Libertarians are as Bad as Christians......

Miscellaneous General
1

when it comes to films. Yesterday I sat through a film that made me physically ill: Avatar- ponderous, self righteous, predictable and feels longer than the Lord of the Rings Extended editions spliced together. Yet some libertarians are praising it, but why? Because it has an anti-imperial message and allegedly advanced homesteading methods. http://blog.mises.org/archives/011295.asp What is lacking is an appreciation of the film as an art form itself.

Many people rightly deride Christians for this when they think a film is amazing since it promotes Christian values and when they decry it when it “has content issues”. See here and here for really bad examples. You’d think reading these most Christians haven’t read their Bibles- Judges I think has rather a lot of “content issues” such as gang rape.

Seemingly though this is fine when it comes to libertarian films in our circles; hence the praise of Avatar and the condemnation of Goodfellas, well from Rothbard at least (and just for the record I’m not a huge fan of Goodfellas). If “we” keep doing this we will rightly percieved as shallow and merely using art as propaganda. A film can be technically fantastic yet morally questionable; my favourite film of all time, The Trial directed by Orson Welles, is an existentialist and somewhat anti-Christian film and I’m a Christian. Now that’s not to say there are elements to affirm in the films world view since there are many.

This brings me back to Avatar and its main message which is primitives are in tune with nature, yay!!! and evil modernity is against nature bad!!! Now it is also obviously anti-imperial but that misses the wood because of the trees. The whole point of the appropriation the flying beasts isn’t to show a great innovative way of homesteading but show, again, that the primitives are in tune with nature. That isn’t to say that it can’t be used as an example of innovative homesteading but just that it wasn’t the point.

Some Christian reviewers have done a similar thing with Pixar’s excellent Up. The film does promote family values and general good morals. However at the heart of the film is humanistic: Charles Muntz follows his life’s goal to find this incredibly rare bird- this is his meta-narrative which ultimately turns him evil. Other reasons to suppose this is that he is also clearly associated with the Nazi’s with his use of airships and his German surname- Nazi’s imply absolutism. The protangonist, the old geezer, starts off wanting an adventure but realises that the really adventure is the little things in life and sees the problems of an overarching goal; life is made up of the little things. All in all then- meta-narrative bad plus little things good equal humanism. Now this is far more subtle in Up than the romantic naturism in Avatar but it is clearly there and any perceptive viewer should pick up on it.

At this point I think it is pertinent to point out that art is not like prose and putting a banner that Jesus, or Rothbard, saves accross the screen does no-one any good. It is seriously hokey and people will se through it. Art at its best does not tell, as logical argument and prose do, but shows. The main theme in Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, which is my favourite film of the year (although I think it came out over in teh USA in 2008), is the importance of fathers and the consquences of not having one or having a bad one. yet at no point in the do we get a ponderous discussion of it; the theme is woven into the fabric of the narrative. Contrast this with the Left Behind books in which the anti-christ is commented by many characters to be an amazing orator, yet at this point we only ever read him speaking hello in lots of different languages to the UN delagates.

In summary we should judge art firstly on its own terms and then engage its worldview. There can be good socialist films and bad libertarian films and we need to be able to distinguish them. Now there are great films which are also libertarian such as the Trial and great TV serials such as the original Prisoner series. If we can be seen to be taking art seriously then we might get more serious libertarian film makers. And if we truly believe that libertarianism corresponds to our nature then serious libertarian films should be more affecting than non-libertarian films since the former correspond most closely with reality.

2

The only film ‘values’ film I really enjoyed was the Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut by Ridley Scott. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. I agree with what you are saying, which is why I don’t watch much TV or go to the theater very often. I’ll be skipping this Avatar film as well.

3

I think opinions are split rather than there being any consensus. Some libertarians may identify some elements of the movie as having associations with libertarian themes. Others see more of the same Hollywood socialist drivel. Bit unfair to throw everyone under the “libertarians are bad” bus, about as much as it is to throw all Christians under the “Christians are bad” bus.

I’ve stated my opinions of the film (you’ve provided the link). I don’t find the film to be libertarian per se, neither do I find it to be a good film from an artistic point of view. Visually, yes it’s quite good. It’s quite obvious that this film had to have the technology developed in order to be made; without it the film falls flat on its face. I found the story was too predictable and cliche, the characters were flat, the dialog was extremely cheesy, and I left with the feeling that this was just a 2 hour and 46 minute propaganda picture for the Green movement, which is decidely socialist.

4

I agree with you. In another post I said that Avatar is yet another case of Rousseau sneaking up into mainstream conscience.

