The cinetrix should state for the record that she has not seen, nor does she ever intend to see, either The Exorcism of Emily Rose or Just Like Heaven. Flicks like these make her happy that, amateur status intact, sitting through schlock is not part of the ol' job description.
Poor Tony Scott is not so lucky. In Sunday's Times he tries to make sense of the whole red state-shift at the multiplex for the blue state readers of the Gray Lady. Here's what he comes up with:
the myth of a monolithically liberal Hollywood is dead
Not exactly a newsflash, even for New Yorkers. Problem is, Scott still has several column inches to go. So the gentle reader is subjected to such earthshattering revelations as this: Christians have money to spend on entertainment! You know, like going to the movies? I know, I didn't believe it either, but it's true! Somehow they're now a niche market!
[B]ig movies, hit movies, movie-star movies - remain one of the few
pop-cultural forms that are supposed to appeal to everyone. The oldest
and fondest dream in Hollywood has been that it might represent, and
thus sell tickets to, a public ruled by harmony and consensus. Those
ideals may seem especially hard to come by these days, but we should
not let old movies convince us that the old days were that much less
contentious than the present. Indeed, the divisive aspects of American
life - the half-hidden conflicts of race, class, place and creed - have
traditionally been smoothed over on screen.
But there is an equally long tradition of trying to see through the
pretty, pandering pictures. Hunting for ideological subtexts in
Hollywood movies is a critical parlor game. Many a term paper has been
written decoding the varieties of cold war paranoia latent in the
westerns and science-fiction movies of the 1950's. Now, thanks to the
culture wars and the Internet, the game of ideological unmasking is one
that more and more people are playing. With increasing frequency, the
ideology they are uncovering is conservative, and it seems to spring
less from the cultural unconscious than from careful premeditation.
I love the game of ideological unmasking, don't you? [All the best grad-school dropouts know how to play, dontcha know. And now, thanks to the Interweb, the hoi polloi can learn how, too.] Here, I'll be red--I'm always red. OK, so The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a thinly disguised position paper advocating "intelligent design," and Just Like Heaven resets Terri Schiavo as an active ectoplasm with a happy ending. And they're both about women, for a change. Yeah, there must be some sort of hidden agenda. Your turn, Tony.
Would I have been happier if Elizabeth died? The very absurdity of
the question - what kind of romantic comedy would that be? - is
evidence of the film's ingenuity. Who could possibly take the side of
medical judgment when love, family, supernatural forces and the very
laws of genre are on the other side? And who would bother to notice
that the villainous, materialistic doctor, despite having the
religiously neutral last name Rushton, is played by Ben Shenkman, a bit
of casting that suggests a faint, deniable whiff of anti-Semitism?
Similarly, it can't mean much that Elizabeth, the ambitious career
woman, is sad and unfulfilled in contrast to her married,
stay-at-home-mom sister. Or that the last word you hear (uttered by Jon Heder, first seen in "Napoleon Dynamite") is "righteous."
The ingenuity of "Just Like Heaven" is that it does not insist on
its righteousness. Its spiritual conceits are not associated with the
doctrines of any particular religion, and its humor, while studiously
clean, never feels prim or self-conscious. "Emily Rose," which also
casts doctors among its villains and favors supernaturalism over
science, is a bit more overt with its message. While "Just Like Heaven"
is content with a vague, ecumenical supernaturalism, "Emily Rose" wants
to tell you, like the old Louvin Brothers song, that Satan is real. Or,
at the very least, that we should be open to the possibility that
demonic possession might offer a better explanation for the title
character's torments than the diagnoses listed in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual.
Talk about ideological unmasking! We now know that A.O. Scott likes to brag about his record collection and probably even gives money to WFMU. The Louvin Brothers is a nice pull, to be sure, but if you're gonna find Jews in the woodpile of central casting, why not go all the way and point out that Napoleon Dynamite was the work of Mormons? Oooh, conspiracy!
The cinetrix should point out here that she hasn't seen Napoleon Dynamite, either, but the film academics over on the geeky list-serv are all in a swivet about why the kiddies love it so. Their hope is that the slow pace will teach the indie kids how to dance to Antonioni again. Riiiight.
But my question is, pace the profs and Scott, should we be worried about the liger? Forget stem cell research in The Island--are the LDS filmmakers advancing a sinister GMO agenda?
I know, I know. It's only a movie. And "Reading From Left to Right" is only a newspaper think piece, albeit a lazy one that ends on this facile "provocative" note:
Will liberals now have a chance to complain, as conservatives have for
so long, that Hollywood is ideologically biased and out of touch with
its audience? Will we ever be able to sit back and say, "It's only a
movie"? I hope not. The arguments we are having among ourselves are too
loud and insistent to be drowned out or silenced in the false comfort
of the movie theater.
Ah, but who is this "ourselves," anyway? The cinetrix spent the weekend reading papers on William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience ["The Lamb" + "The Tiger" = The Liger?] written by good conservative Southern Christian kids who love reading the Bible and listening to the Postal Service. Oh, brave new world.
Vote for Pedro.
Tonight's 7 p.m. Two Boots Pioneer Theater screening of filmmaker Therese Shechter's documentary feature I Was a Teenage Feminist is reportedly sold out. But if you're in New York, you should still try to worm your way in because Shechter is asking the big questions about the f-word:
