Note: Good friend Renee Aste blogs about something similar frequently.
Two nights ago, I watched Meet the Fokkers. The whole thing. It had to be one of the worst movies I've seen in years. The characters were cardboard cutouts, the jokes were telegraphed miles in advance and they were essentially the same joke over and over and over again. The straight, white, traditionalist, conservative male was a reactionary jerk who needed to be evangelized into the One, True Faith of sexual liberation and general libertinism. Yay. His character was the only one who developed throughout the movie. Everyone else stayed the same because they were already perfect.
Maybe that's why I find them so boring - there's no character development at all, save for someone gradually becoming more progressive. That's true of the endless stream of racialist movies as well. The Butler, Selma, The Help and on and on, there's almost always some straight, white, traditionalist, conservative who sees the error of their ways and learns to Stop Hating.
Meanwhile, Baltimore is suffering under racialist rule like there's no tomorrow, but let's not let the lives (and deaths) of real people interfere with the racialist catechism of the progressives.
What's more, the movies don't jive with any of the things I see in real life. I work in a pretty diverse environment and I volunteer at a place that serves a very racially diverse set of clientele. I just don't see any of the things the movies are telling me are out there, at least not as first-order problems. They're more like third-order problems. The really big problems caused by the progressive, libertine lifestyle aren't addressed at all.
My conclusion is that the entertainment industry is a pack of evangelists for a self-contradictory religion. It can be interesting to have conversations with such people, but these are never conversations, they're a one-way lecture series that never ends. That's boring. That's why I watch sports.
You want drama? Try watching Crystal Palace games. Awesome.
6 comments:
Birdcage is another that comes to mind.
The Republican bad guy has sex with an underage black prositute that ends up dead, but you know it's a comedy about a gay couple owning a night club.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birdcage#Plot
Please, no more.
I dunno, maybe it isn't so bad being the villain. The villain almost always gets the best lines, and is generally the one that is trying to *do* something. The villain has goals, objectives, plans, and drives pretty much the whole show (as opposed to the hero, who usually doesn't have any particular goal other than "stop the villain"). And people *remember* the villain.
The only play I was ever in, I was the villain. It was great. Best role in the whole show.
Thanks Tim.
I think the best villians in the movies is where the protagonist is one's self (main character)
My heroes are my dad, my brother-in-law, and my husband. All straight, white, traditionalist, conservative, males. Not because they were/are (my father and brother-in-law have both passed away) straight, white, traditionalist, conservative, male but because they are/were principled, brave, intelligent, caring, compassionate, manly, men.
Tim does hit on a good point. The fun role is almost always the villain.
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