GenSeneca
Well-Known Member
Deconstructing the Liberal Media's Funny Bone
By Oleg Atbashian
A unanimously negative media response to the political slapstick movie American Carol reinforces my theory that humor -- and satire in particular -- is an accurate litmus test of one's political and ideological convictions, even if one insists on having no convictions at all. If you want to check your friends' politics, take them to see this conservative comedy and watch the reaction.
Committed liberals won't laugh at conservative humor and vice versa. If they don't agree on the joke's basic philosophical premise, the sting will miss the spot and the joker will be shrugged off as a pathetic fool (for reference see conservative reaction to any of the David Letterman shows in the last ten years).
Besides, what kind of satire is that which doesn't show President Bush as a cross-eyed war-mongering idiot with a Hitler mustache? Without that minimum requirement film critics can't really be expected to rate a political comedy as groundbreaking, original, and funny. Looks like they all had prior commitments.
Am I implying that all American film critics are committed liberals? Not just yet -- we must psychoanalyze them first.
The fact that all critics -- who otherwise are a rather disunited bunch - displayed a monolithic unity in declaring American Carol "unfunny" speaks not so much about the new film as about their old allegiances in culture wars. Their infuriated braying from across the political minefields helps to identity their species and gives away the locations of minefields. The mischievous comedy worked like a flare sent from behind the enemy lines, exposing hostile fortifications and troop movements, causing commotion, and providing additional comic relief. It would be worth making American Carol just for that.
But if you're an academic pacifist and prefer a highbrow, non-violent analogy, consider likening American Carol to a yardstick that allows us empirically to measure the disconnect between the media and the American public.
On the one-stop movie website RottenTomatoes.com that rates films on a 100% scale, American Carol scored an almost unprecedented 0% from top critics, a miserable 13% from all critics, and a whopping 72% from the RT community (the community score would probably be higher if liberal activists didn't bomb it with zero ratings). For added objectivity I also made a comparative list of critical quotes. The results will astound you -- but more on that later.
To continue with analogies, American Carol can also be compared to an X-ray tool for studying the disparity between differently shaped funny bones in liberals and conservatives -- a phenomenon I had mentioned in my earlier analysis of liberal reaction to conservative humor.
Our perception of "funny" is part of our overall perception of reality and is inseparable from our values and beliefs. In this sense a random chuckle can be as telling as a knee jerk in the doctor's office, betraying our prejudices, attachments, and stereotypes. The switch that prompts us to either laugh or cry is the same one that prompts us to either love or hate. The selection is automatic, based on what we hold true or false, right or wrong, good or evil -- the subjective beliefs we all have, whether we are aware of them or not.
Subjective beliefs are shared by large groups of people: nations, cultures, political parties, and Oprah fan clubs. It's only natural to gravitate toward people who share our beliefs; we feel more comfortable with those whose reactions are consistent with ours. On the flip side, however, it's just as natural to see those who don't share our beliefs as wrong, depraved, and stupid.
And that's precisely what film critics must have felt when they were forced, due to the lack of screenings, to see American Carol in theaters, sitting next to the cheering and laughing fellow Americans: wrong, depraved, and stupid. Feeding off a different belief system than the rest of the country, the "mainstream media" critics were not amused with the jokes whose premise they didn't condone or even understand.
It's true that what makes people in one culture laugh may very well make people in another culture cry. But is there a kind of humor that is shared universally? Humor that can be equally funny to all nations, cultures, political groups, and film critics? Are there jokes that, instead if dividing us, can bring us closer together in celebration of our common humanity? Of course there are -- only such jokes usually involve pulling a finger. Anything above that level is liable to be found divisive, insensitive, and morally depraved.
For a better perspective let's take a step away from American Carol and look at Chevy Chase who was in raptures over the recent SNL lampooning of Sarah Palin, but slammed the parody of Hillary Clinton because it went against his moral beliefs. At the same time, my conservative friends and I found the SNL Hillary jokes hilarious -- just as we thought that American Carol was very funny. Some of the funniest people I know loved it as much as I did.
Now that we've agreed that our funny bones are shaped differently by our biases, let's review American Carol's cultural and historical premise -- the lingering, bitter ideological standoff between conservatives and liberals that permeates every aspect of American cultural and political discourse.
While this is an undoubtedly historic conflict of epic proportions, Hollywood is mostly keeping it under wraps of a mythical "mainstream" culture. The rare appearances of conservatives in mainstream movies and TV shows are limited to hypocritical, narrow-minded hicks who attack graceful liberals but lose in the end because liberals are intellectually, culturally, and morally superior to them and represent the majority of Americans. Paradoxically, outlandish intolerant rants by brain-dead liberal celebrities in real life are also presented as mainstream.
If the notion of two antagonistic cultures within this country is news to you, please be reminded about the reality of culture war and the fact that any war requires a minimum of two adversaries. There surely are other factions -- but for now they are all aligned into two distinct opposing camps that are loosely and rather misleadingly labeled "conservative" and "liberal."
