Unethical Film and Theater Reviewer Bias, Part II: “OK, It’s a Good Movie, But Where’s the Climate Change Propaganda?”

I supposed technically Margeret Renkl isn’t a film reviewer for the Times: officially she’s a “contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.” I don’t care: she criticizes an action movie that audiences are enjoying because it doesn’t deliver the progressive agenda propaganda that she thinks good little Big Brotherites should jam into the brains of the trusting public at every opportunity.

Renkle can bite me, and so can the Times for publishing her dreck.

Renkl and the Times concede that “Twisters,” which appears to be the non-superhero hit that Hollywood desperately needs, “ is a humdinger of a summer blockbuster that delivers exactly what theatergoers want in an action film: plenty of explosions, destruction, high-speed chases and heroism, all with a dash of wit and sexual tension thrown in. It is not — and does not aspire to be — high cinematic art.” However, it is, she argues, a missed “golden opportunity to talk about what scientists know and don’t know about how climate change might be affecting the formation, strength, frequency and geographic distribution of tornadoes, or why they now tend to develop in groups.”

No, it’s really not. A movie people want to see for escape and entertainment isn’t a “golden opportunity” for the writers and producers to bombard them with favored and faddish data related to progressive public policy. The Ethics Alarms standard response to the “Why are you talking/writing/singing about what you want to instead of what I want to” is “Write your own blog, direct your own play, produce your own movie or sing your own song.

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Stop Making Me Defend George Clooney!

In a typical ad hominem rant on Truth Social, Donald Trump attacked George Clooney, who recently joined the “Dump Biden” team with an op-ed in the New York Times calling on the President to step aside.

“So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act,” Trump wrote. “He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are. What does Clooney know about anything?….Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television…Movies never really worked for him!!!”

As is so often the case, the former President doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Clooney can legitimately be criticized for his part in deceiving the public about Biden’s disabilities; as Christian Toto recently pointed out, Hollywood power-players—like Clooney—were despicably complicit in hiding Biden’s real condition from the public. However, claiming the Clooney “never came close to making a great movie” is unfair, uninformed and ignorant, and saying that “movies never worked for him” is just silly.

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A Reward For the Historically and Culturally Literate: “Unfrosted”

If you are looking for a funny rather than syrupy entertainment diversion for your mother (or grandmother) this Mother’s Day, you couldn’t do better than spend 90 minutes or so with Jerry Seinfeld in his new movie for Netflix, “Unfrosted.”

Don’t worry: it’s a lot better than “Bee Movie.”

The film, co-written by the comic, is sly, clever and funny provided that the viewer knows enough about the popular culture of the early Sixties—you know, before everything went crazy—as well as U.S. history to understand what is being satirized. Seinfeld has always been a Sixties trivia buff as he demonstrated repeatedly on his classic sitcom, but this movie is an orgy of such references: JFK, the space program, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jack LaLanne, Werner Von Bron, Quickdraw McGraw and Saturday morning cartoons, Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Silly Putty, the Twist, Thurl Ravenscroft (the original voice of Tony the Tiger who also sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch!” ) the Doublemint Twins (who are both apparently impregnated by JFK while Jackie is away), on and on.

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Everybody SING! “Trump’s Deranged for Christmas…You Can Count on He…”

...Trump might blow the race to Joe
By acting crazily.
Christmas Eve found Donald
Roasting no chestnut
Trump’s deranged for Christmas
He’s in a nasty rut
!

Here is what the man who wants to be trusted to hold the most powerful job on earth sends out to the public…

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As Disney Supporters Complain About Censorship, Disney Engages In Artistic Censorship And WrongThink Control

Doyle: You dumb guinea.
Cloudy: How the hell did I know he had a knife?
Doyle: Never trust a nigger.
Cloudy: He coulda been white!
Doyle: Never trust anyone.

That exchange has been excised from the versions of the film used on Turner Classic Movies, iTunes and Criterion. The film’s distributor, 20th Century Fox, was acquired by Disney before the scene disappeared. It is artistic censorship, straight up; no more acceptable than painting over the breasts Reubens paintings, or bleeping out “damn” is Rhett Butler’s famous kiss-off to Scarlet (as was done regularly when the movie began being shown on network television.)

