[Editor’s Note: LFM’s Govindini Murty has a piece today in The Atlantic, entitled: “Hey, Conservatives: It’s Safe to Go to the Movies Again.”]
By Govindini Murty. As our regular Libertas readers know, Jason and I have worked for over seven years to promote a greater diversity of voices in Hollywood. We’ve promoted hundreds of pro-freedom, pro-American, and conservative-friendly films, both through the Liberty Film Festival and the original Libertas blog, as well as the new Libertas Film Magazine. As I’ve said numerous times, we don’t do this because we want Hollywood dominated by conservative political propaganda any more than we want Hollywood dominated by liberal political propaganda. We do this because we care deeply about film and the arts and we feel that having a diversity of voices in our culture is crucial to maintaining the democratic values that make America great.
However, Jason and I have been very concerned over the years by the conservative establishment’s refusal to seriously engage in film and the arts. By “engagement” I don’t mean reviewing a film here or there or supporting the odd conservative political documentary. I mean genuinely and passionately engaging in film and the arts: funding and supporting filmmakers, artists, and creative people, devoting a significant portion of their media platforms to supporting the arts (even when they don’t directly tie into the conservative political agenda), taking real pleasure in creating beautiful, profound, and arresting artworks that imaginatively inspire people. Conservatives have enormous resources at their disposal to have a greater voice in the culture if they want to. That they fail to seriously engage in the culture year after year is deeply troubling. It undermines both the growth of the conservative movement, as well as the vibrancy of our culture, which needs both sides engaged in order to create art and entertainment that represents all Americans.
So, I’ve written a piece in The Atlantic today (see below) that examines the issue of why conservatives are so reluctant to support conservative-friendly films. As our readers know, when Jason and I relaunched Libertas, we were determined to positively promote films and creative artists. We were tired of just complaining about Hollywood. Conservatives have complained about Hollywood for years, and it never seems to accomplish anything. We decided that rather than give the site over to partisan politics and to obsessing over every left-wing Hollywood affront, we wanted to dedicate our time to promoting films and artworks that broadly affirm freedom and individualism. We were inspired by the genuine change we had seen in the film industry in the last two to three years, in which a greater number of pro-freedom films are suddenly being made. There’s plenty of room for hope and excitement, and yet I don’t see this hope and excitement translating into the rest of the conservative world. Conservatives in the media certainly know about these films because they do cover them (often with snarky and dismissive reviews) – they just refuse to take them as a positive sign of change that should be embraced.
I hope my Atlantic piece (see below) will inspire some honest debate amongst conservatives. I didn’t write a partisan piece – I wrote a piece that objectively deals with the issues as they appear. I truly appreciate all of our conservative, libertarian, independent, and liberal readers here at Libertas who have shown their commitment to supporting the idea of freedom in film. You’re the good ones – you get it. I hope the message spreads to the rest of the public as well, because the culture is too important to be treated as a partisan whipping post. It deserves to be treated honestly, objectively – and always with respect for the artists who create the works that give our culture meaning.
•••
From The Atlantic:
The recent news that MGM’s remake of Red Dawn may finally reach theaters should be reason for conservatives to celebrate. The Los Angeles Times reports that MGM is in talks to sell Red Dawn to Film District (the company behind Ryan Gosling’s Drive), who will likely release the film in 2012. The original Red Dawn is one of the iconic films of the cultural right. Written and directed by John Milius, the 1984 film depicted a group of plucky teens who fight off a Soviet invasion of the U.S. This new Red Dawn, of which I’ve seen an early cut, features a similarly patriotic storyline—and stars one of Hollywood’s hottest young leading men, Chris Hemsworth (Thor). And even factoring in some controversial re-edits that change the villains from the communist Chinese to the North Koreans, the new Red Dawn seems like exactly the kind of pro-American action fare that should please cultural conservatives.
But will conservatives actually support Red Dawn when it comes out?
After years of feeling burned by Hollywood, today’s conservatives seem reluctant to go to the movies, even to see films promoting their own values. A number of right-of-center-friendly movies have been made in recent years—ranging from big-budget studio fare like the Transformers movies or art-house films like The Devil’s Double, to overtly political documentaries like The Undefeated—yet conservatives have responded with little enthusiasm to such films. Indeed, at times conservatives seem more interested in debating left-leaning works like Avatar or Fahrenheit 9/11 than in supporting movies friendly to their own cause.
Witness the conservative public’s tepid response to two recent films on “conservative” subjects: the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, and the Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated. Both films received extensive media coverage earlier this year. Fox News and the Fox Business Network ran numerous segments on each film (with John Stossel devoting an entire show on Fox Business to Atlas Shrugged), and both films were widely discussed on talk radio and in the print media. Yet when the films were released, they fared poorly at the box office. Atlas Shrugged made only $4.6 million on a reported budget of $20 million, and The Undefeated made only $116,000 on a reported budget of $1 million. Granted, both films received mixed reviews, at best. Nonetheless, as conservative film critic Christian Toto pointed out in a recent Daily Caller article titled “Why don’t conservatives support conservative films?,” the popularity of Rand’s original Atlas Shrugged novel and of Sarah Palin as subject matter should presumably have led to greater enthusiasm among conservatives for these projects. Yet they didn’t.
