Raise Your Hand If You’re Not Shocked
By Mitch Berg
Speaking of Red Dawn, from yesterday’s discussion; once I heard that Hollywood – as in Big Hollywood, not John Milius, the author and director of the original – was going to remake the movie, I wondered: in today’s PC environment, just who would be air-dropping into our plucky Colorado town?
I figured the most likely suspects would be:
- Fundamentalist white Christians
- Jewish settlers
- Catholic Priests
- Wall Street Hedge-Fund Managers
So I was almost relieved – and only briefly so – to see the breakdown, from a leaked version of the script:
The bad guys/invaders will now be the Red Chinese, who knocks off America in the first 20 pages, and gets help from those stinkin’ Russians later in the movie. The cause of the invasion? Oil, of course.
I did say briefly, didn’t I?
There are hints that America is kinda to blame, too. In today’s PC environment, that’s not too much of a surprise.
– Our heroes: Jed is now a former Marine back from Iraq and Matt his high school star quarterback brother; Erica is now an Asian-American cheerleader; and Danny is the African-American star running back
. Basically, all the original characters will return (including keeping the same names) but as different archetypes.
I dunno. I don’t see quite the same angst about the Chinese.
(Yet).
May 12th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Oil? So those dastardly Chi-Comms want all the shale in the Rockies and access to the reserves on the Continental Shelf? Oh well, it’s not llike we were using them.
I suppose in the new version the movie ends with the Sierra Club coming in and kicking butt.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I’ve told my Red Dawn story before, but I’ll tell it again.
Saw it a couple times in high school in the theater in Minot ND. First time, there were a lot of folks from the air base there, and it was a raucous movie experience. Cheering when the Wolverines had a success against the baddies, chants of U-S-A!, and so forth. Just great fun.
So, we decided to bring some of our gal friends to the movie. But the second time, it was an entirely different crowd. Somber, absolutely no cheering, sadness when a beloved character died, etc… The gals thought we were nuts for bringing them to such a downer of a movie.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
. Basically, all the original characters will return (including keeping the same names) but as different archetypes.
Which one will turn out to be gay?
May 12th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Kind of takes the thrill out of “Wolverines!” when the Chinese invade us because they want to get back the money we borrowed.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Which one will turn out to be gay?
The one in a monogamous, supporting relationship built on mutual respect.
Lately I’ve seen several films where the point seems to be to compare healthy gay relationships with destructive heterosexual relationships. More propaganda from our betters in the arts community. Completely divorced from reality, of course, as propaganda always is.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Terry says:
“Lately I’ve seen several films where the point seems to be to compare healthy gay relationships with destructive heterosexual relationships. More propaganda from our betters in the arts community. Completely divorced from reality, of course, as propaganda always is. ”
What? Um, I actually do know a few long term healthy monogamous healthy gay relationships, and more than a few destructive heterosexual relationships, as well as destructive homosexual relationships, and of course the ever popular mainstream healthy heterosexual relationship.
HOW is that progaganda? Because I have to tell ya, no matter how healthy that monogamous homosexual relationship is shown to be, on screen OR between real people, I’m not going to change my emphatically heterosexual orientation. I don’t know anyone who would.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the character of Jed, the former Marine, turn out to be a gay character, discharged from Iraq under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, given the HBO documentary about a gay marine who served in Iraq, and the current press by groups like “Knight’s Out” for that legislation to be repealed. Not necessarily because the film makers have a strong opinion, but more because of the subject being topical.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Strong opinion? Hollywood? Got Milk?
May 12th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Correction – it was a show time production, Semper Fi: a soldier’s story, a film of the one man show by and about Jeff Key.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Dog Gone, if you were shown films that contrasted healthy hetero relationships with disfunctionial gay relationships that would be propaganda, too. Not propaganda directed to make straight people gay, but propaganda intended to make straight people (who make up the largest portion of the audience) think that gay relationships are unhealthy. Duh.
Not necessarily because the film makers have a strong opinion, but more because of the subject being topical.
Hollywood _decides_ what is topical. Our victory over Saddam Hussein & al Qaida in Iraq is of far greater import to the nation than the status of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’. Where are the movies about that?
