Movies and Politics: What movies are your kids going to watch?

No review is a replacement for actually watching with your kids, but it's getting harder and harder for parents to avoid the trap that has all parents in the house working and the tv filling in as babysitter, so ...

Recent movies that seemed relatively indoctrination-free and were fun:

Despicable Me 2 (very funny)
Monsters U
Wreck-It Ralph
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians

Recent movies that are heavily liberalized:

Escape From Earth
Para-Norman
Fun Size (not really appropriate for kids or pre-teens at all, but is marketed and billed as a kids' movie)

Beautiful Creatures (again, more for older teens, but marketed to the Twilight age-group)

A fun movie that I've had mixed feelings about is The Croods, not because it is overtly liberalized but because I think that the cautious conservatism of the namesake family is meant as a caricature of conservatism.  Your kids are more likely to get out of it a celebration of individual innovation, but the filmmakers seem to mean it as an allegory of "coming around," "evolving" views, and getting over conservative "phobias" and prejudices.

Movie Review: Beautiful Creatures

Not that this will reassure everyone, but, hey, it's better than Twilight.  Aside from some silly caricatures it's kind of a smart, funny movie at a time that we've been inundated with movies about teenagers and young jobless adults coming to grips with various supernatural powers in a supernatural world.

The silly caricatures I mention do figure into the messaging that I really want to discuss here.  The worst is Emma Thompson's depiction of a Southern church lady.  We see her tormenting her teenage son over Bible lessons at the beginning, and afterward her son disparages her by wondering aloud to his friend how loving Jesus can make her so crazy.  This, dear reader, is how the Left sees the South, the Bible Belt, and most of church-going America.  In case you miss the point, this character later exclaims before the whole town that “atheists, homosexuals, liberals, Democrats, and Greenpeace" are, along with the movie's witches, the sort of “unnatural abominations” from which they are obligated to protect their town.  This caricaturish delivery isn't just limited to Thompson but is supported by the most superficial high school girls in town being the most religious.  They even pray in class, which the teacher reminds them is not allowed.  Is there anything political about "prayer in school" being depicted as something intended to offend and isolate?  The movie also ridicules the idea of evil being something promoted or led by a powerful spirit (i.e. Satan); spirits merely inform powerful wizard humans, silly!  They don't actually wield power of their own!  By the way, what is The Dark that claims some witches on their 16th birthday?  Is that some kind of sentient entity?

To be fair, the movie develops a meaningful spiritual theme, and even has a minister's sermon support that theme.  One of the most knowledgeable people in the "wizarding world" of this film is a woman who does in fact go to church and believe in God, but this curt nod is practically lost in all the attempts to compare religion unfavorably with the leftist notion of embracing the world and embracing ideas.  One of the few "muggles" in the town to be introduced to this dark underworld of magic, we are informed, claims the local library as her church, and her love of "ideas" she finds there is presented as much more valuable and cosmopolitan than the theological ideas in their local church.  Getting out of your parents' little town and getting that larger view of the world at a university filled with anti-conservative messages is what frees the soul from its shackles.  Otherwise, one might just end up like the ultra-stupid religious folks in the movie; or worse, married to one of them.

The filmmakers probably think they are being subtle and ironic by making the superficially good to be bad and the superficially bad to be Christ-like.  It is the irony that is superficial and anything but subtle.  Behold the face of evil:

Crazy church lady

Based on other movies  reviewed on this blog, I'll give it a 7.0 on the Lib-o-meter for its barely restrained secular liberalism.

Escape From America, I Mean, Escape From Planet Earth

Another children's film planting liberal messages in the minds of your children.  Because there just aren't enough liberal messages bombarding our kids as they grow up.  I give this maybe an 8.3 on the Lib-o-meter (or Progresso-meter for those identifying with the Woodrow Wilson fascists since the hippies have gotten a bad rap).

Over all, it's cute.  Funny in a few places, nice sentiments, but over all, a little on the mediocre side.  Not as forgettable as Space Chimps or as boring as Mars Needs Moms.   But as at least one other reviewer has noted: "there are a lot of liberal political undertones that parents should note."

We got the tired mean army guy stereotype (as seen in the sci-fi film Avatar) amalgamated with the other tired kill-the-aliens-before-they-get-you stereotype.  The most original play on the former stereotype has been in Monsters vs. Aliens, which was surprisingly good. For the latter stereotype see James Woods in Contact.  It seems to be written to play into the tired anti-Bush narrative of the evil conservative that wants to decimate other nations on the off-chance that they might pose a danger to us.  (Slightly better than the evil conservative that does it to build an oil pipeline.)  The "conservative" folly of The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Yes, this is about the uselessness of fear and warmongering.  While the recent Avengers movie plays favorably against most Hollywood movies on the Lib-o-meter, there is a cynical skepticism about the need to develop advanced weaponry after Earth is invaded by a powerful immortal villain, soon to be followed by an army of powerful villains.  Yes, to a Progressive that believes that citizens needs to be unarmed and dismantling your weapons is the key to stopping the aggression of totalitarian political movements, this makes a whole lotta sense.  (Though it sure wasn't the key to the Berlin Wall coming down.)  Enter the current administration that believes in having no more weapons of mass destructing than the next nation, does believe in arming genocidal radicals so they can have the anti-American theocracy they've been dreaming of, and believes that only police and government agents should be armed.  Oh, it's a liberal fascist dream.