Stranger still, even when offered more popular or critically acclaimed films, many conservatives still seem reluctant to support them.
For example, a well-reviewed film recently appeared in theaters that offers an implied justification for the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The Devil’s Double tells the true story of Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s gangster-like son, and his reluctant body double, Latif Yahia. Both roles in the film are played by rising star Dominic Cooper (Captain America), whose electric performance has made him one of Hollywood’s most sought-after leading men. The Devil’s Double depicts the Hussein regime pillaging and demoralizing Iraq’s people—and even includes flattering footage of George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And despite its seemingly right-of-center politics, the film was screened to rave reviews at Sundance, with Roger Ebert even calling it a “terrific show” and praising Dominic Cooper’s “astonishing dual performance.”
>>>Read the rest of the article at The Atlantic here.
Posted on October 12th, 2011 at 5:32pm.
[Editor’s update: Many thanks to Kevin Roderick for mentioning Govindini’s Atlantic piece in his article “Left coast writers splash in the Atlantic” on LA Observed. Kevin runs one of the great LA sites and I urge you all to check it out.]
[Many thanks as well to Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air for linking to Govindini’s Atlantic article. Hot Air is always on top of the most interesting news and analysis, so be sure to check them out.]
[And of course, a big thank you as well to our friend Lars Larson. Lars is one of the best-informed and most articulate talk radio hosts out there (and rapidly rising, with his radio show carried in over 200 markets). Lars posted Govindini’s article on his site and he has always been supportive of Libertas Film Magazine and the cause of freedom in film.]
Congratulations on your piece in Atlantic, Govindini. It makes a nice bookend with the recent piece in the Hollywood Reporter about how conservatives tend to avoid actors who have branded themselves as leftists. It’s nice to have some notice out there that conservatives are a substantial fraction of the potential audience.
FYI, I was interested in seeing “The Devil’s Double”, but here in the OC it apparently was only on the art house circuit and for a short time only since I can’t remember seeing it on Fandango. Same with “Four Lions”.
K – Thank you so much for your kind comment! Yes, I think it’s good to keep writing about these issues so that conservatives know that they are a major audience who can support films friendly to their cause and help to influence Hollywood to make more of them.
As for “The Devil’s Double,” it showed here in LA in our local AMC multiplex in August, though it initially opened in art house theaters in late July. Definitely check it out when it comes out on DVD. As for “Four Lions,” it’s available on DVD right now, as is “Mao’s Last Dancer,” which Patricia Ducey, Jason, and I all really enjoyed.
And by the way, I like your new gravatar – it’s very dashing! 😉
You’re doing a great service for conservatives with this fight to lend our voice to the culture of this country. It’s discouraging as a conservative to endure the constant drumbeat of the liberal agenda in all of our major media sources. As an aside listening to the Occupy Wall Street protestors, for me, is distressing and disturbing. The sheer stupidity of these people is confirmation of the liberal narrative that’s permeated our popular culture for the past fifty years. We must fight to reverse this insidious attack of liberals and take the fight back with our own narrative. The cinema is a great place to fight that battle. Also the Atlas Shrugged movie was atrocious and a crime. You really cannot blame conservatives for not supporting it.
Johngaltjkt – thanks so much for your comment and for your words of support. Jason and I are glad to do what we do every day because we believe in supporting the cause of freedom. I think there’s a great opportunity for conservatives to have a greater say in the popular culture, but the conservative establishment has to make a greater effort.
I don’t blame conservative audiences for not showing up to see “Atlas Shrugged,” but I do blame the conservative establishment for making such an enormous effort to promote the film, and yet give next to no attention to other, better films that the conservative public might actually enjoy a great deal more. That’s why we here at Libertas promote good films, not just political films. We have a worldview that is broadly-speaking ‘pro-freedom,’ but within that framework a film has to have some artistic or intellectual merit for us to recommend it.
Congrats on the article – and I dare say you are correct (though I guess it goes without saying that I would think that, given that I’m a regular).
I’ve discovered so many films here that I probably would have missed or avoided otherwise. The writing is consistently excellent, informed, and (last but not least) interesting.
Speaking of interesting, one thing I would add as an appendix to your article is something that conservatives need to learn, something that Libertas teaches by example: story and skill matter. On the side of actual filmmaking conservatives seem to be mired in a kind of reactive imitation of what the left is perceived as doing: namely, trying to make films out of ideology. This is the paradoxical flip-side of the conservative resistance to films that contain conservative messages while not being, as it were, “vehicles” for conservatism. We don’t realize that we ignore the “vehicle” films because they’re all-too-often just bad art, while at the same time we set standards that amount to a demand for bad art. As Mencken said of democracy, we get what we want, “good and hard.”
Libertas provides a way out of that morass. Would that more conservatives took the hint.