Anybody who has paid the slightest attention to what has come out of Hollywood lately can see that it is Hollywood’s goal to normalize homosexual relationships, not because it’s the right thing to do, or because people are demanding it, but because it has become fashionable to do so.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
You mean like American Beauty? Suburban hetrosexual deviancy writ large with the 5 majors Oscars to bestowed.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
The movies with this theme I have seen recently are Wilby Wonderful and some utterly forgettable Luke Wilson pic that I can’t ID.
The Wilby Wonderful film had a scene where the gay couple — without a personality fault between them — sit in a truck discussing how their relationship can work when there are so many bigots in their small town. They have to break off their conversation to rescue girl who is being date-raped by her boyfriend. There is also an evil mayor who wants plants hypodermic needles in the local park so he can justify turning it into a golf course.
Luckily the brother of one of the gay guys is the chief of police. He brings the mayor to justice. The films ends with one of the gay guys visiting the other in the hospital. He has attempted and failed to kill himself . . . because of the bigotry!
May 12th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Did I mention the only “normal” people in American Beauty were the two gay partners? And straight Kevin Spacey blackmails his soon-to-be former boss with threats of homosexual exposure?
Great film. All American.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Dog Gone said:
“HOW is that progaganda? Because I have to tell ya, no matter how healthy that monogamous homosexual relationship is shown to be, on screen OR between real people, I’m not going to change my emphatically heterosexual orientation. I don’t know anyone who would.”
Perhaps you are not a child anymore.
Bill Bennett quoted Plato tonight “the most important questions that determine the course of civilization are who teaches the children and what they are taught”.
May 13th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Troy says:
“Perhaps you are not a child anymore.”
No, I’m not a child anymore. And when I was a child, my sexual orientation was not something that I was taught, it was inherently part of who I am.
“Bill Bennett quoted Plato tonight “the most important questions that determine the course of civilization are who teaches the children and what they are taught”. ”
I do believe that whoever controls our understanding of the past / history controls the future. It is ridiculous to assert that somehow children are going to become gay by being taught to be that way.
The most interesting facets about orientation, both gay and straight, are from the work being done on identical twins, where they differ on their sexual orientation. There is very compelling information about developmental differences that indicate specific periods in fetal development that are determinant. There is information that explains how we become who we are in terms of masculinizing and feminizing maternal hormone levels; the information on length of the fourth fingers of our hands correlating to testosterone is an example. If in fact ‘gayness’ could be taught, you would expect to find a higher percentage of gay offspring in children raised by gay parents; none exist that I’m aware of to date.
I don’t believe that being gay is something that one chooses, anymore than I chose to be straight. Less so, as being gay potentially makes a person the target for a hate crime, where being straight does not.
Terry says:
“Anybody who has paid the slightest attention to what has come out of Hollywood lately can see that it is Hollywood’s goal to normalize homosexual relationships, not because it’s the right thing to do, or because people are demanding it, but because it has become fashionable to do so.”
I haven’t been intrigued by much recently from Hollywood film producers. That caveat said, from what I have observed, Hollywood has one goal, one intention, one desire above all others – to make money. To that end they will use anything; they have no great ethics about what or whom they exploit to make that payoff. Anything that might reasonably be controversial is potentially lucrative. I think that may be more at the bottom of the trend you are observing Terry, than ‘fashion’. If it didn’t pay, it wouldn’t play.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:43 am
DG – agreed, orientation isn’t ‘taught’, and homosexuality isn’t deviancy – though many on the right claim it is – in fact there are camps to train you to not be (as the Rev. Ted Haggerty will let you know).
Terry – our victory over Hussien uncorked the Iranian power grab, you’re right that it’s an important event – but I think, frankly, as both a heterosexual in a 23 year (and counting) relationship and a member of the military for many years – that homosexuality is the last remaining bastion of bias in the military, and one for which time has long passed to be repealled. 24 years ago, when I joined the Army, it probably would have caused some chaos, but not so today – and it’s time for that policy to go.
The military is normally on the leading edge of resolving bigottry, but in this case, due to some ludicrous psychology of the 60’s and 70’s (and earlier) which claimed homosexuality to be a mental illness, they’ve resisted incorporation of openly gay members longer than the private sector, or the other public sector components of our government. Our victory over Hussien (such as it was – since the Iraqi Army effectively didn’t resist, but rather evaporated – and please note, I’m not talking about Iraq as a whole, but rather just the short fight to oust Saddam) will probably get small place in the history books long term as it was such a brief endeavor – however, our decision to finally put to bed the last peg of bias against gays, will more likely take a higher standing in those same history books. Yet, to date, I’ve seen more movies about our ‘victory over Hussien’ than I’ve seen about the unfairness of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.’
