I consider it slightly odd that a film website as august as Moving Image Source would devote so much space to a consideration of Ross Douthat, a young triple-dealing conservative shill whose only lasting contribution to cultural and political discourse is the coinage of the phrase “chunky Reese Witherspoon.” But MIS contributor Tom McCormack has given the matter of Douthat some thought, and while he drops a few howlers along the way (“Douthat has an impressive knowledge of American cinema that stretches all the way back to the 1970s,” holy shit!), he winds up making the case he wants to make, so good for him. And his final point, which is that Douthat is, well, a triple-dealing conservative shill who’s so full of shit that he can commend the depiction of the cardboard commies in Red Dawn and then turn around and tsk-tsk the terribly nuance-lacking portrait of Spanish fascism in Pan’s Labyrinth is, while hardly surprising, or anything but self-evident, correct. And if you think Douthat’s bad in this category, try reading the guy on birth control some time.
Anyway, the passage in McCormack’s piece that gave me somewhat more considerable pause was this one: “Douthat’s most significant talent, though, isn’t verbal dexterity but his ability to draw out a movie’s underlying ideology. This is a rare gambit among journalist film critics. With the exception of Armond White and J. Hoberman, most film critics consider it oddly infra dig to mention politics too directly, as if doing so might sully their prose with the grime of cultural studies departments.”
Well. Given that Douthat’s movie-reviewing largely occurs in National Review, and that “Hollyweird Is Leftist” is pretty much an article of faith in those parts, the tenor of his readings hardly surprises. And I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that from what I can glean, many if not most of the other film critics working professionally today locate their politics somewhere to the left of Douthat’s. But I rather doubt that they don’t mention politics too directly because they consider it beneath their dignity. I think they avoid it largely because it’s boring. Or, rather, because it would be boring, or it would get boring.
Before I explain why, let me first look at the two other critics McCormack cites. J. Hoberman is, of course, a critic I revere and a human bring I admire. His particular approach draws on ideological investigation, a breadth of aesthetic knowledge, a playful enthusiasm for making disparate connections, and a wry, engaged sense of humor; he weaves all these elements together with a genuine sophistication. While he deeply deplores genuine cruelty, he would never stoop to the genuinely naïve fake outrage that Douthat whips out when considering the Hostel films. As for White, he is easily disposed of; his politics and his readings of film politics are incoherent, dribblingly neurotic bordering on the lunatic; just another channel for his never-ending stream of personal resentments.
To my mind the greatest politically-inclined critic was the late Robin Wood, who was unstinting and unsparing in pointing out how not only movies but movie critics were in some sense enslaved to the dominant ideology. The fulminations of the Big Hollywood idiots notwithstanding, almost 100 percent of mainstream film product does, in some crucial respect, if not serve, than at least pay fealty to the dominant ideology. Most professional film critics are employed by companies/institutions whose very existence is, in some way, reliant on the upholding of the dominant ideology. I understand that there’s at least one juicy academic paper to be written on the new film Wanderlust, to which I link to my review below. The movie genially lampoons communal life without any thought-out examination of the actual reasons why it might be “better” than the urban rat race its characters are trying to escape from. Its resolution involves a kind of balancing act between two “competing” modes of life that in actuality cannot exist in tandem. It’s a fairy tale.
I didn’t get into this too thoroughly in my review not because I thought it would be “infra dig” for me to do so. It was because, first off, I don’t have unlimited space; second off, or close to first off, having seen the film on a Tuesday evening and needing to file in order for the review to post on a Thursday, I didn’t have time to work out my observations about this into a satisfactorily cogent form. And third off, for the purposes of both the audience I’m addressing and my making a living, the observation is kind of beside the point. I don’t wanna go “we are all prostitutes” on y’all, because that’s not what I believe, but I do believe that I’m working in a system that’s in a sense the definition of the dominant ideology. The dominant ideology is our water, so to speak. Douthat, whose conservatism is at odds not just with the post-modern but the modern, can choose to ignore the fact that a particular wrinkle in the dominant ideology of late capitalism is precisely what enables the deviations from conservatism that he finds so objectionable; this is one of the ways he gets to be triple-dealing. For those of us on a different end of the spectrum, digging too deep into the dominant ideology would get pretty damn tedious. I try to imagine what my life would be like if I spent it, say, pointing out how hetero-normative almost EVERYTHING was. You see what I’m saying. And the other reason is, of course, that there’s a limit to how much I’m REALLY interested in rocking the boat. Douthat can “rock” the boat all he wants; his masters/allies own it, after all.
This is an interesting post.
But when you call my line a “howler,” I assume you mean “A laughably stupid blunder” – is it really not obvious the line is a joke? Especially given all the overall tone of the piece?
