC, especially Dennis Miller just kind of makes me sad, in a Greg-Kinnear-in-Auto-Focus-kind-of-way), everytime I turn it on, I end up seeing either a far-right blubberer being sampled for some depressing and disconnected montage about morality...or something, or a softy-focus piece about why it's important to listen to what bigots and people who are frightened by the newspaper have to say.
This precious tirade from a couple of days back about whatever has been making the rounds on the Big Blogs, and even broke the Daily Show seal:
Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. That's why they hate this movie. It's about Jesus Christ, and it's about truth. It's about the messiah. Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common.
Bad old Hollywood. They don't like children, they like abortions!
Anyway, there's always been a sort of false logic behind the whole Hollywood versus The Non-Sodomizing-America argument (never mind that bizzaro anti-Semetic garbage about Jews controlling the airwaves - yeah, SuperJews even, like Rupert Murdoch), Hollywood being a catch-all for the entertainment media industry - simply put (maybe a bit oversimply) Hollywood (again, in the catch-all sense) is a business, controlled not by deviant hook-nosed rabbis, but by large media corporations that generally expect to see a return on their investments. What most people don't realize is that most entertainment product is being sold to a very specific slice of the populace, one that's generally youngish, white, and male, with money to spend. Cowardice, mediocrity and an utter lack of imagination are "Hollywood's" real crimes, but that point may be a little too fine for frothing pervert-Jew-haters.
John Sayles put it a bit better in a November 2004 Z Magazine interview with Colorado's own David Barsamian:
BARSAMIAN: The Big Hollywood studios, mirroring trends in other media, are owned by a handful of conglomerates. Talk about their influence and power, particularly in the light of Disney/ABC trying to prevent the distribution of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. There is another studio right now, Warner Brothers, that doesn't want to release a new edition of Three Kings.
SAYLES: There's all this talk about liberal Hollywood, but in the end, the corporations that own the studios have the final green-light power. So if they see something coming out that is going to make those people nervous, they're likely to say, "Let's not open it yet" or "Let's not open it at all." It's not so much that they tried to stop the distribution of Three Kings; they just didn't want their names on it. They didn't want to be liable. All big corporations now have these risk management people.
**snip**
What I think you see a little bit more now is not so much repression as disassociation. Usually it happens that you don't even get the money in the first place to make something that might upset people. But if it somehow happened accidentally within their system, they're going to say, "Okay, good luck. Go find another distributor, if you can, but we don't want to be associated with it."
Unfortunately, no matter how deranged and empty all this concession to the Right on "culture" might be, it poisons what passes for public dialogue, ultimately leeching any real meaning out of cultural matters of real importance that carry weight in the real world.
And as the "liberal media" becomes and less and less so - any media outlet that considers Jerry Falwell relevant or even sane can't be called liberal, not even as a bad joke - semi-sexually-fetishistic rantings about Hollywood's Legions of Fags and Shoe Sniffers lurking on The Left Coast and, like Nikita Kruschev, waiting to topple America from within, are looking a bit incredible. Just a couple of dispatches from that swishy, coke-snorting Heart of Darkness:
** The Passion of The Christ, a movie with little or nothing to do about Jesus' teachings and instead his sexualized and gory end at the hands of (guess who!) Jews, ranks number nine on the all time box office returns list.
** In a TomDispatch.com piece written as far back as October 2003, Nick Turse warned of the emergent "industry-military-entertainment-complex":
The military is now in the midst of a full-scale occupation of the entertainment industry, conducted with far more skill (and enthusiasm on the part of the occupied) than the one in Iraq. Perhaps the "front" where the most significant victories have been scored in the military's latest media-entertainment blitz is the one where our most vulnerable population – children -- resides. Through toys, especially videogames, the military and its partners in academia and the entertainment industry have not only blurred the line between entertainment and war, but created a media culture thoroughly capable of preparing America's children for armed conflict. This is less a matter of simple military indoctrination than near immersion in a virtual world of war beyond John Wayne's wildest dreams.
** And now, this little gem pops up on the Common Dreams site, via the Guardian UK, this morning:
Universal Pictures announced yesterday that it is to make The Battle for Falluja. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.
The film - Hollywood's first foray into the second Iraq conflict - is due to go into production next year and will be based on a yet-to-be-finished book, No True Glory: The Battle for Falluja by Bing West, a former marine, politician and now war correspondent.
The movie and book take as their starting point the killing of four civilian contractors in Falluja and the ensuing decision to order an assault on the city by US marines. That first assault, which was abruptly stopped by the White House, was led by General Jim Mattis, who will be played by Ford.
So how much of this movie do you think will cover the ongoing war and debasement of Fallujans?
In case the overarching meaning of all this has eluded you, Major Francis Piccoli, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which is leading the occupation of Falluja, spelled it out for the AP's Kratovac: "Some may see this as a 'Big Brother is watching over you' experiment, but in reality it's a simple security measure to keep the insurgents from coming back." Actually, it is undoubtedly meant to be both; and since, in the end, it is likely to fail (at least, if the "success" of other American plans in Iraq is taken as precedent), it may prove less revealing of Falluja's actual future than of the failure of the American counterinsurgency effort in Iraq and of the desperation of American strategists. In this context, the most revealing element of the plan may be the banning of all cars, the enforcement of which, all by itself, would make the city unlivable; and which therefore demonstrates both the impracticality of the U.S. vision and a callous disregard for the needs and rights of the Fallujans.
But who cares what Hollywood thinks, right?
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