See Saw – thanks so much for your comment. As always, you make a number of excellent points.
First of all, I absolutely agree that what Jason and I and everybody here at Libertas care about is art and craft – or as you so well put it, “story and skill.” Let’s just call it the classic approach to the arts, which believes that life, beauty, the world, and humanity should be celebrated for their own sake. This does not imply a mindless hedonism, but rather a life-affirming view that believes that art fundamentally serves as what Aristotle termed mimesis – the joyful imitation of life. I believe this covers not just representational art, but also abstract art that takes the joy of the world but then translates it into abstract forms (just look at the joyful forms and colors of a Kandinsky painting, and you’ll see what I mean).
Opposed to this classic approach though is what I would call the “radical” approach, which attempts to subsume art to ideology. This is where I believe – as you have rightly pointed out – that conservatives fall apart at the seams. They think that the way to counter liberal ideological filmmaking is to simply make their own ideological filmmaking, and the result is dull and didactic. That was the problem with a film like “Atlas Shrugged,” which only saw the ideology in Rand’s novel, but not the colorful characters or strong emotions.
You really sum it up well when you say:
“On the side of actual filmmaking conservatives seem to be mired in a kind of reactive imitation of what the left is perceived as doing: namely, trying to make films out of ideology.”
This is something Jason and I have been warning conservatives about for years. During four years of running the Liberty Film Festival, I saw conservatives donors and media figures repeatedly call for a “conservative Michael Moore.” I told them that what they really needed was a “conservative Francis Ford Coppola” or a “conservative Steven Spielberg,” but they didn’t want to hear it. Instead they poured millions into one didactic documentary after another in search of their “conservative Michael Moore,” only to have all these efforts fail to do anything to change the culture or reach a broader public.
Again, thank you for your wonderful comments, SeeSaw. You and all our other terrific readers at Libertas are a major reason we enjoy doing the site.
I suppose that you have no choice but to take this position if you are a promoter of the American film industry — the fringe left which controls Hollywood has given you no other option. But the truth is that it is absurd to think of conservatives patronizing Hollywood. This is a community which not only despises conservatives as individuals and uses their ill-gotten riches to actively work against the political interests of conservatives as a party, but they use their industry to create propaganda which promotes their chosen political party and which attempts to discredit conservatism.
If you take this view as undeniable — and I obviously do — then your position is untenable. Why would we give our money and support to those who use both against us, with their bitter hatred? American film where it touches on politics — and astonishingly often where politics has nothing to do with the story being invented — has no art and little craft; it is just cheesy propaganda.
And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the lesser issue of financially supporting the individual idiot-leftist-actors. Naming them is pointless — so pervasive is the fringe left worldview in Hollywood that it is a default position. If someone in the industry makes the mistake of publicly leaving the Democrat/Leftist plantation, it is major news everywhere and they are ostracized and their career is immediately threatened.
The resulting environment looks like this: when a Republican is in the White House, the military is depicted as corrupt and evil; and when a Democrat is in the White House, suddenly Hollywood movies are rah-rah America. We’re not stupid, Govindini, and most of us will never buy anything that Hollywood produces. It is all crap.
It’s a shame that you refuse to address a single one of the films I’ve described. You denounce things you apparently haven’t even seen. Even if the film industry is majority liberal, why would you want to squash the growing numbers of filmmakers (and we document them every day here at Libertas) who are making films that are bravely pro-American, pro-military, and pro-freedom? Why would you want to deny the numerous conservative, libertarian, and independent filmmakers out there who are working within Hollywood and in the independent film community any chance of success? Do you just hate film itself that much?
According to your logic, we would have to denounce Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and Charlton Heston too – because after all, they were from Hollywood. I know that was classic Hollywood, but as I pointed out in my article (did you even read my article, or are you so angry you are blind to facts and reason?), if classic Hollywood could have a strong conservative voice, than modern Hollywood can as well if conservatives make an effort to support the incipient trend I’m documenting, rather than squash it in its infancy. If Hollywood could change in the ’60s and ’70s, why is it so impossible to imagine that it could change again? Also, you treat Hollywood as a monolithic entity, completely ignoring the fact that it’s made up of people with an increasingly diverse range of beliefs. Also, many of the films I describe were not made in Hollywood – some were made independently and then picked up for Hollywood distribution, others are foreign films. Must they all be denounced too?
You haven’t dealt with a single movie or fact I bring up in my article. You’re just reacting out of prejudice and emotion. I urge you to set aside your anger and ask yourself which you would prefer: hating Hollywood at all costs and contributing to permanent liberal domination of the film industry, or encouraging conservative-friendly films and filmmakers so that their success spurs others to join them with the ultimate goal of positively changing Hollywood?
Nice article, especially your praise of Captain America and Indiana Jones IV. This site, and your approach, is such a refreshing alternative from the snide garbage that characterizes so much of online conservative film commentary. Keep up the good work!
Thanks so much Sean! After all, it’s film – reading and writing about it should be enjoyable – and that’s why our preference here is to focus on the positive.