As for the line about politics. I think you picked up that I was being a little polemical there – obviously I’d like to see more politics in film criticism. I’ll note that I certainly wasn’t singling out White for praise – he’s great illustration of why critics tend to avoid politics.
Incidentally, we both think Robin Wood is a good model for political criticism – and he’s way, way, way less BORING than the great majority of film reviewers.
My vote for money shot in that piece: “There is, at times, a poet in Douthat.”
Yes, there is, and his name is Rudyard Kipling. And when the day arrives that he carves his way to sweet freedom with an India pattern bayonet I hope that Eli Roth is there to film it.
Well, TM, as Stan Demeski said to Doug Harvey at a post-gig band meeting in the early 80’s, after Harvey played bare-legged in an overcoat, “If that was a joke, quite honestly I didn’t get it.” I’ll cop to some obtuseness here and say the drollery wasn’t self-evident. I’ll check the piece proper again when I get home. Also, to clear up an obtuse commission of my own, I did not, in my remarks re A. White, intend to imply your commendation of him. Sorry.
Hi Tom!
Though “infra dig” hardly rankled me to the extent than it did Glenn, I tend to agree with his explanation of why ideological parsing isn’t, except it certain quarters, a consistent feature of first-run film reviewing.
Although I would actually blame readers/audiences, frankly, who tended to react with indifference or outright hostility to The L’s own attempts at “the ideological analysis of mainstream movies” (which I need to figure out how to continue doing now that Sutton’s gone). That’s not a very politic thing for an editor to say, I suppose. Maybe I should have been more aggressive about framing it with Slate-style headlines. “What ‘Bridesmaids’ REALLY Says About the Commoditization of Female Friendship.” That would have built a receptive audience, surely.
Since you’re here, I actually had a question about Douthat’s consistency vis a vis praising the simplifications of RED DAWN and damning the simplifications of THE CONSPIRATOR. A case could be made (and this has to do with the “ideological water,” I suppose) that the former, as a genre film, can be commended for its underlying worldview without being docked for not examining it thoroughly; while the latter’s an adult drama that engages explicitly with American history and culture and should be graded on a different curve.
I don’t really buy that, I suppose, but then again I publish the occasional bit of stridently political genre-film criticism; clearly not everyone agrees that everything is always fair game, which is why Douthat can get away with it.
I think the problem is that ideology and aesthetics are seen as opposed, and not only by those who uphold the latter. Jonathan Rosenbaum (surprised he hasn’t come up in this conversation yet) said it well in a comment thread a few years ago:
“It’s true that a lot of academics of all stripes write poorly and inelegantly, including those who depend too much on jargon (although there are fewer of these around now than there used to be), but you might say that the rejection of aesthetics in the study of both film and literature has been wholly compatible with the lack of any sense of necessity on the part of many academics of writing well about ANY subject.
To the best of my knowledge, the U.S. is the only country in the world where art is actively hated by many intellectuals, and this bias is, alas, fully apparent in their work.”
http://girishshambu.blogspot.com/2009/04/narrative-synthesis.html#c3482798819931127488
Personally, I loathe politically moralistic judgements of art, but I feel that political/ideological analysis has a definite place in film discussion, better integrated with aesthetic reactions (because I think the emotional responses get closer to the actual phenomena of movies than intellectual deconstructions) but not to be disregarded. It just has to be seen from a holistic perspective – not something added on, or “on top of” other reactions – but a part of the big picture.
“We are introducing new silicon valley film festival awards – ‘NARRATIVE FEATURE’, ‘COMMERCIAL AD SPOT’, AS WELL AS ““BEST ACTOR””, ““ACTRESS””, ““DIRECTOR””, ““EDITOR””, AND ““CINEMATOGRAPHY””.
Film Submission Deadlines:
Early entry fee:
Short: $35
Full: $50
APRIL 1ST 2012 SUNDAY
Regular entry fee:
Short: $45
Full:$55
JUNE 3RD 2012 SUNDAY
Late entry fee:
Short: $50
Full: $65
JULY 15TH 2012 SUNDAY
The greater San Francisco bay area residents and Students – with proof , receive a $10 discount.”
Interesting points, JB, that underscore some continuing-to-run-rampant symptoms in our discourse. Althoigh I will add that for as much as I respect and admire Rosenbaum, I do think his politically committed approach has led him up some blind alleys. I think he misreads Soderbergh rather thoroughly, for instance. Robin Wood’s hostility to Cronenberg is another interesting case in point. Cronenberg himself allowed that his own brand of pessimism likely abraded Wood’s revolutionary utopianism (for lack of a better term).
Mark! We’ve got to stop meeting like this.
I understand way less of the cost/benefit decisions editors have to go thru re: politics. J. Hoberman seemed to me to draw a crowd (though I guess someone decided that wasn’t profitable).
