Hollywood Scripting

[Spiro C. Thiery]

A question: When did I brag about my own lack of taste? Cuz I'm still not getting that part.

By merely stating that you thought someone else lacked taste, you brandish what you seem to believe is a superior position. But that position regards taste. Therefore, taste being a matter of taste, it could just as easily be said that you are bragging about your lack thereof (though, obviously neither you or Cox is making that claim, but expressing different tastes).

There were any number of silly, snarky comments I might have made, among them the standard Do tell! or more cheesier Oh, reeeeeally? or the more cloaked in faux-ernestness Tell me about it, what with the way things are theeeese days! or a more severely pointed It would seem the propaganda--both the sterile, patriotic variety, and the poisonous alphabet soup kind--has affected you more than you might think.

I think I understand this part - you're saying that because these men made films about patriotic themes and loved the state, that somehow this, in and of itself, is to you a reflection of a lack of quality in their productions? That is, because they made films that demonstrated their love, interest, and appreciation for America, that somehow disqualifies their work as having value as art?

Huh? No, not at all. I am saying that you expressed (in the quote prior to mine that you did not include this time around) the kind of acceptance of patriotism for patriotism's sake in a way that one would expect from someone awash in a pro American worldview. ie. how Hollywood wins hearts and minds.

Also, some straight speaking wouldn't hurt, if you wanna be understood. I'm not a mind-reader, ya know.

No comment.

[MinM]

There have been hints that he took up residence at a certain other RI-users forum...

No, believe me, I've looked there.

A "poor man's" Hugh at DU???

I just watched "Home Alone" again. I don't remember it as being so conservative...

Then again, it has been ages since I watched it. It was before I became political (I guess I was about eleven then...).

The main messages seem to be:

"Christmas miracle fixes dysfunctional families."

"Armed private citizen defends home against burlglars after government fails miserably at doing so."

In addition there are several conservative themes:

"Pant-suit wearing career woman is horrible mother."

"Personal growth through learning self-reliance."

"Cosmopolitan/European-ish upper middle class people are jerks."

And lots and lots of Christian imagery (i.e. the whole choir thing and boy says a prayer before "going to war" against burglars).

I guess if you look beyond politics though it is still kind of entertaining.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022069135

[barracuda]

By merely stating that you thought someone else lacked taste, you brandish what you seem to believe is a superior position. But that position regards taste. Therefore, taste being a matter of taste, it could just as easily be said that you are bragging about your lack thereof (though, obviously neither you or Cox is making that claim, but expressing different tastes).

No. I'm objecting to Cox's phony populism in his blanket statement endorsing what he thinks is the popular regard for abstract art as a pit stop on his little side trip to mock the work of Jackson Pollock. Is James Joyce or Dostoevsky a better writer than Barbara Cartland, or is it simply a matter of taste?

Anti-intellectual bullshit.

Huh? No, not at all. I am saying that you expressed (in the quote prior to mine that you did not include this time around) the kind of acceptance of patriotism for patriotism's sake in a way that one would expect from someone awash in a pro American worldview. ie. how Hollywood wins hearts and minds.

Then you misunderstood me. John Ford was a genius. Merian Cooper was brilliant. That's what I'm saying. Their art transcends their political lives. Fuck America. You think it's not possible to make a great work of art within a nationalist context? I disagree.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

By merely stating that you thought someone else lacked taste, you brandish what you seem to believe is a superior position. But that position regards taste. Therefore, taste being a matter of taste, it could just as easily be said that you are bragging about your lack thereof (though, obviously neither you or Cox is making that claim, but expressing different tastes).

No. I'm objecting to Cox's phony populism in his blanket statement endorsing what he thinks is the popular regard for abstract art as a pit stop on his little side trip to mock the work of Jackson Pollock. Is James Joyce or Dostoevsky a better writer than Barbara Cartland, or is it simply a matter of taste?

Phony populism? You are a regular irony machine (you're gonna have to figure that out, if you don't get it). And then to immediately return to the taste argument. Nice. As much as we all would like to believe that we can qualify the superiority of that which we hold near and dear, at the end of the day, it's still taste. And as much as it may hurt you to admit it, Cox is on the money regarding Pollock's popularity, whoever he may be a "better painter" than.

Huh? No, not at all. I am saying that you expressed (in the quote prior to mine that you did not include this time around) the kind of acceptance of patriotism for patriotism's sake in a way that one would expect from someone awash in a pro American worldview. ie. how Hollywood wins hearts and minds.

Then you misunderstood me. John Ford was a genius. Merian Cooper was brilliant. That's what I'm saying. Their art transcends their political lives. Fuck America. You think it's not possible to make a great work of art within a nationalist context? I disagree.

No I didn't misunderstand you at all. And you didn't say that. You're backtracking. You said you didn't feel bad about the films selling the American Way. As far as your considering many of those films great art, you and Cox agree. I couldn't care less. I like Cox' films, but I don't have to like what he thinks is great art. I posted his blog post because I thought it germane to this thread, not because I thought it his view on Pollock's work would tug at the chain of someone's inner aesthete.

