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Thursday, March 23, 2006 ( 3/23/2006 08:02:00 AM ) Bill S. "IF THAT'S THE TRASH AESTHETIC, I SUGGEST THAT YOU FORGET IT"* – Lots of left-leaning poli-bloggers are making much merry fun over new red state Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech's scoffing put-down of his new print media boss' ignorance re: the John Milius flick Red Dawn. "It's the greatest pro-gun movie ever," Domenech asserts. "I mean, they actually show the jackbooted communist thugs prying guns from cold dead hands." (What Ben doesn't mention is that writer/director Milius even includes a shot of the famous pro-gun bumper sticker in the foreground of that scene – an image so hammily overstated that much of the audience I first saw it with loudly started groaning.) Oh, those out-of-it liberal editors: they don't even recognize when a mediocre teen-centric action flick speaks to core conservative values! Of course, a better question might when don't American action movies speak to core conservative values? Let's just look as the "pro-gun" question – isn't it a given in American moviedom that a gun in the hand of a right-&-just man is a Good Thing? Think of all the slavering close-ups of arms and ammunition that've become an inextricable of the moderne action pic. You'd think, from the way Domenech elevates it, that Red Dawn was the only American movie to come out in favor of the right to bear arms. I guess all those Stallone and Schwartzenegger movies released in the 80's (both Commando and the second Rambo came out a year after Dawn) were girly anti-gun Chick Flicks. In any event, citing some newspaper editor who most likely hasn't set foot in a movie theater in the past forty years probably sez more about the insignificance of pop culture for many middle-aged workaholics than it does the cluelessness of blue staters. This tendency on the part of too many hack pundits to turn every aesthetic judgment (Like to eat broccoli? You must be a liberal!) into ideological credentialing has grown increasingly more pronounced in the Internet Years. But that doesn't make it any less idiotic. Besides, everybody knows Invasion U.S.A. kicks Red Dawn's ass . . . *This post title written for Ben Varkentine . . . # | |
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