The American Culture

When a movie form achieves lasting popularity, it eventually becomes rather baroque, pursuing increasingly bizarre concepts and events in order to bring a little orignality to the overworked format. That has happened with action movies in recent years, as filmmakers have moved into grotesquely weird comic-book concepts and ludicrously impossible action sequences.

In such a situation, a little classicism can be a very good thing, as it distinguishes a film by differing it from its increasingly mannered competition, and also foregrounds what people really liked about the genre in the first place.

Live Free or Die Hard is a great example of that process, and a superb representative of the action melodrama form.

Bruce Willis is the centerpiece of the film, of course, as NYC police Detective Lt. John McClane, who finds himself in Washington, D.C. sheperding a person wanted for questioning by the FBI, when the nation's entire communications, transportation, and power grids shut down in the wake of an attack by terrorists (or so it would seem....).

The action sequences take the form to a new level of absurdity and spectacular grandeur, which is something one would have thought impossible after the most recent James Bond films. But Live Free or Die Hard manages to top them all, as McClane launches an automobile off of a makeshift ramp to crash into a flying helicopter and destroy it, finds himself on the back of a fighter jet that is about to crash, plummets to the ground off of said jet and survives by sliding down a ramp made by a destroyed section of elevated highway, and so on.

The sequences are silly but fun, and they serve the same purpose as the song sequences in a musical, advancing the story while providing an interlude of aesthetically pleasing unreality.

If you've ever wanted to see a film version of the TV program 24, Live Free or Die Hard is just what you're looking for. The vast and elaborate (and thoroughly implausible) conspiracy at the center of the story, the bizarre and impossible action scenes, and Bruce Willis's indomitable John McClane all evoke what is best about the Fox action TV series.

Of course, Willis's McClane character is the most direct historical model for Jack Bauer, an indestructible hero whose greatest virtue is his ability to endure a huge amount of pain and physical damage and still find a way to keep going. The modern hero is a suffering savior, and John McClane is one of the archetypal instances of the character.

The film also has a powerful underlying theme: how our dependence on technology makes each of us vulnerable to its potential loss, and how easy it would be for any of us to be destroyed by the smple removal of our identity and assets from the computer networks that increasingly organize our lives.

(The same theme is strong in the pilot episode of the new USA Network TV series Burn Notice, which premiered last night and will be repeated several times including tomorrow at 5:30 EDT.)

That's a powerful theme, which the movie handles in a surprisingly sophisticated way. It recognizes that such dependence on technology creates a vulnerability so profound that few if any of us can be said to be truly free. It also notes, however, that the technologies that can enslave us also enrich us, lengthen our lives, and give us freedoms to pursue our natures, for better worse, to a degree never before possible in human history.

That's a sophisticated treatment of a complex subject, and it makes Live Free or Die Hard
 more than just a great action film. In fact, its contemplation of these issues may be even better than the action. And that's saying a lot.

Recommended.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fleeing headlong to the last refuge of a particular type of scoundrel, actor Isaiah Washington, fired from the high-rated ABC-TV program Gray's Anatomy for referring to a fellow actor as a "faggot," claims that he was dumped because he's black, not because he said something—twice—almost guaranteed to get him in trouble in today's extremely sensitive, pro-homosexuality Hollywood environment.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Washington said that his refusal to act submissively was what really got him fired:

"someone heard the booming voice of a black man and got really scared and that was the beginning of the end for me."

Right, it had nothing to do with the bad publicity the show was getting for his outburst, right or wrong as that public outcry may have been.

Washington further said that the organization's expectations were for him to act like some sort of 1930s B-movie comic character:

"Well, it didn't help me on the set that I was a black man who wasn't a mush-mouth Negro walking around with his head in his hands all the time. I didn't speak like I'd just left the plantation and that can be a problem for people sometime," he said.

"I had a person in human resources tell me after this thing played out that `some people' were afraid of me around the studio. I asked her why, because I'm a 6-foot-1, black man with dark skin and who doesn't go around saying `Yessah, massa sir' and `No sir, massa' to everyone?

"It's nuts when your presence alone can just scare people, and that made me a prime candidate to take the heat in a dysfunctional family," he said.