Conservatives are trying to conserve the American revolutionary tradition of small government whose main duty is to make sure people are free to take care of themselves. Liberals, on the other hand, want to impose a foreign tradition of a massive government that takes care of the people in exchange for their liberties. Did I mention that labels were misleading?
To see who the aggressor in this culture war is, notice who is trying to preserve cultural values and who is trying to change or replace them.
Hollywood was one of the first American territories occupied by liberals in culture wars. The last conservative insurgency was briefly fought there back in the 1950s. That episode was later rewritten in a classic Hollywood fashion to present liberals as modest and noble heroes fighting the roaring conservative Goliath.
Soon thereafter Hollywood was churning out dozens of agitprop culture-war movies annually, showering money and Oscars on able radicals. But this year a small band of conservative Hollywood insurgents, risking their careers, produced one openly counter-propagandistic comedy about the very culture war that had forced them into the trenches in the first place. Of course American Carol was booed in Hollywood. What did you expect, an Oscar for best literary adaptation?
Denunciations by major film critics in the national media were echoed by an army of internet wannabes who tend to flock around the shortest rout to fame and fortune: liberal activism.
Brian Orndorf, whose film reviews appear on prestigious movie websites, calls American Carol a "lousy, hopeless movie, easily one of the worst films of the year" that "reinforces how needlessly divisive our country has become." But if the cultural division is so sizable that both groups can't even understand each other's jokes, isn't it best to acknowledge this fact and act accordingly instead of continuing to pretend and live in denial?
And what's with this "needlessly"? Aren't we supposed to "celebrate our differences"? What happened to the liberal doctrine of diversity? Or are there different kinds of differences and some differences are more different than others? Should we only celebrate those differences that conform to the party line and obfuscate those that are perpendicular to it? And isn't the latter closer to the actual meaning of "being diverse"?
The party line on this subject is clear: beat conservatives into pulp and if they resist accuse them of being "needlessly divisive." Anything less would legitimize conservatism and make it an equal partner in the cultural narrative. Because if the liberal narrative monopoly is shattered, down will go the "mainstream" cover of the liberal media, exposing decades of deception and hidden skeletons. Once you realize how high the stakes are, the sadistic critical beating of American Carol no longer looks like an overreaction. In the words of Karl Marx it was "historically inevitable."
To get a better perspective I looked up reviews of a liberal comedy Religulous with Bill Maher that opened in theaters simultaneously with American Carol (in case you're wondering, Religulous was never labeled as "liberal," "left-wing," or even "political").
<Continued below>
By Oleg Atbashian
A unanimously negative media response to the political slapstick movie American Carol reinforces my theory that humor -- and satire in particular -- is an accurate litmus test of one's political and ideological convictions, even if one insists on having no convictions at all. If you want to check your friends' politics, take them to see this conservative comedy and watch the reaction.
Committed liberals won't laugh at conservative humor and vice versa. If they don't agree on the joke's basic philosophical premise, the sting will miss the spot and the joker will be shrugged off as a pathetic fool (for reference see conservative reaction to any of the David Letterman shows in the last ten years).
Besides, what kind of satire is that which doesn't show President Bush as a cross-eyed war-mongering idiot with a Hitler mustache? Without that minimum requirement film critics can't really be expected to rate a political comedy as groundbreaking, original, and funny. Looks like they all had prior commitments.
Am I implying that all American film critics are committed liberals? Not just yet -- we must psychoanalyze them first.
The fact that all critics -- who otherwise are a rather disunited bunch - displayed a monolithic unity in declaring American Carol "unfunny" speaks not so much about the new film as about their old allegiances in culture wars. Their infuriated braying from across the political minefields helps to identity their species and gives away the locations of minefields. The mischievous comedy worked like a flare sent from behind the enemy lines, exposing hostile fortifications and troop movements, causing commotion, and providing additional comic relief. It would be worth making American Carol just for that.
But if you're an academic pacifist and prefer a highbrow, non-violent analogy, consider likening American Carol to a yardstick that allows us empirically to measure the disconnect between the media and the American public.
On the one-stop movie website RottenTomatoes.com that rates films on a 100% scale, American Carol scored an almost unprecedented 0% from top critics, a miserable 13% from all critics, and a whopping 72% from the RT community (the community score would probably be higher if liberal activists didn't bomb it with zero ratings). For added objectivity I also made a comparative list of critical quotes. The results will astound you -- but more on that later.
To continue with analogies, American Carol can also be compared to an X-ray tool for studying the disparity between differently shaped funny bones in liberals and conservatives -- a phenomenon I had mentioned in my earlier analysis of liberal reaction to conservative humor.
Our perception of "funny" is part of our overall perception of reality and is inseparable from our values and beliefs. In this sense a random chuckle can be as telling as a knee jerk in the doctor's office, betraying our prejudices, attachments, and stereotypes. The switch that prompts us to either laugh or cry is the same one that prompts us to either love or hate. The selection is automatic, based on what we hold true or false, right or wrong, good or evil -- the subjective beliefs we all have, whether we are aware of them or not.