May 13th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Dog Gone said:
“it was inherently part of who I am.”
So, do you think that life experiences and learning have nothing to do with how people feel toward others and the choices they make? That’s the impression that I get.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Peev thinks homos are the norm and not the exception. What a complete idiot. I suggest she finds a dictionary or takes some remedial classes.
Peev = FAIL
Now run along back to your Penisblog.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:28 am
penigma said:
“homosexuality isn’t deviancy”
If homosexuality wasn’t deviant from “what is normal”, wouldn’t it become so given time?
May 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am
If homosexuality were “normal” there would be no debate.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Dog Gone-
Hollywood isn’t Wall Street. The motivations of the people who produce, direct, write, and act in films are not one dimensional.
May 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Troy Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Dog Gone said:
“it was inherently part of who I am.”
So, do you think that life experiences and learning have nothing to do with how people feel toward others and the choices they make? That’s the impression that I get. ”
I would make this analogy, that being gay is like being left or right handed, it is part of the hard wiring in our brains and bodies. People learn things like how to operate a keyboard, or use a pen to handwrite. You can force them to try to operate with either hand equally, or to use the non-dominant hand as if it were dominant, but the brain is still fundamentally oriented the same. You only change the appearance of what is really there. Camps and Haggerty’s assertions not withstanding, I don’t think very many of those who have tried to ‘retrain’ themselves have been happy or successful at it.
“If homosexuality wasn’t deviant from “what is normal”, wouldn’t it become so given time? ”
There seem to be a certain approximate percentage of populations, looked at historicaly, and geographically, that can be identified as gay, or bi, or transgender for that matter (now that we are beginning to understand factors like extra X or Y chomosomes). What we didn’t know before but do now is that this is not unique after all to humans, but exists in myriad other species as well, part of a normal pattern found in nature. It has been the pattern of human history for people to be afraid of less common characteristics. So no, I wouldn’t expect this to become more ‘deviant’ from what is normal anymore than I would expect that to happen from people being born left handed.
A
May 13th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Dog Gone-
I am old enough to remember a time when many gays insisted that their sexual orientation was a personal choice. It was a 60’s-70’s personal autonomy thing.
Homosexuality is a human behavior. Behavior can have a strong genetic component or a strong environmental component, or a strong ‘choice’ component. It is frequently a tangled knot of all the above. It is folly to make an absolute statement about human behavior, such as ‘all gays were born that way’ (as an aside, the proper term for that is ‘congenital’ but it’s rarely used by people who believe that homosexuality is congenital).
May 13th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Dog Gone said:
“I would make this analogy …”
That’s a nice analogy. Is it accurate? I don’t know.
“What we didn’t know before but do now is that this is not unique after all to humans”
Did we learn this last week or something? I thought this was very old news.
“There seem to be a certain approximate percentage of populations …”
Yes, but is it the norm? I don’t think it is. If it was, a few generations of “failure to reproduce” would reduce the numbers to something less than “normal”. I think left handedness is not as much an impediment to reproduction as homosexuality.
May 13th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Dog Gone, You are not, I think, examining your assumptions properly.
Take out the word ‘gays’ and you can substitute nearly any other descriptive term for a group of people. “story-tellers”, “criminals”, “musicians”,”adulterers”, etc.
May 13th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
The deviant behavior of homos usually isn’t criminal.
May 13th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Terry says:
“Homosexuality is a human behavior. Behavior can have a strong genetic component or a strong environmental component, or a strong ‘choice’ component. It is frequently a tangled knot of all the above. It is folly to make an absolute statement about human behavior, such as ‘all gays were born that way’ (as an aside, the proper term for that is ‘congenital’ but it’s rarely used by people who believe that homosexuality is congenital). ”
Terry I didn’t assert that all gays are born that way, but the analogy to left-handedness is an apt one, as both are now being more widely understood in the context of contributing immunological or possibly genetic factors, and to naturally occurring differences in how are brains are hard wired. Both have been the targets of harsh, cruel, even barbaric pressures to conform to the majority pattern, and both have had to deal with a lack of factual information for many years, and with horribly wrong negative assumptions. There was a time when being left handed was believed to be a sign of satanic worship, and carried severe penalties. In some parts of the world, homosexuality still carries the death penalty, which I find hugely inappropriate. Both appear to exist in populations at a consistent rate of slightly less than 10%.