I think Hoberman is a good example for a lot of reasons. Being snarky, getting a few good jabs in there, and noting maybe a good performance– that seems to me easy work. Being smart and interesting about politics and not defaulting to cookie-cutter cult. crit. generalities is hard, especially the shorter the word count, and especially if you want to win over some kind of general audience. Given the limited supply of people who are good at the latter, and the seemingly unlimited supply of people who are at least OK at the former, what would I do as an editor?
On the other hand, as Slate, and Armond White, show, politics can draw in readers, even if trollishly. My suspicion is that less trollish writing could do this too – it depends, obviously, on the sort of audience a magazine already has. But I’ll put it this way – I see some film critics and editors willing to take risks in certain directions (talking about more arcane formal matters) and not willing to take risks in other directions (talking about politics). And (and this isn’t directed at either M or G, who are both more subtle) people act as if what they’re doing is in the interest of readers – like I have to talk about “shock cuts” and “mise-en-scene” because people living thru a war-exacerbated recession wouldn’t be interested in the fact that the military underwrites Michael Bay’s movies. This seems to me to be passing off a personal preference, and one I guess I’m suspicious of, as some sort of market-driven one.
I realize a whole lot of people resent talking about “entertainment” in any terms other than how entertaining it is. But I think writers are willing to alienate some readers doing certain things, and not willing alienate them doing others.
Re: you last comment – I do think that certain movies frame themselves as fantasy while others don’t, and we should keep that in mind when we talk about them. I note that Douthat is *more* critical of historical dramas. But what’s frightening about the passage on Red Dawn is he *doesn’t* praise it as fantasy, he praises “geo-political realism.”
Rosenbaum, I think, is the rare case of the ideological judge (rather than analyst) whose rants & broadsides I find enjoyable and illuminating – and individual – enough to accept (despite frequent frustrations). And, as his quote indicates, he wraps ideology up with aesthetic judgement (as do most critics coming out of the 60s, in my perception) rather than just impose a simple-minded political judgement of narrative content in a Bizarro World version of Big Hollywood. That’s an important distinction I forgot to mention – I think the better ideological analysis foreground form in their critique, rather than just picking apart the screenplay. That’s something that bugged me in the recent brouhaha over The Help – I would have like to see more critics (deservedly) pick apart HOW it tackles its material rather than just what that material is, though I’m sure did.
Your highlighting of Wood in the book meme a few years ago led me to check out that chapter on Spielberg/Lucas. It’s another example of very entertaining and informative ideological criticism, though I like the filmmakers more than he does and the consistent references to “Obi-One” drifted into facepalm territory.
*though I’m sure SOME did.
/fixed
Tom, see above: I think in an ideal world (or even a realizable one) one could discuss shock cuts/mise en scene in relation to the fact that the military underwrites Bay’s film (which I’ll admit is news to me but I’ll admit I haven’t been paying much attention to his career) and present it in a matter-of-fact enough fashion that it doesn’t seem like political fore-feeding or desperate connect-the-dots. Not that that’s what you’re doing, mind you; I mean these comments more generally. Besides, I’m still splashing around in this SCR thread and haven’t read the Douthat piece yet, which I will do promptly.
Joel, I agree that, most of the time, political discussions can and a lot of times should be wedded to formal ones. But with movies like The Help – granted, I haven’t seen it, but it seems justifiable to object to a movie on grounds that don’t even have to do with form (insert Griffith reference). Form is one interesting thing to talk about, but as long as movies also have plots and ideas that are abstractions, there will be other interesting things too.
“*Late* capitalism”?
If only.
Definitely, but that’s my point (sorry if I didn’t make it clear): not to remove plot from the equation, but rather to include mise en scene as well (and, I’ll admit I think it’s wise – with the caveat that I’ve hardly ever managed to do it myself – to foreground the formal qualities in relation to the content, to give them a slight privilege). Obviously what’s objectionable about the The Help begins with the fact that it’s another “Bourgeois white person liberates black victims” story – but it doesn’t end there: the slick, quasi-Mad Men way the story is presented, in the advertising campaign and the film itself, the particular generalizing touches used throughout to suggest poverty, race, etc. can be taken alongside the bizarre narrative choices (aside from the primary one, how about the fact that the film depicts Poor White Trash as being more, not less, sympathetic to the oppressed minorities – an interesting reflection of the time the film/book was made, rather than when it was written). I truly believe that a more gifted or adventurous (or free from studio oversight) filmmaker could have taken the same story, heck maybe even the same screenplay, and drawn out a far more interesting and complex film. That’s why the Griffith reference would be pertinent: The Birth of a Nation is a far more objectionable film than The Help but it’s also far more compelling, resonant, and even beautiful. And I don’t think that’s because of the story…
By the way, just visited the article which made for a great read (and, whether or not it was the intention, made me want to check out Douthat further – I’m familiar with the name but not, I think, as a film critic). Many of your ideological observations hit home, though I think you lend contemporary American conservatism more coherence than it actually contains, even in criticism.