Again, we are faced with deciding whether the motives here were stupid or sinister. I probably vote for both. The accelerating effort to declare the word “nigger” as taboo regardless of intent, use or context is pure attempted mind-control and Orwellian WrongThink totalitarianism—now embraced, as in other totalitarian tactics, by most of the Left and the Democratic Party. It is also unprincipled pandering to Critical Race Theory extremism. The rational mind boggles at what canonical works of art and literature face permanent scarring if the practice is allowed to take hold. Just off the top of my recently repaired head, I can think of several superb films that include “nigger” in the dialogue, like “The Shining,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Mississippi Burning,” “Pulp Fiction,” and of course, “Blazing Saddles.”

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Early in William Friedkin’s classic film “The French Connection,” Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) argues with his partner, Buddy “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider) regarding Russo recently sustaining a knife wound in a confrontation with a black drug-dealer:

Doyle: You dumb guinea.
Cloudy: How the hell did I know he had a knife?
Doyle: Never trust a nigger.
Cloudy: He coulda been white!
Doyle: Never trust anyone.

That exchange has been excised from the versions of the film used on Turner Classic Movies, iTunes and Criterion. The film’s distributor, 20th Century Fox, was acquired by Disney before the scene disappeared. It is artistic censorship, straight up; no more acceptable than painting over the breasts Reubens paintings, or bleeping out “damn” is Rhett Butler’s famous kiss-off to Scarlet (as was done regularly when the movie began being shown on network television.)

Again, we are faced with deciding whether the motives here were stupid or sinister. I probably vote for both. The accelerating effort to declare the word “nigger” as taboo regardless of intent, use or context is pure attempted mind-control and Orwellian WrongThink totalitarianism—now embraced, as in other totalitarian tactics, by most of the Left and the Democratic Party. It is also unprincipled pandering to Critical Race Theory extremism. The rational mind boggles at what canonical works of art and literature face permanent scarring if the practice is allowed to take hold. Just off the top of my recently repaired head, I can think of several superb films that include “nigger” in the dialogue, like “The Shining,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Mississippi Burning,” “Pulp Fiction,” and of course, “Blazing Saddles.”

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Arrogant, Deluded And Ignorant Is No Way To Go Through Life, Jennifer Lawrence…

Jennifer Lawrence is a charismatic, versatile, talented movie star, but someone misled her into believing that everything that pops into her head is worth saying, and it isn’t. In this case, it wasn’t just banal or gratuitous progressive blather points, but a wildly false and disrespectful over-praising of her own significance at the expense of actresses that she ought to be honoring rather than insulting.

In a recent interview with Variety magazine, the star of the “Hunger Games” movies (beginning in 2012), “Silver Lining Playbook” and other films said,

“I remember when I was doing ‘Hunger Games,’ nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work. We were told … girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead.”

If you don’t know your film history, don’t make statements about film history. It makes one look like a conceited fool, as the social media mob rushed to inform Lawrence. Continue reading

Ethics Quiz: The Cartoonist’s Regret

                                        Hell’s video store

Sometimes Ethics Alarms is on these matters quicker than anyone; sometimes it takes a while. Two years ago, retired “Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson confessed that the above cartoon was the only one he could think of at the moment that he felt he should apologize for. He wrote,

Ace Ethics Alarms commenter JutGory alerted me to Larson’s lament, which had been recalled in this recent post on the site “Screen Rant.” I tended to find that the cartoonist’s apology reflected well on his  ethics alarms, as did the Screen Rant pundit, who wrote,

In the end, he put his ego aside and admitted he unfairly judged the movie and criticized it without ever seeing it. The Far Side creator sharing his mistake shows that even the most talented and self-aware cartoonists can accidentally cross a line without initially realizing it. Thankfully, after seeing the movie for himself, Gary Larson understood an apology was warranted for the Far Side comic.

Jut, however, has a different take. He wrote,

It was a joke that landed well because of popular sentiment at the time it was made. Thinking about it another way, what if he saw Ishtar at the time and liked it?  He could still make the same joke because it would resonate with the public.  It would still be funny. I guess the real question is whether comics are bound by the same rules as a critic.  A critic should know what it is criticizing.  A comic is going for a laugh.  And, to the extent it was an “unfair” joke (I am not sure it is, as the movie had a widely-known bad reputation), is an apology necessary.  Most jokes are “unfair” to some extent.  But, does that, in itself, require an apology.  From a critic, yes; from a comic, no.