Troy says:
Yes, but is it the norm? I don’t think it is. If it was, a few generations of “failure to reproduce” would reduce the numbers to something less than “normal”. I think left handedness is not as much an impediment to reproduction as homosexuality. ”
Except that there are homosexuals who choose to reproduce, many others who choose to adopt. It has not been demonstrated that homosexual biological parents reproduce homosexual offspring. Homosexual offspring continue to be born to heterosexual parents; in fact, there is an indication that birth order is one of the factors in homosexuality, and that it is the maternal immunological response to subsequent births as foreign bodies that may be one of the determinants.
Troy says:
““What we didn’t know before but do now is that this is not unique after all to humans”
Did we learn this last week or something? I thought this was very old news. ”
Not quite last week, so much as a relatively new understanding of the behavior of far greater range of species, as a result of better observation and less pressure to inacurately interpret observations. This is not static, but rather the number of species and the kinds of behavior is information that continues to develop dynamically. We learn more all the time, so – no not OLD information by any stretch. There is still an awful lot to learn before we can replace assumptions and misinformation with fact. The first step is always recognizing how much there is to learn. Until we learn a great deal more, I am reluctant to penalize people, based on what we have learned so far.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
There was a time when being left handed was believed to be a sign of satanic worship, and carried severe penalties.
I can’t believe that you think this is a good analogy to homosexuality, Dog Gone. The only similarity between homosexual behavior and being left handed is in your mind. Look: even if it was true, what you are saying could apply to any kind of behaviour, including those we justifiably imprison people for.
I’m not speaking to you specifically, here, Dog Gone, but I think it is a mistake whenever left or right tries to make social policy based on science. Even if every homosexual was born that way and the individual behaviour of homosexuals may not be harmful, there may be still be good reasons for stigmatizing it.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Terry says:
“I’m not speaking to you specifically, here, Dog Gone, but I think it is a mistake whenever left or right tries to make social policy based on science. Even if every homosexual was born that way and the individual behaviour of homosexuals may not be harmful, there may be still be good reasons for stigmatizing it. ”
Obama recently signed a UN resolution decriminalizing homosexual behavior. There are still countries where that is a crime that results in the death penalty. I still remember when I was a child the hate crime murder of a gay man who was beaten to death by a couple of guys with baseball bats just because he was gay, coming out of a gay bar.
If there are good reasons for stigmatizing sexual orientation, I have yet to see them presented. The case of Rev Ted Haggard was mentioned here earlier. While I don’t feel it justified his lying about his homosexual conduct, apart from his responsibility, the pressures that caused him to deny his conduct was clearly at least in part the penalties he experienced when he was finally honest. Forcing people to lie – as is the effect with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – is never a good thing for our society. What positive benefit do you suggest?
May 13th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Dog Gone said:
“less pressure to inacurately interpret observations”
Comedy gold.
“There is still an awful lot to learn before we can replace assumptions and misinformation with fact”
Or replace fact with assumption and misinformation.
“Until we learn a great deal more, I am reluctant to penalize people, based on what we have learned so far”
I am reluctant to penalize or encourage when I “don’t know” stuff. *shrug*
May 13th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Dog Gone said:
“the hate crime murder”
Because a regular old baseball bat beating and murder would have been better? Stop with the thought police stuff, please.
May 13th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Stop with the thought police stuff, please.
There’s a reason liberals need to criminalize thought: they lack the self restraint to even allow themselves to think anything but politically correct thoughts.
Hate crime laws are a necessary supplement to the “if it feels good, do it” philosophy, since without it being criminal the liberal won’t know it’s wrong.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:26 am
Dog Gone-
Sorry for the late response, this has been a travel day for me.
First of all, it is not up to me to show that removing the the stigmata will cause harm. The stigma has been there for centuries in Western culture. The burden of proof is on your side.
Second, personal anecdotes prove nothing. Perhaps you’d like to hear about the fag drug dealer who hung around Fridley High School back in the 70’s and would give teen age boys dope in exchange for . . . what I will not mention.
Third, you seem to be willfully confusing criminalizing behavior with stigmatizing behavior. They are not the same thing.