Hollywood's Political Scorecard: the Capitalists & Socialists

Many will say that a movie is only a movie, nothing more; I say, the movies are everything, literally, because it takes everything within a culture at a specific moment in history to make that movie. A film contains a story, and a story contains all the morals, values, norms, taboos, anxieties and dreams of the audience it aspires to reach. If films didn't properly reflect what society thinks and feels, there wouldn't be any films, there wouldn't be any art at all if art wasn't capable and supposed to do that exact task and no one has greater influence than Hollywood: from news about celebrities we are constantly bombarded with, to the discs we slip into our home media players in the privacy of our homes, Hollywood has an enormous role in shaping our opinions and beliefs, are ideals and our dreams.

Today Snow White and the Huntsman is released world wide. I am catching the earliest showing of it today, will be posting my initial reactions to the film via Twitter and desperately trying to get my post of it up tonight. (I have cleared the day to do just this so hopefully it will be successful). I would like to take a moment to pause and tally up where Hollywood stands regarding the political debate of November's elections. I predicted that 2012's historical significance as an election year would be important to the film industry and I was accurate in that; what I so happily failed to realize was how many major Hollywood productions would buck the trend in supporting the liberal agenda of the current political administration, so let's just pause to take a look at the political landscape in Hollywood.

Films that can be considered as occupying a pro-capitalist/pro-America or politically conservative agenda:
The Artist: it won Best Picture at the Oscars, but most importantly, it bucked the idea that artists--specifically film makers, should not be a part of the capitalist system. Making the case that the innovations of "talkie" films was for the best, in spite of some actors from the silent era being unemployed, The Artist successfully bonds art to the economy for the good of the industry and the individuals (the country as well).
Mirror, Mirror, Battleship, The Chernobyl Diaries, Men In Black III, Gone, Man On a Ledge, John Carter, The Grey, A Better Life, The Raven Moneyball, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (post is forthcoming), Act Of Valor, Lockout.

The Avengers: clearly a capitalist film, and a record breaking film, Iron Man's billionaire Tony Stark not only saves the "ship of state" by using his knowledge to fix the engines of the SHIELD organization after they have been attacked by alien invaders, but then risks his life to to get them running again. Tony  risks his life again to avert "the attack on Manhattan" and deliver the nuclear bomb to the attackers of New York City, rather than let New York's financial landscape suffer the kind of fate all New York suffered in 9/11.

"A ghost story for the minimum wage" lets us know that when we fail in being competitive in the market, we are locked into minimum wage jobs, equivalent to death for us because we fail in driving ourselves to improve and develop ourselves to do better, for our own ends and those of society. Claire being condemned to "stay in the inn" as one of the ghosts haunting it is literally an "unnatural state" (the dead should die, not go on living after the die) just as the inn taking care of her instead of her taking care of the inn.

The Innkeepers: because of references within the film, and Claire obviously having no skills to do anything, and the fact that she dies (which is a punishment in art), I have to say that Claire going from being "an innkeeper" to the inn "keeping her" is a similarity of the state "keeping someone" in terms of providing care for them; that being an "undead" is as unnatural a state of being as the state taking care of you is. 

Yes, some images are worth a thousand words, but not the billions it took to bail out the auto industry; Project X's accurate indication of the auto industry's luxury accommodations courtesy of the Obama administration, courtesy of tax payers, can't be summarized any other way.

In 1726, English author Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, one of the greatest satires ever penned; Project X is of the same, gross and disturbing caliber, depicting the irresponsible behavior of the Democratic "Party" in the artificial means of "floating the economy" (the dog tied up with balloons), mortgages "under water" (the neighborhood being torched than flooded by helicopters above) the disrespect towards Republicans and Tea Party members asking for the accountability that Obama promised in his campaigns (the neighbor confronting Costa about the party going on and the damage they are doing).

Just as it is unnatural for dogs to fly, so it's unnatural to create artificial "floaters" to stimulate the economy and keep it floating because doing that never ever works, as we have discovered billions of dollars later. When Thomas' father tells his son he didn't think he had it in him to throw that kind of a party, most of America didn't think the government didn't have it in them to wreck this kind of destruction upon their own country.

The liberal media's refusal to accurately report news (Dax the camera man only video taping the neighbor punching the "child" in the face and not the fact that the neighbor had been tasered by him first), is also taken up , as well as the plethora of homosexuality, especially among the young females constantly kissing each other and taking their clothes off at the drop of a hat (the fake "freedom" supported by pro-abortion Feminists in the Democratic "Party") and finally, if all of this isn't enough, Costa stealing condoms from a store because "he shouldn't have to pay" for his own birth control; the irony is, at the end of the film, there are three paternity tests against him, so the condoms didn't work anyway.

Films that are socialist/liberal/pro-Obama or anti-capitalist:
The Descendants, The Three Musketeers, The Vow, The Hunger Games, Dark Shadows, The Pirates! Band Of Misfits. This is a rare time when I will bow to pressure from others, but everyone insists that The Ides Of March is a pro-Democrat film, so I list it here, even thought I can't (upon examination of it) see how, in any way, it supports the Democrats because of the issues of abortion, the trade unions, the affairs with the interns, etc.

The destructive monsters unleashed by the Democrats' behavior that threatens the world.

There are films such as The Lorax, The Wrath Of the Titans, The Secret World of Arrietty and The Dictator which seem to rise above the political squabbles and make conservative commentary on where the country is headed, but aren't necessarily taking sides. What about a film like Margin Call? Can't that be considered anti-capitalist? Many would consider the greed-driven decisions and unethical behavior depicted in the film to be a fabulous case against capitalism; in the history of film, however, this has always been done. Capitalism, we all know, works in cycles, and there are bad people in the world taking advantage of other people; the problem isn't with the system, however, but the fault lies with the people within the system, spending more than $80,000 on prostitutes is a great example, because that kind of behavior wouldn't go away with socialism, but it can be brought out in art and, hopefully, corrected.

Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. from Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows. Anti-capitalist? It would be easy to argue that if Moriarty didn't have all that money, he wouldn't be able to start the war; I've learned, however, that just because an argument is easy to make, doesn't mean it's a good argument. It's the socialists in the beginning of the film who are doing all the bombings and destroying everything, and Moriarty's designs to wage war are the typical vehicle for morality lessons by which film usually engages the audience in an encouragement to do good, not evil.

What about films coming up?
Both GI Joe Retaliation and Jack the Giant Killer have been moved to release next year; pity, they won't be nearly as relevant. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will most likely be a pro-socialist film. The Amazing Spider Man... I can't say, but if I had to wager a bet, it would be that it will be pro-socialist, even though the Obama administration wouldn't bail me out for the faulty gamble I took but I still have to pay my tax dollars to bail out Wall Street. Prometheus, being released next week will probably be a lot like Avatar, watered-down and liberal.
The big splash still to be made is The Dark Knight Rises.

I desperately want to see the billionaire hero Bruce Wayne put down the rabble rousing against the country but there is a good chance that most of the footage we see in the trailer isn't in the film; that's just a guess. Mr. Christopher Nolan, the director, is very secretive, justifiably so, but I don't think anything substantial can be deduced from the trailers. We do have a hint, albeit, not much of one, from his earlier film Inception. The purpose of Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) doing the last inception job was to incite Robert Fischer Jr (Cillian Murphy) to break up his father's company so Saito (Ken Watanbe) could compete and not go out of business. The vast majority of good capitalists are against monopolies, it prohibits competition and reduces consumer choice and power; the question is, is that why Mr. Nolan wrote the script as such?
We'll soon find out.
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