Ooooo, I think I may have to agree with Jut.

Maybe.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Does Gary Larson have anything to apologize for?

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Sunday Afternoon Ethics Reflections, 11/20/2022, Part 2: The Rest Of The Stories…

[Part I, consisting of the introduction to today’s random collection and a related selection from the EA archives, is here…]

1. This marks the official beginning of the yearly holiday runaway emotions train wreck for me, with which I have permanent love-hate relationship that grows more intense each year. I inherited from my mother an immediate nostalgia, regret and sense of loss with this season, typically kicking in with the first Christmas song, which Sirius was cruel enough to offer weeks ago. I think that’s why I gravitate to the Karen Carpenter version of “Home for the Holidays,” because her early loss was so tragic, and her unique voice was so emotionally expressive. This coming week is our 42nd anniversary, of which I am proud from a perseverance and integrity standpoint, since almost nobody among our contemporaries are still on their first marriage, Thanksgiving, which will have fewer people around the table than ever before, then the anniversary of my finding my father dead in his easy chair on my birthday, followed by the annual hell of getting 2000 lights on a live 8 foot tree, a task that falls entirely on me now, and then Christmas madness. What fun. And yet I love the memories, the lights, the music, the spirit and the values the season represents.

Rats. Here we go again…

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The Failure Of “Bros”: Why Don’t Minorities Accept The Right Of Majorities To Feel Like They Do?

Gee, what a shocking development! Non-gay audiences haven’t flocked to see a romantic comedy that advertises itself like that!

I’m a movie fan. I have lots of gay friends, family members and associates: I worked in the theater for decades. I respect them all; I support their right to live and love and marry whomever they please; I want them to be treated like any other law-abiding Americans in all things as they are judged solely on the content of their character, and regard discrimination and bias against them as despicable and unconscionable.

But I don’t enjoy watching gay sex and related activities.  I have every right to feel that way. I would no more pay, or take time out of my sock drawer duties, to see “Bros” than I would watch an NFL game, or attend a one-man show by Alec Baldwin. So sue me. But I think there are millions of Americans with similar tastes, and they span the generations.

Apparently the makers of “Bros” convinced themselves that non-gay (I will say “cis” when there is a loaded gun at my head and not before) Americans, who are, believe it or not, the majority, would go to see a romantic comedy about gays because they have been told that they should, and are bigots if the don’t comply. Non-gay America replied, “Bite me!,” and good for them. Continue reading

Weekend Ethics Kick-Off, 9/10/2022: Aftermaths: Dinosaurs, Chess, And Oberlin

How’s this for an aftermath: thanks to the U.S.’s full embrace of alcohol, its social value and its offsetting pathologies, it is the leading cause of traffic fatalities. Indeed, drinking combined with driving kills about one person every 52 minutes here according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, leading to more than 10,000 lives lost each year. Of course, that doesn’t include that many thousands of lives negatively affected by these avoidable accidents, or those scarred, maimed and crippled despite having survived. September 10, 1897 marks the first arrest for drunk driving. London taxi driver George Smith was charged after crashing his cab into a building. Smith  pleaded guilty and was fined 25 shillings. Nobody was harmed. The first U.S.  laws alcohol-impaired driving went into effect in 1910. A professor of biochemistry and toxicology,patented the “Drunkometer” in 1936, and in 1953, Robert Borkenstein invented the Breathalyzer, an improved version that we still use today. Almost everyone I know has driven under the influence of alcohol at one time or another. Most never consider that the only reason they didn’t hurt or kill someone is that intervention of moral luck.

1. “Jurassic World: Dominion” ethics. I mentioned the latest in the “Jurassic Park” franchise in a negative context here, but the fact is that I saw the movie and enjoyed it very much. The film is now considered a conundrum wrapped in an enigma: it is going to soon pass a billion dollars in box office worldwide, and it has the worst reviews and most negative audience reactions of any of the six films in the line. There is a good reason for that: the plot is ridiculous, the sub-plots are even more ridiculous, and the dialogue is hackneyed and moronic. Continue reading