Right, and Samuel L. Jackson and Denzel Washington are shrinking violets who bow and scrape before their white overlords. What a jackass.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"We don't owe the president our unquestioning agreement," U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar said yesterday in a stunning, lengthy, unnanounced speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Reflecting to a significant extent the ideas outlined in my articles on A Classical Liberal View of the Iraq War, originally presented in detail here on The American Culture, Sen. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, bluntly said that the Bush administration's plan for Iraq is simply not working.

Acknowledging that he did not come to his conclusions lightly, Lugar delivered a lengthy speech on the subject on the Senate floor.Lugar's central point was that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the point that our national interests are not being served by our engagement there:

"The United States has violated some basic national security precepts during our military engagement in Iraq," Lugar said. "We have overestimated what the military can achieve, we have set goals that are unrealistic, and we have inadequately factored in the broader regional consequences of our actions. Perhaps most critically, our focus on Iraq has diverted us from opportunities to change the world in directions that strengthen our national security."

Observing that the war has put a huge strain on the U.S. military, the Indiana senator spoke out against the Bush administration's "surge" strategy, pointing out that maintaining it indefinitely would be disastrously expensive in lives, money, and materiel, and would probably not work anyway.

"The costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved," Lugar said in a lengthy speech on the Senate floor. "Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests in the long term.

His solution: reduce the U.S. military presence and increase diplomatic and economic action.

Lugar appears to have come a good way toward the classical liberal position, and his words carry a good deal of weight in D.C. international affairs circles.

Other Republican senators have begun to move toward the classical liberal approach outlined by Lugar, including Armed Services Committee member Sen. John Warner (VA, who praised Lugar's speech as "an important and sincere contribution" to the debate), Sen George Voinovich (OH), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), with whom Lugar consulted on the speech.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 05:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Coincidentally timed to align with today's premiere of Live Free or Die Hard, the magazine Entertainment Weekly released its list of the greatest action movies of all time. Number one in the genre was Die Hard.

It's a fairly good and reasonable list, albeit tilted toward more recent films as these things usually are. I doubt, for example, that Spider-Man 2 and Kill Bill—Vol. 1 will make the list in future decades, even though they may be justified in making this one.

Some titles I'm glad to see included are Drunken Master II: Legend of Drunken Master (feat. Jackie Chan; I think Drunken Master is better, however), The Adventures of Robin Hood (though it's absolutely ridiculous that it's not number 1 or 2), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hard-Boiled (John Woo's highly influential film starring Chow Yun-Fat is an action film with heart and mind as well as the necessary amount of muscle) and Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (although I like his Hidden Fortress a good deal more).

There are a few films on the list that I wouldn't care to include, especially those that are not action films or not very good.

Highly conspicuous in absence are The Dirty Dozen, Rio Bravo, and The Great Escape, Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, Scaramouche, White Heat, Dirty Harry, The Big Heat, and several others of like quality.

In addition, I think it's thoroughly absurd that not a single silent film is included. Lists such as these should educate their audiences, and this one largely fails to do so. Overall, however, it's about as decent a list as we could hope for from an entertainment magazine.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Actor Isaiah Washington, fired from ABC TV program Gray's Anatomy, one of the top-rated shows on television, for calling a fellow actor a "faggot," may soon have a new job.

Washington is in reportedly "sorting through" numerous offers of television and movie projects, and is leaning toward an undisclosed opportunity at NBC.

Meanwhile, Washington has argued that the offended actor, T. R. Knight, used the incident to exploit a pro-homosexual spirit in Hollywood in order to bolster his own position on the show. 

After his firing from Gray's Anatomy, one of the most popular shows on television last year, Washington hit back with claims that the actor about whom he had used the word had exploited the incident in order to strengthen his position at the program. 

AP reports:

"They fired the wrong guy," the 43-year-old actor said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.

He blames former cast mate T.R. Knight for stoking the scandal that led him to lose his role in the ABC hit. Knight is the one who should have been let go, he told the newspaper.

Shortly after the incident, in which Washington referred to Knight as a "faggot" in the third person in a conversation with a third party at which Knight was not present, Knight admitted that he was a homosexual, in a clearly overdramatized public statement. He then went on a tour of sympathetic TV programs such as the Ellen DeGeneres Show to drum up support for himself as a victim of a purported hate crime.

It worked, as Knight eventually received a pay raise for his work on the show. Washington was fired.

Washington says that Knight lied about the encounter, falsely claiming that it was public instead of private, in order to increase the amount of sympathy for him within the industry, where support for homosexuality is an absolute requirement:

Knight, who announced soon after the initial fracas that he was gay, told talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres in January that Washington used the slur against him and that "everyone (on the set) heard" him do so.