Lately I’ve been engaged in a lot of disputes with conservatives online, and it’s amazing to me how even the intelligent, thoughtful ones (and a cursory visit to a Big Hollywood thread on gay marriage, Hollywood celebrities or, God forbid, both will demonstrate that they tend to be in the minority in online conservative forums) take for granted so many derogatory generalizations about liberals. Granted, there’s a similar impulse on the left, and I’ve indulged in rancorous generalizations myself at times (from both angles, as I’ve been politically promiscuous in my time, albeit serially rather than simultaneously), but there’s a special quality of brusque certainty in the way that even intelligent conservatives will write things like, “liberals are hypocrites who want to control everyone’s lives” or “liberals react to everything on an emotional basis and don’t think at all,” etc. as if these notions were simply self-evident. There seem to be few examples of, say, a right-wing New Republic in which moderate or even dedicated conservatives actively deconstruct liberal memes rather than offer up insulting cliches. It sounds like Douthat approaches that but still falls into a more clever version of the Standard Line.
Ultimately it all relates to the haphazard way American political identities have been assembled – there simply aren’t commonly held definitions of left/right, liberal/conservatives so that people don’t even agree on the very terms of the debate. The “Nazis = left-wing” meme (which is mostly what I’ve been engaging with on these recent occasions) is a great example. The traditional left/right axis emerged in Europe 200 years ago as a way of discussing differences in values (and concomittant institutions or governing styles one desired/opposed as a result) but lately in the U.S. it’s been reinvented as purely applied to governing strategy, by which fascism is on the left and anarchism is on the right. At this point both left and right discourse is up to its neck in postmodern worldplay, whether or not the right wants to acknowledge it, and I think it’s left political discourse for the worse.
This was quite the ramble but your piece, Douthat’s quotes, Glenn’s post, and the subsequent comments have opened up several interesting cans of worms and this fish has bitten…
Oliver, it reminds me of how positive the early Christians were that the Apocalypse was just around the corner…
It’s a nicely written pice by at the end of the day Ross Asshat isn’t worth talking about.
Here’s a teriffic pice on film and politics by J. Hoberman
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/contraception-con-men/
Seems to me that THE HELP could have avoided a lot of criticism by having one of the maids approach Emma Stone’s character about doing a book, rather than the other way around. That way, you acknowledge the maids’ lack of power but make at least one of them a more active character, while still staying true to the reality that such a task would require the added assistance of a white character.
That said, I generally liked the film.
David E., he’s one of the most widely read political pundits in the country. It makes no more sense to say he “isn’t worth talking about” than it does to say Mitt Romney isn’t worth talking about. You could say his film criticism, which is marginal, isn’t worth talking about, but I think it’s pretty clear that in the piece I try to make more general points about him as a writer and about the conservatism he represents more generally.
That would be a start. But it brings up why the film/book exists in the first place. From what I gather it’s more or less conceived to assuage white guilt and project into the black experience than to actually empower black women themselves. Which, you know, is legit. What’s less legit is that it’s only movies like these get made & especially seen – but I don’t have much use for the people who whine about this and demand justice from Hollywood. Hollywood will never listen because they’re in the business of profits and self-expression is decidedly not a consideration. The answer for film-lovers, writers, makers, and financiers who don’t like the situation is to seek out/discuss/create/finance (in reverse order, I suppose) movies that DO cast the net wider. Cheaper technology & online distribution certainly makes that feasible, and I suspect that’s the path most interesting movies, not just those about race or politics, will end up taking in the coming years.
Even a fictional film about that era in the South is hamstrung a bit by reality. As you sort of suggest, one path is simply not to make films/write books on the subject. I give the makers of THE HELP props for ‘going there,’ with their hearts clearly in the right place. I have no idea if those involved conceived the project as a way to ‘assuage white guilt’ (I would guess not intentionally), although I can understand how a good liberal writer might concoct the plot as a wish fulfillment sort of thing – “If only I had been there to help these poor women!” But at least the film (and the book, I assume – haven’t read it) does give more or less equal time to the white and black protagonists, and the Viola Davis character does come into her own after deciding to do the book. The Emma Stone character may be instrumental in this to the extent that she facilitates the possibility of it, but she doesn’t write the Davis character’s words.
I agree that the bigger issue involves the ‘wider net’ you mention. Frankly, it’s a bit of miracle these days when even something like THE HELP gets a green light, because it’s a story about people and issues and history.
I don’t care how “widely read” Ross Asshat may be.