[justdrew]

http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/ProductionCode.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood

[barracuda]

Phony populism? You are a regular irony machine (you're gonna have to figure that out, if you don't get it). And then to immediately return to the taste argument. Nice. As much as we all would like to believe that we can qualify the superiority of that which we hold near and dear, at the end of the day, it's still taste. And as much as it may hurt you to admit it, Cox is on the money regarding Pollock's popularity, whoever he may be a "better painter" than.

As far as your considering many of those films great art, you and Cox agree. I couldn't care less. I like Cox' films, but I don't have to like what he thinks is great art. I posted his blog post because I thought it germane to this thread, not because I thought it his view on Pollock's work would tug at the chain of someone's inner aesthete.

Ah, I see. You don't know art, but you know what you like. Good for you. Follow your heart.

You said you didn't feel bad about the films selling the American Way.

Why should I, if the final result is a great work of art?

[justdrew]

Tarantino 'Unchained,' Part 1: 'Django' Trilogy?
In the first of a Q&A series, the director tells our editor-in-chief about his next black film.
By: Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Posted: December 23, 2012 at 12:20 AM
http://www.theroot.com/views/tarantino-unchained-part-1-django-trilogy?page=0,0

from page 4:

...And if you ever tried to read The Clansman [the book and play upon which The Birth of a Nation is based], it really can only stand next to Mein Kampf when it comes to just its ugly imagery.

HLG: Oh, it's pure evil, man.

QT: It is evil! And I don't use that word lightly. It was one of the most popular touring plays of its day.

HLG: And a foundational moment in the history of cinema.

QT: Oddly enough, where I got the idea for the Klan guys [in Django Unchained] -- they're not Klan yet, the Regulators arguing about the bags [on their heads] -- as you may well know, director John Ford was one of the Klansmen in The Birth of a Nation, so I even speculate in the piece: Well, John Ford put on a Klan uniform for D.W. Griffith. What was that about? What did that take? He can't say he didn't know the material. Everybody knew The Clansman at that time as a piece of material.

HLG: Right. It was a best-seller.

QT: And touring companies were doing plays of it all the time. And yet he put on the Klan uniform. He got on the horse. He rode hard to black subjugation. As I'm writing this -- and he rode hard, and I'm sure the Klan hood was moving all over his head as he was riding and he was riding blind -- I'm thinking, wow. That probably was the case. How come no one's ever thought of that before? Five years later, I'm writing the scene and all of a sudden it comes out.

HLG: So 98 years later, you've deconstructed The Birth of a Nation through Django.

QT: Yeah, it's actually funny. One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously. To say the least, I hate him. Forget about faceless Indians he killed like zombies. It really is people like that that kept alive this idea of Anglo-Saxon humanity compared to everybody else's humanity -- and the idea that that's hogwash is a very new idea in relative terms. And you can see it in the cinema in the '30s and '40s -- it's still there. And even in the '50s.

But the thing is, one of my Western heroes is a director named William Witney who started doing the serials. He did Zorro's Fighting Legion, about 22 Roy Rogers movies; he did a whole bunch of Westerns. Great action director for Republic Pictures. And he worked all the way into the '70s.

So he was like the low-budget John Ford where John Ford was the high-budget John Ford at Republic. And he worked with the same guy: Yakima Canutt is his stunt guy and everything ... William Witney ends his career directing the movie Darktown Strutters, directing the Dramatics doing the song "What You See Is What You Get" in his film. He also directed Jim Brown in I Escaped From Devil's Island. So it's like John Ford puts on a Klan uniform, rides to black subjugation. William Witney ends a 50-year career directing the Dramatics doing "What You See Is What You Get." I know what side I'm on.

[compared2what?]

It explains how the work of a talentless boozer, Jackson Pollock, found its way into museums owned by the Rockefellers, and thence onto gallery walls all over the US. Pollock's slap-dash canvases were bought and sold - at US taxpayers' expense - to show that American art was "better" than the crude naturalism which Russians supposedly preferred. Unfortunately, most Americans prefer crude naturalism, as do I: given a choice between a Pollock or a Norman Rockwell I would gaze on the Rockwell any day.

That's such an insane choice for someone who's objecting to mid-century American propaganda to make, it's practically abstract-expressionist.

.

And that's just to choose the most obvious example. I mean, he practically invented the form.
.

[compared2what?]

"The American Way"

[Nordic]

Barracuda wrote:

Their art transcends
their political lives. Fuck America. You think it's not possible to make a great work of art within a nationalist context? I

Leni Reifenstahl was a great artist then? Did her art transcend her political views?

You gotta draw a line somewhere. Ford was a fucking racist and his movies, including "The Searchers" were fucking racist. I hated that fucking movie. Why it's consideted a great work of art is beyond me. Plus it's just fucking stupid. Who lives in Monument Valley? Nobody. Just idiotic.