Subjective beliefs are shared by large groups of people: nations, cultures, political parties, and Oprah fan clubs. It's only natural to gravitate toward people who share our beliefs; we feel more comfortable with those whose reactions are consistent with ours. On the flip side, however, it's just as natural to see those who don't share our beliefs as wrong, depraved, and stupid.
And that's precisely what film critics must have felt when they were forced, due to the lack of screenings, to see American Carol in theaters, sitting next to the cheering and laughing fellow Americans: wrong, depraved, and stupid. Feeding off a different belief system than the rest of the country, the "mainstream media" critics were not amused with the jokes whose premise they didn't condone or even understand.
It's true that what makes people in one culture laugh may very well make people in another culture cry. But is there a kind of humor that is shared universally? Humor that can be equally funny to all nations, cultures, political groups, and film critics? Are there jokes that, instead if dividing us, can bring us closer together in celebration of our common humanity? Of course there are -- only such jokes usually involve pulling a finger. Anything above that level is liable to be found divisive, insensitive, and morally depraved.
For a better perspective let's take a step away from American Carol and look at Chevy Chase who was in raptures over the recent SNL lampooning of Sarah Palin, but slammed the parody of Hillary Clinton because it went against his moral beliefs. At the same time, my conservative friends and I found the SNL Hillary jokes hilarious -- just as we thought that American Carol was very funny. Some of the funniest people I know loved it as much as I did.
Now that we've agreed that our funny bones are shaped differently by our biases, let's review American Carol's cultural and historical premise -- the lingering, bitter ideological standoff between conservatives and liberals that permeates every aspect of American cultural and political discourse.
While this is an undoubtedly historic conflict of epic proportions, Hollywood is mostly keeping it under wraps of a mythical "mainstream" culture. The rare appearances of conservatives in mainstream movies and TV shows are limited to hypocritical, narrow-minded hicks who attack graceful liberals but lose in the end because liberals are intellectually, culturally, and morally superior to them and represent the majority of Americans. Paradoxically, outlandish intolerant rants by brain-dead liberal celebrities in real life are also presented as mainstream.
If the notion of two antagonistic cultures within this country is news to you, please be reminded about the reality of culture war and the fact that any war requires a minimum of two adversaries. There surely are other factions -- but for now they are all aligned into two distinct opposing camps that are loosely and rather misleadingly labeled "conservative" and "liberal."
Conservatives are trying to conserve the American revolutionary tradition of small government whose main duty is to make sure people are free to take care of themselves. Liberals, on the other hand, want to impose a foreign tradition of a massive government that takes care of the people in exchange for their liberties. Did I mention that labels were misleading?
To see who the aggressor in this culture war is, notice who is trying to preserve cultural values and who is trying to change or replace them.
Hollywood was one of the first American territories occupied by liberals in culture wars. The last conservative insurgency was briefly fought there back in the 1950s. That episode was later rewritten in a classic Hollywood fashion to present liberals as modest and noble heroes fighting the roaring conservative Goliath.
Soon thereafter Hollywood was churning out dozens of agitprop culture-war movies annually, showering money and Oscars on able radicals. But this year a small band of conservative Hollywood insurgents, risking their careers, produced one openly counter-propagandistic comedy about the very culture war that had forced them into the trenches in the first place. Of course American Carol was booed in Hollywood. What did you expect, an Oscar for best literary adaptation?
Denunciations by major film critics in the national media were echoed by an army of internet wannabes who tend to flock around the shortest rout to fame and fortune: liberal activism.
Brian Orndorf, whose film reviews appear on prestigious movie websites, calls American Carol a "lousy, hopeless movie, easily one of the worst films of the year" that "reinforces how needlessly divisive our country has become." But if the cultural division is so sizable that both groups can't even understand each other's jokes, isn't it best to acknowledge this fact and act accordingly instead of continuing to pretend and live in denial?
And what's with this "needlessly"? Aren't we supposed to "celebrate our differences"? What happened to the liberal doctrine of diversity? Or are there different kinds of differences and some differences are more different than others? Should we only celebrate those differences that conform to the party line and obfuscate those that are perpendicular to it? And isn't the latter closer to the actual meaning of "being diverse"?
The party line on this subject is clear: beat conservatives into pulp and if they resist accuse them of being "needlessly divisive." Anything less would legitimize conservatism and make it an equal partner in the cultural narrative. Because if the liberal narrative monopoly is shattered, down will go the "mainstream" cover of the liberal media, exposing decades of deception and hidden skeletons. Once you realize how high the stakes are, the sadistic critical beating of American Carol no longer looks like an overreaction. In the words of Karl Marx it was "historically inevitable."
To get a better perspective I looked up reviews of a liberal comedy Religulous with Bill Maher that opened in theaters simultaneously with American Carol (in case you're wondering, Religulous was never labeled as "liberal," "left-wing," or even "political").
<Continued below>