Should Barbara Taylor Bradford have gotten the Pulitzer Prize? Or maybe you prefer Alice Rosenbaum.
The “Conservatism” Asshat represents is as a “seat-filler” for the thankfully six-feet under William F. Buckley Jr. – one of the most loathesome carbon-based life forms to ever draw breath.
“Even a fictional film about that era in the South is hamstrung a bit by reality.” Oh not really jbryant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlWjEQcR_kc&feature=related
Far more to the point than “The Help” don’t you think?
I’m having trouble parsing your comment. Are you suggesting that trying to destroy a political ideology and the person who professes it is somehow comparable to rewarding a writer with a Pulitzer Prize? A better comparison would be: do you think no one should write critically about William F Buckley? I’m sorry, but what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.
“I try to imagine what my life would be like if I spent it, say, pointing out how hetero-normative almost EVERYTHING was.”
Perfect quote. When I was finishing my PhD I didn’t have to imagine this. I lived amongst these people. As someone who was always more of a cinephile than “theorist” I certainly had difficulty getting along with the “only ideology” matters type of grad student. Although perhaps their real problem was their grasp of ideology was painfully obvious and sincere in its refusal to consider ambiguity or contradiction.
What’s so annoying about the all-ideology film studies types is that their ideology is so dull and straightforward (unlike form/aesthetics, which are often surprising and complex). I’ve suffered through way too many lengthy pieces that boil down, after long simmering, to “This is how this movie speaks for good, and condemns bad” or vice-versa. Yawn.
Obviously, it’s valuable for a critic to publicly attack a crappy fake-critic like Douhat (almost as obvious as the line about “a vast knowledge stretching back to the 70s” being a joke), so no worries there. What makes Douhat so very, very awful is his tendency to seize ground with crazy unsupportable assertions about movies (and people) without even understanding what it is to demonstrate the existence of an ideology within a work of art, and anyone who musses him up is doing (the real) God’s work.
I’m saying EVERYONE should write critically of Buckley and the world he created – of which Asshat is a strategically important part.
Does THAT make sense?
What do you need? Flash Cards?
Somewhere between saying a topic “isn’t worth talking about” and then saying “EVERYONE” should write about it – yes, a flash card would’ve helped.
Personally, I’d love “Ideological Criticism” flash cards, though I’d probably end up throwing them at students.
@That Fuzzy Bastard: That was my problem too. The all-ideology types were simple moralists which is fine if you want to be a moralist. However, I don’t understand why one would study aesthetic objects to arrive at simple morals. As a related point: most of the all-ideology types I would encounter wouldn’t like, say, films by Godard or Chantal Akerman or directors who very much tried to express ideological criticism through formal innovations. Nope, they preferred to discuss transparent representations or plot resolutions.
ZS, another one of their real problems is that they tend to hover together in universities chanting “Four legs good, two legs bad” instead of you know, actually doing something about their ideology. But then they might have to rub shoulders with the rubes in flyover country, God forbid.
It’s highly ironic…while imposing irrelevant ethical standards on aesthetics, they simultaneously corrupt ethical concerns with aesthetic grandstanding (since the forms of their political expression seem to be more about satisfying their own feelings of self-righteousness and indignation rather than actually winning undecided people over to their point of view).
jbryant, I didn’t quite mean why this book exists as why it exists in this particular form (which, admittedly, may amount to the same thing; would it have been written without the particular motives?). The book definitely had a genesis in a sort of white guilt (here’s an interview/article that goes into it a bit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5844739/The-maids-tale-Kathryn-Stockett-examines-slavery-and-racism-in-Americas-Deep-South.html). & like I said, any route an artist takes has some validity to it (which doesn’t mean it can’t be criticized); its the overall cultural pattern that irks me most of all.
Ross Douthat is a film critic?!
Asshat writes film criticism for “The National Review” – a publication I do not read.
He is also an op-ed columnist fro the NYT –a publication I DO read.
Writing critically of Buckley and the world he created is not writing about film criticism but ideology.
How fucking DENSE are you anyway?
COMMENT, PART 1
Tom,
This is going to sound much harsher than I intend, but (if I may borrow from your query of Ehrenstein) I’m having trouble parsing what you’re getting at. It’s nice you warn us that you’re going to do a Douthatian flip but it’s hard to make it through to your promised land of severe critique when your subject’s powers of observation are wobbly as hell – and you praise him for it! I’d very much like to separate ideology from the examples I’ll cite, but Douthat can’t or won’t, so I don’t see how I can.