[justdrew]

I just watched that damn thing, annoying, not so great, probably there are better westerns.

but hey, those Comanche put up a fight, and it looks like the 1954 novel by Alan Le May is based on a real event...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%E2%80%93Indian_Wars
The half-century struggle between the Plains tribes and the Texans became particularly intense after the Spanish, and then Mexicans, left power in Texas, and the Republic of Texas, and then the United States, opposed the tribes. Their war with the Plains Indians became one of deep animosity, slaughter, and, in the end, near-total conquest.

Although the outcome was lop-sided, the violence of the wars were not, especially in regards to the Comanche. The later led such a violent existence, looting, burning, murdering, and kidnapping as far south as Mexico City and especially destroying and capturing so many Texans that Comanche became a by-word for [url=/wiki/Terrorism]terrorism[/url]. Thus, when he recovered [url=/wiki/Cynthia_Ann_Parker]Cynthia Ann Parker[/url] at Pease River, [url=/wiki/Sul_Ross]Sul Ross[/url] observed that her recovery would be felt in every family in Texas, as every one of them had lost someone in the Indian Wars. Indeed, during the [url=/wiki/American_Civil_War]American Civil War[/url], when the army was unavailable to protect the frontier, the Comanche and Kiowa pushed white settlements back over 100 miles on the Texas frontier.

ahh, but this is known...

Several film critics have suggested that The Searchers was inspired by the 1836 kidnapping of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker by Comanche warriors who raided her family's home at Fort Parker, Texas. She spent 24 years with the Comanches, married a war chief, and had three children (one of which was the famous Comanche Chief Quanah Parker), only to be rescued against her will by Texas Rangers. James W. Parker, Cynthia Ann's uncle, spent much of his life and fortune in what became an obsessive search for his niece, like Ethan Edwards in the film. In addition, the rescue of Cynthia Ann, during a Texas Ranger attack known as the Battle of Pease River, resembles the rescue of Debbie Edwards when the Texas Rangers attack Scar's village. Parker's story was only one of 64 real-life cases of 19th-century child abductions in Texas that author Alan Le May studied while researching the novel on which the film was based. Moreover, his surviving research notes indicate that the two characters who go in search of a missing girl were inspired by Brit Johnson, a black man who ransomed his captured wife and children from the Comanches in 1865. Afterward, Johnson made at least three trips to Indian Territory and Kansas relentlessly searching for another kidnapped girl, Millie Durgan (or Durkin), until Kiowa raiders killed him in 1871.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Searchers_%28film%29

[compared2what?]

Barracuda wrote:

Their art transcends
their political lives. Fuck America. You think it's not possible to make a great work of art within a nationalist context? I

Leni Reifenstahl was a great artist then? Did her art transcend her political views?

She was no John Ford, but as far as what she was goes, I'd say that it did.

__________________

ON EDIT: Same goes double for Norman Rockwell, who was practically chiefly a propagandist. I love his work. .

[barracuda]

Leni Reifenstahl was a great artist then? Did her art transcend her political views?

I think to a certain extent it did. We can despise Nazi affiliations and her and her politics, but does that mean we can't admire her film work without sympathizing with her cause? Does one become a Bolshevik upon finding that you admire Battleship Potempkin?

Some great films have been propaganda films. Triumph of the Will is one. Battleship Potempkin is one. You might say Casablanca is one as well, not as great of a film, but one I've always liked.

You gotta draw a line somewhere. Ford was a fucking racist and his movies, including "The Searchers" were fucking racist. I hated that fucking movie. Why it's consideted a great work of art is beyond me. Plus it's just fucking stupid. Who lives in Monument Valley? Nobody. Just idiotic.

You seem to have strong feelings about the film. I take it you fucking hated it. I think Ford's whole idea of calling Monument Valley "Texas" is kind of interesting. I like that about it. I've always thought it meant something.

If you're going to enjoy most American major studio films of the first sixty or so years of the 20th century, you're stuck in the position of watching a bunch of white people running around doing white people stuff in a white people world and reflecting a bunch of somewhat onerous Anglo-Saxon white people values, at least in the context in which we have to view them today. That's kind of the floor plan.

I guess you could say Norman Rockwell really was a fascist propagandist selling the American Way. I look at his work and see those homey American values and understand that they're myths manufactured upon the back of oppression. But was he a great artist? Pretty much.

Again, bad people +/or bad motivations does not necessarily = bad art, imo.

I just watched that damn thing, annoying, not so great, probably there are better westerns.

It's not my personal favorite western, by far. I just have a hard time seeing why the CIA would want to... oh, never mind.

[compared2what?]

Fuck America. You think it's not possible to make a great work of art within a nationalist context? I

If you're Richard Wagner, it is. So I guess it is. There aren't a ton of other examples springing to mind, though.

[justdrew]

I just watched that damn thing, annoying, not so great, probably there are better westerns.

It's not my personal favorite western, by far. I just have a hard time seeing why the CIA would want to... oh, never mind.

well, putting a honorable "good amercian values and 'stay the course' determination" mask over our own little genocidal 50-year terror war is not without nationalist value.