"That's a lie," Washington told the Chronicle. "I used the word during a disagreement with Patrick. I apologized for that. We shook hands and went back to work."

Having apologized repeatedly for using the offending term, and even doing a public service announcement saying that "words have power," Washington appears to be putting his career back in order. Reuters reports:

Recently axed "Grey's Anatomy" co-star Isaiah Washington has been in preliminary discussions with NBC about a deal, although the talks have stalled, according to people familiar with the situation.

It was not clear whether NBC was interested in bringing the outspoken actor onto an existing series or casting him in a new project.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's a very good film. Not a classic, but entertaining, affecting, and truly meaningful. In fact, for those not entirely resistant to it, Evan Almighty could well prove rather inspiring.

The first half is quite funny, with lots of silly humor. As the story progresses, the issues become more serious, but the movie does not lose its essential lightness of tone.

Steve Carell delivers the expected amount of crazy humor as Evan Baxter, the title character who finds himself called by God to build an ark in his Virginia subdivision, and Morgan Freeman gives a highly effective and affecting performance in, well, a rather difficult role.

Carell doesn't have even a goodly fraction of the energy Jim Carrey brought to the role of Bruce Nolan in Bruce Almighty (which is a terrific film, also directed by Tom Shadyac, who helmed Evan Almighty), but Carell has an essential sadness to his face that makes his character much more likeable than any that Carrey has ever played. We really root for him in a way that Carrey absolutely cannot elicit. In addition, Carell's ability to bring out the serious side of the character while stuck in exceedingly silly situations gives the film a firm personal foundation on which to build.

The film's secondary plot—a powerful Congressman's effort to legislate a land grab that will make him and his cronies wealthy beyond all rational dreams—bears a striking resemblance to the analogous situation in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and is about as convincing (meaning: not at all). Yet the undertone of that storyline and its connection with the main story—that the solutions to our problems are not to be obtained through politics but by simple kindness toward one another, inspired by love for God and our neighbors—is very interesting indeed, and quite welcome.

Of course, to many people that message will seem naive and indeed dangerous. They will go to see Michael Moore's latest film instead. But Evan Almighty is right about the real solution to our problems, and no amount of cynical dismissals will ever change that simple truth.

Certainly Evan Almighty is neither psychologically nor politically sophisticated, and it would be easy to be put off by the lack of depth in the characterizations and the refusal to dig into political and social debates. It's a film with immensely serious ideas that is told in the same cinematic terms and tone as Cheaper by the Dozen and Elf. A clever person could easily dismiss it as frivolous and not worth one's time.

That would be a mistake. It is in fact a thoroughly superficial view of the film (and cinema in general and art in general), and one which intelligent people should be expected to be able to overcome.

Evan Almighty is lighthearted but with a serious purpose: to express in cinematic terms God's love for all people. It does this quite successfully, and given the perverse, materialistic, sensualistic nature of most contemporary American journalists and internet loudmouths, it does not surprise me at all that the film is not getting good reviews.

But you really should see it, because it's a sound, intelligent, spiritually wise film that entire families can enjoy. That is something to be appreciated, not sneered at.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Evan Almighty, the most expensive comedy film ever made—with an official reported cost of $175 million—opened less strongly than expected at the box office this weekend.

The religiously themed comedy starring popular TV actor Steve Carell was number one at the box office during its first weekend, earning an estimated $32.1 million over its first three days. The studio had reportedly expected it to bring in something in the mid-$30 million dollar range and possibly break $40 million.

A studio spokesperson said she hoped strong word of mouth would strengthen the film's performance in the weeks to come, a not entirely implausible scenario.

I wonder whether many Christians and Jews, the film's primary intended audience as I presume, have stayed away while waiting to find out how the film deals with the story's apparent serious contradiction of the biblical account of the Flood: in the biblical account, God promised Noah that he would never flood the entire earth again, yet here is a movie that purports to have God telling a modern-day man to build an ark.

I should think that people who take the Bible seriously might well decide to hold off seeing Evan Almighty until finding out how the film deals with that issue. It's certainly a possibility.

I will convey my own thoughts on the film on Monday.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer topped the U.S. box office during the past week, performing very well at the box office while garnering generally negative reviews.

The audiences are right on this one (as usual).

