It’s safe to make movies slamming the Nazis – and has been for quite some time.
Thank goodness. Hollywood sometimes appears on the verge of running out of scapegoats and villains.
I mean, how many movies can you make where the bad guys are either Nazis, CEOs or rednecks?
Well, plenty. But I digress.
Newsday’s Rafer Guzman riffs on Hollywood’s infatuation with Nazis atop his list of 2008’s best film, and he raises a fine point. Nazis remain the one go-to villain that doesn’t upset anyone. I guess Rednecks and CEOs need a lobby, their own version of CAIR, to represent them.
Until that time, it’s game on!
And then there’s the ’50s. To hear my Dad tell it, the decade was a wonderful time to be an American.
You wouldn’t know it from modern movies. Films like “Far From Heaven” and the new “Revolutionary Road” seem to think it was the worst decade ever. How bad could it have been? They had sock hops, for crying out loud?
Kyle Smith deconstructs the ’50s hate in yesterday’s New York Post.
So where does that leave Hollywood? Well, you’d think screenwriters might turn to international terrorists as a source of plain, ol’ evil. Or possibly some of the African dictators who are turning their countries into hunger camps. But those folks don’t seem to inspire today’s screenwriters.
(Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star in “Revolutionary Road,” a new film critical of the 1950s: Photo by Francois Duhamel)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Good observation.. I noticed the hate in Pleasantville, even though I really enjoyed the movie. Except for the message being beaten over my head, over and over again.
Trivia question though, I’ve never figured out which man Joan Allen went with, your thoughts?
I saw “Pleasantville” too long ago … I can’t remember who Allen ended up with …
And my commentary doesn’t mean I disliked the films in question. I remember enjoying “Pleasantville” and am looking forward to seeing “Rev Road.”
I look at movies like V for Vendetta and all I can think of is, if only Hollywood hated terrorists as half much as they hate conservatives.
My personal favorite example of this is You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, where a Mossad agent is at war with a Hamas terrorist, until they join forces to fight the TRULY evil villains…a property developer and his redneck henchman. Talk about showing Hollywood’s true colors.
Great point, JimmyC. And Adam Sandler isn’t a typical left-leaner … he even mocks the PC crowd in his new film. But even he can’t escape the Hollywood tractor beam …
Well, I don’t know about your last sentence. Listening to some Hollywoodians, it appears America-hating terrorists and dictators who kill their own people are a great source of inspiration for them! Just maybe not the kind of inspiration rational people would have (you know, the inspiration to oppose what they stand for, rather than to embrace it).