–Douthat’s bit in his ALL THE KING’S MEN review about the camera being anti-democratic, which you cite as “poetic”, is really just a fancy sounding turn which masks what he’s really getting at. The camera, yes, is nothing without the will and expression of the person using it, blah blah, but what *he’s* expressing is his frustration that this dumb beast isn’t being used at the service of exposing Willie Stark as a fascist (you know, building those free hospitals and all). Well, okay, if that’s what he wants. But his engagement with the source material is so shoddy that all we’re left with is the ideological yearning. That he derides Stark’s speech as “quasi-Biblical patter” shows a tin ear for time, place, people, politics, culture. He actually says that the speech of a Southern politician in the Thirties should not be so thick with Biblical cadence! Kind of an ivory tower thing to say, isn’t it? And his obsession with THE GREAT GATSBY has obviously destroyed his close reading skills for anything else. An incomplete quotation he employs reveals much – Stark tells Jack Burden when sending him to dig dirt on a political opponent that “Man is conceived in sin and born of corruption, and he passes from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud” but Douthat leaves off the capper. “There is always something,” is the way that line ends. It’s one I’ve always been fond of because it *works.* It’s in character, it directs the story toward its tragic end, and it’s illustrative of all that stuff about aristocracy and time and regret that gets in the way of Douthat’s (stated!) wish for propaganda – all the stuff that the book is, you know, ABOUT. You don’t have to agree with my slant on the material to ponder if the Heir to William Buckley’s Legacy simply cannot read, and if, perhaps, one should demand more of criticism. Not to mention poetry.
–He’s incapable of praising a film like “Letters From Iwo Jima” without giving Hollywood, Demon Hollywood, the back of his hand for not making films about the bravery of fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan – essentially, an upbraiding for making THEY WERE EXPENDABLE instead of DER FUEHRER’S FACE. He also prisses it up about how queasy it makes him to watch a film which humanizes the Japanese. I know how he feels. Nothing can induce certain rumblings like reading Ross Douthat fail to contend with the objective reality that if Demon Hollywood thought It could make a buck off a film that was utterly in the tank in favor of Gulf II, then It, like It has done so often, would do that thing. But, like ideologues of all stripes, and toddlers, he wants it NOW. Remember, the camera is only good for rhetoric and propaganda; Douthat’s not even triple dealing there, he’s telling you exactly what he’s about, dealing right off the top of the deck. I’d also ask that anyone reading his review note the part where he describes IWO JIMA’s cinematography as “shot in a palette so dark it might as well be black-and-white.” Finished? Good. You have now read the extent of Dauthat’s powers to describe what artists can make stupid cameras do. His thoughts on every other aspect of cinema, whether dramatic or technical, are about as sharp.
COMMENT, PART 2
–Your take that “It’s not completely outrageous to say that blunt anti-communism offers a “more accurate depiction of Soviet Communism” than more sympathetic takes” in a paragraph which compares RED DAWN to REDS is, to my mind, completely outrageous, and no references to Susan Sontag can gussy it up. Again with Dauthat, ignoring what’s in front of him – and you do it, too. Does it make one an unreconstructed Stalinist to note that the entire last half hour of REDS is devoted to John Reed coming up hard against the reality of ending up a propagandist for a cause whose reality in no way resembles his romantic vision? Maybe, if *your* romantic vision doesn’t allow for the possibility that somebody else’s might be at all nuanced. The extent of Douthat’s nuance as far as I can see is giving the Bourne movies a pass because, even though they’re leftist tripe, they deliver the goods; they get him off.
–Also the description of Abigail Breslin you find so expressive, that she was “radiantly buck-toothed”… call me a hater, but I can’t even hang with that. To my eye, the set of her jaw revealed a grin that could be called at best “toothy.” Anybody else, I’d let it pass, but it is an observation by Ross Douthat, and after spending a DELIGHTFUL couple of hours reacquainting myself with his film writing (can a volume called DOUTHAT ON DOUTHAT be far behind?) I’d trust his telling of what he sees about as much as I trust a vision of my future imparted by someone in a mu-mu at the other end of a psychic hotline.
This whole thing might be an over-the-top response to what may have been a little thought experiment, but in the end I do agree with you that Douthat is a figure to be grappled with, if for no other reason than he’s suckered a few name brands out of their cash, and you know the old saying – steal a little, etc. You are the one who gave him a fair amount of credence and I’m still trying to figure that out. I look at him and see a dilettante, filmwise, someone with little to offer me. Again – what were you getting at?
And he just keeps posting…
In fairness, I have to note an error I made in haste. The KING’S quote is incorrect; the word is not “passes”, but “passeth”. Be cautioned – NEVER cut and paste from anything Ross Dauthat writes lest you be dragged into his personal hell of textual inferiority.
Just to pick up on a sub strand here: There are insufferable, uneducated ideologists in academic film studies, just as there are the same in popular criticism. I don’t think it is fair or accurate to paint all academia with this brush. There seems to be a recurring position of dismissal of academic film work, often coming from educated, smart critics. I’ve never understood this antagonism myself and it oft comes across that outside of a Robin Wood or David Bordwell there is very little reading done or attention given to work coming out of an academic environment, and much broad dismissing (which seems to find the whole domain faulty).
Writers like D.N. Rodowick, Robert Stam, Kaja Silverman and William Rothman, to name but a few, are most certainly tuned into the relationship of aesthetics and ideology, how they function together and are absolutely concerned with form and construction. Importantly, they should be read and engaged with. There are just as many crummy aestheticians and popular critics but let us not dismiss an entire field for the failures of the untalented.
Jim G, wasn’t Tom M. being sarcastic in noting that “radiantly buck-tooth” thing? Like he was when he was repeating that marvel of sociological and psychological insight: torture “exists only to exist” as a “self-conscious spectacle”? Like Glenn Kenny, I had a hard time detecting sarcasm at several places. Ultimately, I DID find the critique funny, but not nearly as funny as the subject.
Re: social content- surprised no-one yet mentioned Thom Andersen and Noël Burch who made an entire movie, RED HOLLYWOOD, about the social content of 30s and 40s Hollywood pictures, specifically how Communist screenwriters managed to sneak in their ideas into studio products (including those of MGM). Andersen followed this with LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF, which combines both formal and political analyses of filmmakers from Sennett to Polanski. For the record, I did not find either of them boring.
Shamus, I read Tom’s piece backwards and forwards, God help me, very much wanting to give it a break and find the funny, because I do love the funny. If there is comedy to be teased out of the examples I cite, I can only quote what a dealer of (long-past) acquaintance said to a guy who was doing rhetorical flips to avoid paying a debt – “THAT is some esoteric shit.”
Thank you for mentioning RED HOLLYWOOD, a film I haven’t seen. If it’s anything like LAPI I’m in for a treat.
Jim G., You’re welcome. RED HOLLYWOOD is a little more serious, more objective and probably less funny, but Burch-Andersen take the trouble to interview some of the (then) surviving Ten and discuss and criticize their ideas (Abraham Polonsky, in particular, makes a fascinating interviewee). And like LAPI, the movie is gripping in its own odd way. Well worth the trouble to find and watch it.
It seems to me that most film critics avoid talking about politics for the same reason that they avoid talking about the intricasies of quantum mechanics. It’s a subject that, if they’re honest with themselves, they’re just not qualified to discuss. When they do make the mistake of trying to talk about it anyway, they inevitably get called out on their ignorance by a bunch of raving loonies from all sides. Better just to let the subject lie and talk about something they do understand instead (i.e. aesthetics, storytelling and so forth).
It also helps that most filmmakers don’t know a damn thing about politics either. That being the case, what’s there to discuss about it anyway?
The IDEOLOGY of a movie like Red Dawn is so simplistic, that criticism of that aspect of the film merits only a commensurate amount of thought or analysis.
“…most filmmakers don’t know a damn thing about politics either. That being the case, what’s there to discuss about it anyway?”
That’s kinda missing the point; movies can still reflect some of the dominant mores, whether intentionally or not. For instance, Jason Reitman’s last couple of movies basically service the conservative ideology, in a rather crass and disgusting sort of way. If you place UP IN THE AIR in the context of the financial crash, you will see how much “politics” is contained in even a bad studio programmer.
Odd that anyone would deny that movies are political, especially these days when filmmakers are more self-conscious than ever and deliberately construct narratives around “big” and “important” events (eg. O. Stone and his redundant Wall Street sequel).
Even films like Stone’s that are ostensibly “political” in subject matter are only such at the most base and simplistic level (i.e. “My views are correct and everyone else’s are wrong”). The more overt the political message in a movie, inevitably the more naïve and unsophisticated it will be. Other than acknowledging the viewpoint that the filmmaker is trying to espouse, what’s the point in debating it further? To Glenn’s point, doing so quickly turns boring, excruciatingly so, especially when both the critic and the readers are all just as ignorant about politics as the filmmaker, which is the case the vast majority of the time.
An honest critic will acknowledge his limitations and focus on the things that he actually knows something about, which so happen to be the same things that his readers actually care about: Is the film well made? Are the performances good? Does it tell an interesting story? Etc.
I’m not saying that there are NO critics that know anything about politics. But c’mon, how many of them are really out there who aren’t idiot ideologues like Douthat? Does it even require all of your fingers to count them all?
If the question is why more film critics don’t try to analyze and discuss the political messages (whether intentional or not) of the movies they’re reviewing, the answer is quite simple. We have a bunch of critics who neither know nor care about politics writing for an audience of readers who also neither know nor care about politics. In short: Nobody gives a s***.