One, at 92 minutes, the film doesn't drag on and on as most of these CGI-superhero movies tend to do, and indeed as most films tend to do these days. There's one main plot, one subplot, and that's about it. That's the way movies typically work best. We don't need to know everything that ever happened in the characters' histories, told at length in flashbacks or boring conversations full of back-story exposition. We can accept them for what they are, thank you very much, if you're capable of motivating their choices within the present action.

The creation of tons of back story in these films inevitably betrays a lack of ability to understand and express characters' choices through their direct actions.

Movies used to avoid this kinds of dwelling on the past. In Rio Bravo, to take just example from among literally hundreds, we don't need to know why John Chance (John Wayne) is devoted to his duty and is shy in showing his affection for Feathers (Angie Dickinson). We understand the choices he makes by seeing him in action in the present. That is to say, we are not stupid, and the film does not treat us as such.

Returning to the present film, positive element number two is that the central characters, while far from perfection, are appealingly good-natured and thoroughly committed to benevolence toward their fellow human beings. There are no doubts or conflicts in their minds regarding this devotion.

Although this type of straightforward, positive commitment to helping others directly and without desiring compensation is highly realistic and plausible, as it is actually quite common in the real world, it is of course precisely the kind of attitude that latitudinarian modern-day film critics despise.

Audiences, however, respond more sensibly and positively to this approach. Hence the bad reviews and good audience numbers.

Three, the biblical implications and allusions in the film are plentiful and presented in a sensible way that gives the story greater importance through the use of symbolism and analogy. Particularly strong is the film's observation that the doings of powerful angels in our world would easily make us wonder whether a particular being's intent is good or evil.

Other apocalyptical allusions add to the film's thematic treatment of religious issues. The ideas thus expressed are neither too obvious nor too obscure, and the filmmakers clearly take these underlying themes seriously.

A film that does this many things right is almost guaranteed to get poor reviews. Sad, isn't it?

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't want to leave this buried in the comments section, so I'll put this here on the main page, though it's very simple and brief.

In reference to my post on "A Great Father," commenter Steve wrote, in part, that he still considers The Andy Griffith Show to be "the greatest American TV show ever done. So full of love and warmth and wisdom and kindness and, when needed, courage!" Steve says, "My childhood was better because of that show. I still watch reruns of TAGS. I also have several DVDs of selected episodes."

My comment:

The Andy Griffith Show is one of the great accomplishments of contemporary American culture.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The once and former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Thomas Nifong has been officially disbarred, and his bosses have taken away his badge and locked him out of the building. The arrogrant ex-lawyer had actually intended to remain on the job for another month after his disbarment.

This author and this publication called for Nifong's disbarment and removal from office very early last year, soon after the story hit the newspapers with a huge bang. I'm glad that Nifong has received his due, and I hope that the civil suits against him, brought by the young men he falsely prosecuted, will be highly successful.

But there's more to be done. 

The state must bring criminal charges against Nifong. The accuser must be charged and brought to justice. Duke University president Richard Brodhead must be fired. And the Duke faculty members who rushed to sign an advertisement condemning the incident as representative of prevalent campus attitudes should be fired as well. Every one of them.

Thomas Sowell, who has been writing about the case since last May, has provided a fine summary of the issues on National Review Online. He notes that the real moral corruption at Duke was among the faculty and administrators:

This case served their purposes. That trumped any question about whether the charges were true or not.

Don’t expect any of these people to recant or apologize. But be aware of how wide and how deep the moral dry rot goes.

That such people are teaching students at an elite university is a chilling thought. That they promote a campus atmosphere where political correctness trumps the search for truth is painful.

That such attitudes and such atmospheres are not peculiar to Duke University, but are common on elite college campuses from coast to coast is a time bomb with the potential to destroy individuals and ultimately undermine the whole society.

Sowell is correct to observe that the Duke administration and faculty won't purge these people on their own. It would take courage from the trustees to accomplish that. And given the mindset of most college trustees today, that is not going to happen.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The media are exposing children to too much overly sexual and violent content, but parents are increasingly finding ways to shield their children from programming of which they don't approve.

That's the conclusion of a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Parents are growing more confident that they can protect their kids from inappropriate content on TV, the Internet and video games, a new poll has found, but still worry that their children are exposed to too much sex and violence.

The mixed results from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation will probably provide ammunition for both sides in the increasingly heated debate over shielding children from excessive sex and violence in the media.