The point is, your children need to be taught that a person who wants weapons to be safe or thinks that he or she is under any threat is paranoid and dangerous and wants desperately to kill and destroy.  Or so the moviemakers think.  They were probably as disappointed as Chris Matthews that the Boston bombers weren't Tea Partiers from some anti-government militia group.

And what is the biggest threat to our planet?  The best alien minds of the galaxy answer that for your kids: It's Global Warming, kids!  In the 80s, the answer probably would have been nuclear holocaust, as played up in the movie Dreamscape.  That liberal trope is old news, since the success of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy.  Global Warming is now the narrative of choice for the progressive trend toward the One World Government.

This even makes its way into this movie, which blames our wars on our silly division into nations.   Yep, borders lead to wars, just like property lines and fences lead to breaking-and-entering.  I mean, all China needed to end the wars between its states was a ruthless Emperor to force them to be one country, which was the message of the Jet Li flick Hero.

The liberals that made this movie were not content with these as the only progressive messages in the film.  The movie is deliberately vague on the gender of the Grey Aliens, but the Greys turn out to all have male voices, and in the final scene of the movie, it is revealed that the three Grey Aliens are a married unit. Not a married couple, if you catch my meaning.  It happens so fast, most reviewers didn't even notice it.  As they share kleenexes while witnessing the exchange of wedding vows, one alien says to the other two, "Let's never break up, guys."  Same sex polygamy, folks.  Boy, when liberals set out to do a children's movie, they go all out.  Personally, I think there's something very cynical about it.

So, while Fun Size beats this at a 9.6 on the Lib-o-meter, and so does Para-Norman with an 8.7, the libs would love to introduce your kids to their more inclusive, less fearful universe with Escape From Planet Earth.  While reminding the young audience that it is the U.S. that is particularly stupid about alien invaders (unlike the more general story of the sci-fi District 9), they decided not to call it "Escape From America," something liberal radicals are often promising to do, but rarely follow through on.

Fun Size: Liberal Adventures in Babysitting

Fun Size reminded me a little superficially of Adventures in Babysitting.  Both were essentially teen movies that targeted a pre-teen audience (an ugly trend) partly by using a pre-teen character.  The Elizabeth Shue vehicle had its share of vulgarity and wasn't really all that appropriate, but the vulgarity is much more incidental in AiB than in Fun Size.  But hey, a lot happens in 25 years.

But making a movie for pre-teens that is overly sexualized, glamorizes teen sex, and has a giant rooster humping a car isn't the main point of this post.

I wanted to point out the little political advertisements to be seeded in the minds of young people. Please let me know if there is a similar movie that is as conservative-friendly as this is liberal-friendly.

1) Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  One of the smart kids is so smart and sophisticated she thinks of dressing up for Halloween as Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg, as she is a "feminist icon."

2) E. O. Wilson.  One of the smart, sophisticated kids thinks of being E.O. Wilson  for Halloween.  I don't think they explain other than that he's a famous sociobiologist.  E.O. Wilson promotes evolutionary biology as the foundational understanding of our humanity and nature.  He has an outlook that aside from its religious overtones and its sweeping grandeur, is much more aligned with liberalism.  Is that what gets smart kids all excited about Wilson or is it his handy "butterfly net."

3)  Katie Couric.  One of the few times the frat boys aren't saying something vulgar, it's to compliment a woman by comparing her to Katie Couric.  Katie Couric.  Couric is pretty, but that's the journalist that comes ot mind for this frat boy?   Katie Couric.  'Nuff said. (Any odds on a non-vulgar beauty nod to Megyn Kelly, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, S.E. Cupp, etc...)

4) "My moms."  The smart, sophisticated boy is raised by a stereotypically liberal same-sex couple.  He mentions his "moms" all the time.  He's very close to his momzzz.  He'd never lie to his moms.  He always listens to his moms.  He talks to his moms.  He loves his moms.  Moms. Moms. Moms.  (Meanwhile, I hear that the "Glee" show has decided to change its name to "My Two Dads" since most of the original viewership has moved on anyway.)

5) Obama.  Okay, we meet the "moms."  In case we have any doubts where these ancient Greek-spouting green-conscious sophisticants are about, you'll see them handcrafting a big oversized jolly portrait of good-natured Obama.  Gosh, liberals are so smart and sophisticated.  

6) Raise your hand.  Just to throw it out there, a boy asks a room full of girls if anyone wants to kiss him.  One boy quickly raises his hand and quickly lowers it before he is noticed.

Is it desperation or overweening pride or both that have filmmakers so out of the liberal closet with their early proselytizing?

Now this all wouldn't be so bad if there was that other kind of movie.  The fun movie for kids in which the following things occur.  A smart kid wants to be Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell (Oh, that's right; there's that "scandal"--and why didn't the NAACP defend him?) because they are black intellectual icons or conservative icons or black conservative icons, and why wouldn't smart kids want to acknowledge them?  How 'bout some obviously conservative parents who are also obviously smart and compassionate.  (Oops, Hollywood folk know that there are no such people, because the liberal icons tell them so.)  Maybe some conservative kids that rally around and protect bullied kids.  Hey, Hollywood has also been about showing the way the world should be rather than the way it is, so the industry's total inability to perceive these things shouldn't hinder their ability to imagine.  And Hollywood'll be finally showing 55% of Americans that they don't hate everything about them and can actually think outside their narrow narrative.

Like that'll happen.