Josh – I’m not sure I’d put a layman’s knowledge, an engaged citizen’s knowledge, really, about the cultural lay of the land on a level with quantum mechanics. But, hey, horses for courses. I tend to like people who put themselves out there, if their gigs allow it. I like the give and take. And as far as raving looniedom goes, I’ll just say that I’d be much more favorably inclined toward Douthat if he knew more about the practical mechanics of filmmaking and got it across every so often. There are plenty of people who are in the same ballpark as him ideologically whose work I enjoy very much. Can’t say the same for RD.
Again, the distinction that needs to be made between engaging with ideology and simply bellowing your own. That’s not to say someone with an axe to grind can’t offer pointed and cogent criticism but too often (as Rosenbaum notes in that passage I quoted) the ideology-first types have two strikes against them: what they are expressing is a limited view to begin with, and they don’t express it very interestingly.
Red Hollywood sounds great – I find that period endlessly fascinating. But again, it’s an example of investigating (it sounds like) rather than merely propagandizing. In my experience, a lot of cultural studies types lean toward the latter (and Evelyn, you’re right none of us should paint with too broad a brush, and I definitely know & know of many generous, thoughtful, and genuinely enthusiastic academics, though I will note that on the meta-level most of the great ideas and approaches of film criticism/theory seem to have emerged in a pre-academic context…)
As far as writing/discussing film in terms of politics and ideology being “boring” – Zizek manages to make it pretty damn zesty, I must say. Not to say that you said it was impossible, Glenn – your point is well taken. But he’s an interesting example – coming to film, as it were, through philosophy, and not the other way around.
And if I can push it a wee bit farther – isn’t the fact that it’s perceived as boring indicative of a certain complacency – similar even to the one you point out in your review of Wanderlust? It’s a delicate balance, to talk about aesthetics and politics both, but there’s those who would say that aesthetics itself is political, not that this is the time or place for that argument, even though it is an important one.
Josh, at the risk of repetition, it’s not what movies tell, it’s what they reveal: their attitudes, their codes. [Like you, I consider Stone a mediocre (at best) filmmaker.] How did Hollywood react to the financial crash of 2008? Well, the two examples I gave you started emphasizing family (or rather, FAMILY) in an incredibly, astonishingly unsubtle way.
At the end of WALL STREET 2 (Jesus- what an imagination to come up with that title), M. Douglas stares at his bank account and then looks at the sonogram of his grandchild. Guess what he “chooses”. FAMILY. The movie ends with a tacky montage of the birthday celebration.
UP IN THE AIR basically tells us (esp. in that obnoxious scene with JK Simmons) that it’s alright if you’re fired, because the suits know best and it’s really for your own good and because they care, now go home and fuck your wife. Clooney’s character is a person who lays people off, but in a caring sort of way: but imagine, there are uncaring people who want to start firing people over the internet! THEY are the villains. It also includes a tacky montage of people who REALLY got fired, telling us about how wonderful it is to be fired because they have a family. Isn’t it great? FAMILY.
You can judge for yourself the crassly stupid techinque the filmmakers use to showcase this vacuous “moral”. As Joel Broncko notes, the disintegration of any meaningful critique or political content is closely aligned with a simple failure of aesthetic imagination.
I’ve chosen these two films because they are the ones that readily come to mind, and if there are any others, I quite frankly am too fed up to give a fuck, and I’ll readily consent to being roasted over slow flame than be subjected to another Reitman film again.
I friend of mine recommended UP IN THE AIR solely on account of the peaceful nap he enjoyed during the screening.
My issue with Up in The Air is that it didn’t end; it stopped.
For some reason that new version of my name makes me think of the SNL skit with Jimmy Smits where everyone insists on calling stretching out the vowels in every vaguely Spanish-sounding names (including only vaguely Spanish-sounding teams like the Broncos…) You are right about Up in the Air’s lame attempts at relevance though – the worst thing about that movie was its attempt to “feel America’s pain” (although the particular way it failed made it inadvertently interesting). The best thing about it (a vacuous but, I found, mildly enjoyable movie) was its literal depiction of living in the clouds, on a kind of perpetually sleek yet shallow joyride – pretty much the Hollywood mentality in a nutshell.
@Joel: Oh, damn, so sorry man. I was tired and pissed and the alphabets started to conjugate themselves, if you know what I mean. I’m sticking to first names from now on. And you’re also free to misspell my name in any way you see fit…
In half-hearted defense of Oliver Stone’s WALL STREET sequel, the title (at least in the U.S.) was not WALL STREET 2 but WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, so Shamus scolding the filmmakers for an unimaginative title seems a little unfair.
No problem, Shameus.
Betttencourt (on the subject of usernames, you’re just asking for trouble aren’t you?), this is true but if I detect a bit of tongue-in-cheek there, well-played.