As an art form… well this film cost hundreds of millions and surely has stunning special effects. But District 9 cost a paltry $ 15 millions and can keep up with anything Hollywood has to offer. And if we want to talk about cost-effectiveness in the CGI department nothing beats that Finnish parody, Star Wreck, made by three blokes in a shed.

5

Now obviously I’m not saying all Christians and all Libertarians have an undeveloepd aesthetic, since I’m a Christian and Libertarian this is manifest, but it it is generally true from my experience and the cause is the same with both Christians and Libertarians as outlined above. To see this in action you just need to read the Must See Movies thread: there is very little discussion of the artisitic virtues of the films and it focuses primarily on the message. Another example is Jeff Tucker’s Dark Knight essay which oddly interprets it as libertarian and focuses again primarily on the message. For an alternative view see here.

I’ve just read your review in its entirety and I must say you hit the nail on the head with the possible exception of who started the confilct. From the way it was put together it would seem that humans came and wanted to mine but that the natives wouldn’t agree to let them on their land so the humans tried a bit of strong arming but realised they were stronger than they thought. So they tried diplomacy whilst racking up the daisy cutters.

6

Gran Torino was awesome. Can’t believe you didn’t like Goodfellas though, that’s one of my favorite movies of all time.

7

The problem I felt with the Goodfellas was that the individual episodes of Ray Liota’s life weren’t that inetersting on their own nor did they amount ot a coherent narrative. I don’t hate it like Rothbard, I just think it is overhyped and is just better than average.

8

I was talking about this the other day, because an environmentalist socialist can look at the movie, and a worldly anarchist, can both look at a work of art and see polar opposite things. But, within the story of Avatar I can see some very worthwhile morals, although most certianly are not the ones most people would pick. But indeed isn’t this why we are different and individuals? Because two people can look at two things and see different values impressed there in? Avatar an easily be made into a film supporting property rights, pacifism (and the right to self defence), and the pursuit of hapiness.

9

Well unless you’re a deconstuctionist then the author exists and he has a message. Now some people will pick up different things but we must be clear on what was intended and that which could be used to show another point. For an example take the choosing of the flying beasts. Its main point was one of intiation rite as a man and to show again teh primitives are in tune with nature- that was the point. Now you can use it to show an elaborate homesteading method a la Kinsella but that really wasn’t the poiint and we should keep these distinct.

10

Conclusion: James Cameron failed to communicate the main theme of his movie coherently, and thus the result is massive confusion.

11

Libertarian or not, my problem with 2012 was that it was superdumb. All the idiots made the wrong decisions always.

12

Libertarian websites satisfy the demand for libertarian viewpoints. So they will provide a libertarian take on this movie or the other.

That does not mean libertarians may not enjoy a movie that has nothing to say about any libertarian themes, but if they do then they are not going to write about it on a libertarian website, because that is not why people visit them.

13

Good point.

Value systems prescribe neither complexity and richness nor simplicity and shallowness. There are many different reasons why a person would like a particular film or other work of art. There are many - a nearly endless amount - of lenses with which to view the creative imprint left behind by others. A person may like a film because of purely aesthetic reasons, ideological reasons, because they saw the movie at the right time in their lives and it helped them through something, etc. The list could go on and on. This is why a list of “libertarian” films isn’t a bad thing on a pro-liberty website. There are going to be other lenses overlapping every opinion, including ones given on this site, but taking one as a guideline for analysis is a way to write an interesting article on a piece of work… I don’t see anything illegitimate about it, per se.

I like the post-rock genre of music, for example, because many of the songs written from that perspective come out with a lot of grandness and structure which reflects my sense of life as being an amazingly worthwhile adventure, but also retains the sonic textures of much rock music (like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr., etc.) which reflects the mystery and danger lurking around every corner.

What does that have with libertarianism or politics at all, for that matter? I suppose I could stretch things a bit, but that isn’t what sells me on the stuff as being enjoyable to me and worthy of my time… in that particular case. Maybe one day I could write a libertarian music review or whatever but I probably wouldn’t write about post-rock as a genre… I’d write about the 60’s psychedelic garage-rock phenomenon which emerged in Cambodia but was crushed by Mao, or something.

It’s all what pair of shades you wanna wear viewing a particular topic. For art, aesthetics is a good starting point, but not the only one.

14

What is a Libertarian take? I’d assume that this would mean accurately reprensenting the message of the film and then critquing it from a Libertarian standpoint. However what has been done is to misconstrue the message of the film to say something it wasn’t saying. That isn’t to say that aspects of it can’t be used to show the inconsistency of a message or to show that a certain scene can be used to show something completely different than it was intended to be used for.

Well that’s obviously true. But it does not follow that they should misrepresent the film for their own purposes or demonstrate a complete lack of artistic discernment.