re: NYT: Hollywood’s Message to Red States: Our Movies Are for You

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I hope we can do better than that

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Why? Top Gun: Maverick was never going to be an Oscar contender for Best Picture, but it was an exciting, enjoyable, family-friendly, nostalgia-tinged summer movie packed with charismatic characters and lots of fighter jet action.

I think most of us are perfectly capable of appreciating a more cerebral or artistic film in the appropriate context, but 95% of the time, we go to the movies for pure escapism (and basically 100% of the time, that’s why we take our kids). There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, “entertainment” is literally the stated purpose of the entire industry.

Back on the topic of Twisters: I just brought two of my kids to see it a few days ago. I’m pretty sure it was the first time we’ve been to a theater since Top Gun.

1. I counted two lines that could be inferred as statements about climate change. Neither one overtly blamed climate change, though, and the second line in particular tied weather events in with other expenses and hardships that have negatively impacted small farmers. To be fair, those same lines could just as easily have been referencing consequences of increased population density or suburban development, natural weather patterns, rising insurance costs, etc. — the significance of both comments was left open to the viewer’s interpretation. I’m fine with that.

2. Those “questionable” lines were far outnumbered by the shots of American flags billowing across the screen, rural folks and so-called rednecks being humanized and treated with compassion, and small-town values being highlighted or even celebrated.

3. The director wasn’t the only one who specifically called out Hollywood for essentially treating middle America like a bunch of irrelevant buffoons. One of the lead actors said, in essence, that the industry has been catering to the coasts for too long and underserving the millions in between who don’t enjoy the same kinds of movies and don’t want to be looked down upon simply for having different tastes and beliefs.

Maybe they’re both closet progressives who are purely following trends for the sake of profit, or maybe not. If it’s the former, they’re entitled to their own beliefs, and I’m willing to consider their products if they don’t feel entitled to bludgeon me over the head with their personal opinions or depict people who think like me as one-dimensional objects of derision. It wouldn’t be any different from the way Hollywood has always operated in the past; back then they just had enough sense to recognize who actually depended on whom for survival.

4. Obviously, the supporting cast has been diversified with regard to race and gender, but (much like in Top Gun: Maverick) it was never treated as anything laudable or even so much as commented on. The two leads remained white heterosexuals from humble backgrounds, and that was similarly accepted as “normal” and fine.

5. The movie itself was otherwise surprisingly clean. The only reason it must have qualified for a PG-13 rating was the intensity of the tornado sequences and the handful of on-screen “deaths”, because it was basically sexless, there was relatively little blood and no real gore, and (unless I somehow missed it) nobody even dropped the one obligatory f-bomb that the industry tends to lazily insert as insurance against the PG stamp.




TL;DR: Was Twisters high art? Of course not. But it was a great popcorn move and a refreshing change of pace that, while modernized to an extent, didn’t weaponize any ideology and employed an “inclusiveness” that felt more balanced and genuine because it A) acknowledged the existence of traditional ideals, and B) treated the people who embrace them as worthy of representation. It felt like the kind of movie that movies used to be, and I’m not sure I realized how sorely I had missed that.

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Moving to a more advanced, liberal society is why slavery became outlawed.

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Wrong. Had nothing to do with becoming a more liberal society. It had to do with becoming a more moral society. People started realizing that it is morally wrong to own other people. Just like we finally came around to it being morally wrong to segregate and not offer people of color the same opportunities as white people in this country.

And in both cases of slavery and then later with civil rights, it was the liberal, progressive, left that fought against it.

It is easy to see that as the country has slid more to the liberal progressive left there has also been a stready decline in the overall morality of our society.

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Big government, no matter the flavor, is all liberal. Again, the smaller and less intrusive a government is, the more conservative it is.

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As a person who promotes smaller government and is called a leftist and liberal on here for it I can assure you this is not the popular definition of the term. In fact specifically in terms of social issues, you will not find much support for this. Also, with Trump's economic policy and spending, the MAGA version promotes large government in economics.