"In the name of all that's holy, you talentless hack-wife of a pandering hack-master, stop typing."
That's from this delightful rant at Kung Fu Monkey, in which screenwriter John Rogers addresses the myth of "liberal Hollywood." Responding to the popular liberal-agendas-hiding-under-the-bed fears of conservative writers posing as film critics, Rogers examines the alleged political content of the top films from recent years.
His capsule-summaries include things like:
Revenge of the Sith — claimed by both liberals and conservatives, and both of you are idiots. It's a Star Wars movie, jackass, sixth and last in the most famous franchise in history. …
The Day After Tomorrow — Hmm, I guess if you're someone who believes this movie is pitching the whole climate change issue as its central theme rather than a convenient way to bring about big-budget mayhem, I can spot you this one. Of course, you then have to argue that Roland Emmerich is objectively pro-alien, and Independence Day was a vicious assault on the Clinton Administration's lack of a coherent anti-alien policy. But you know what, I'll spot you.
Read the whole thing for much, much more in that vein.
The "talentless hack-wife of a pandering hack-master" to whom Rogers refers is Danielle Crittenden, wife of David Frum. This is, of course, name-calling. It's also funny.
Rogers is a stand-up comedian, and therefore an honest man. What is the duty of an honest man when confronted with the ridiculous? What else but to meet it with ridicule? To defend the ridiculous in the name of civility is uncivilized. Civility requires honesty, and honesty often requires that the ridiculous be ridiculed and the laughable be laughed at. This is a form not only of honesty, but of justice. Justice can, of course, be tempered by mercy, and charity can transcend justice, so it need not always be a sin to refrain from the duty of ridicule. But sometimes it really is.
While we're briefly on the subject of such ridicule, it's probably necessary, yet again, to point out that an insult and an ad hominem argument are not the same thing. The latter is a logical fallacy (often merged with a nice bit of question-begging circular reasoning); the former is a sometimes-rude, sometimes delightfully honest bit of classification.
I reserve the right to fulfill the honest person's duty to ridicule the ridiculous. In our long-running encounter with the Left Behind series of books, for example, I will engage the books arguments wherever possible, and also where possible construct arguments in support of my criticism. But engagement and argument are not possible in the face of transcendent absurdity and ridiculousness. When faced with that, our obligation is to point and laugh. This is what Rogers does with the liberal-and-therefore-anti-American-Hollywood nonsense.
And while we're revisiting this theme, allow me to also reiterate the main point of this previous post: H.G. Wells' novel "War of the Worlds" is a classic of early science fiction, an enduringly frightening and unsettling piece of storytelling with political insights that still resonate more than a century after it was written. Steven Spielberg's film often does a good job of capturing the book's tone of creepy fatalism, but read the book first.
For sheer creepiness, I'd also recommend Wells' "The Invisible Man" — a skin-crawling tale deserving a capable adaptation on the screen. (Out of respect for the late Marlon Brando, I'll avoid further comment on the pitfalls of making movie versions of H.G. Wells' novels.)
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