John Nolte On Critics' Peevish Sneering Over Success of "The Expendables"

Which, damnit, I really wanted to see yesterday but didn't.

Nolte's got a point.

Critics aren’t dumb, they know the public doesn’t much care which way their thumbs point. But critics do know that based on their opinions and reviews they can enjoy an influence over what kind of films get made. And that’s not a small amount of power. Culture is upstream from politics, after all.

If you have 95 percent of critics savaging a faithful retelling of the Gospels as anti-Semitic, no matter how successful “The Passion” is, no one’s going to go near that subject matter again. And that’s the goal. Same with anything that comes close to patriotism or conservatism. Such cinematic rarities are frequently labeled “jingoistic, fascist or simple minded.” This is all done consciously and for a desired effect.

You have to understand that when I look at the critical community I only see it for what it really is: a journolista cabal of left wingers deeply engaged in a cultural and ideological war, deeply committed to shaping the powerful messaging of sound and fury that emanate from our pop culture masters.

He then catches an LAT "journalist" trying to do just that:

ut the Stallone picture — with its hard-charging, take-no-prisoners patriotism unbothered by the vagaries of the real world (it takes place in a fictional country, for starters) and its caricature of freedom-hating enemies (”We will kill this American disease,” as the TV spot enticed us) — planted itself squarely in the old-school genre. And this weekend, the movie showed that there’s life in that category yet. …

...

Political eras are, of course, rarely just one thing or another, and the movies we want to see in a given period are hardly monolithic. But as tempting as it is to infer that the success of “The Expendables” shows a deeper cultural need, it may well be the wrong inference. When times are confusing, we want movies to reflect that confusion, and even to make sense of it. But we probably don’t want to pretend that confusion doesn’t exist.

Nolte goes on to mock him for his supposition that dreary, muddled pieces of crap like Syriana are just outstanding filmmaking, and that films about clear-cut heroism just don't sell tickets anymore.

To get to that claim, the leftist is required to ignore successes like 300.

Or, Nolte himself forgot: Iron Man.

And On That Note: Psychologists (who are, let's face it, critics of the mind) caution that you shouldn't let your boys read superhero comics -- Superheroes are "too macho" and send "the wrong message."

posted by Ace at 10:50 PM

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