About two-thirds of parents polled are still "very concerned" that children in general are exposed to too much risque and bloody programming and support new federal restrictions on what broadcasters can air during early-evening hours. But parents who use the V-chip, a device in most TVs that allows programs to be blocked, generally find it very useful.

"It may not be a perfect system . . . but parents who use it, like it," said Jim Dyke, head of TV Watch, which represents broadcasters and other groups opposed to more government regulation.

Rather than having the FCC decide what we get to watch, the market is making the necessary adjustments, the report suggests. However, the current system—pressed by the federal government during the Clinton administration—remains confusing and less effective than most would prefer.The LA Times report continues:

Vicky Rideout, director of Kaiser's Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health, agreed there was a mixed message in the poll of 1,008 parents of children under 18 years old and focus groups held in Irvine, Dallas, Chicago and Washington.

"While parents are still concerned about the broader media environment that they're raising their kids in … most of them feel like they're managing to cobble together the tools they need to do a pretty good job of monitoring media their own children are exposed to, at least while they're at home," Rideout said.

The percentage of parents who are "very concerned" that their children are seeing too much inappropriate content has dropped since a similar study in 1998—from 67% to 51% for sex, from 62% to 46% for violence and from 59% to 41% for adult language. . . .

Use of TV ratings by parents is up from 42% in 1998 to 49%. Only 16% of parents said they have ever used the V-chip, but 71% of those who did found it "very useful." Nearly half of parents who have TVs with the V-chip, required since 2000 in all sets manufactured with screens larger than 13 inches, were unaware it was there.

The V-Chip, in short, is not of much use to people, but the ratings definitely are. Most TVs and programming services allow viewers to set the levels of various content that may be viewed on a particular set, and I suspect that a lot of people are doing that. The most likely approach, however, is that parents are simply keeping an eye on what their kids are watching, and telling them to turn off the more offensive stuff.

And there's always the possibility that parents imagine that they're monitoring their kids' viewing much more effectively than they actually are. . . . 

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Perhaps the most striking generation and sex gap in the 'B' detective mysteries of the thirties took place in Warner's Nancy Drew series. Drew senior, played by John Litel, was a lawyer rather than a detective, but was frequently drawn somewhat unwillingly into an investigative role because of close friends with murder raps hanging over them.

Teenage daughter Nancy (eighteen in the books but played as closer to fifteen in the movies by a bouncy and effervescent Bonita Granville) follows the Philo Vance route by never accepting official parental or police verdicts--and, of course, is ultimately proven correct. Her harrowing escapades--including the unearthing of a body in a field, being pursued by a killer through a secret passageway, and being set adrift in a pilotless plane--seem to leave her with no traumas whatsoever. The four Nancy Drew mysteries were all directed by William Clemens and scripted by Kenneth Gamet, based with reasonable accuracy on a quartet from the endless supply of books by Carolyn Keene.

For films designed mainly for juvenile audiences, they were astonishingly noncondescending. The thrills were all genuine, even if punctuated with a certain amount of comedy relief, and the plots and villains were quite strong enough to stand up to adult scrutiny.

Solid if not outstanding in production values (the small-town setting was not too demanding in that respect), the films were also surprisingly long for 'B' pictures, some even running as much as eight reels, so that the plots did have time to develop neatly and not be rushed into a five-reel comic-strip format. Expert little films in their way and quite unappreciated in the thirties (when juvenile audiences had an abundance of riches at the movies), they could help to fill part of the gaping void in contemporary films for youngsters were they to be reissued. NANCY DREW, TROUBLE SHOOTER (the one in which the body is dug up in the cabbage fiel d!) was probably the best of this enjoyable series. (pages 136-137)

In an earlier entry I described Bonita Granville's Nancy Drew as bristly and self-assertive, which she certainly is, but I should also point out that she portrays Nancy as perky and charmingly cheerful through all the danger and mayhem. Those are important qualities of the character.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not that it should surprise anybody, a year-long internal investigation by the British Broadcasting Corporation has found that the BBC has a strong leftist bias.

The Telegraph reports:

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded.

Although the BBC report "maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial," according to the Telegraph article, coverage of particular issues is biased:

The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased—and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.

How the BBC can be "fair and impartial" while being biased on various issues is left unexplained.

In any case, it is clear that the BBC is something of a political cult, as the Telegraph article reports:

The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.

It reads: “There is a tendency to 'group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone.”

A staff impartiality seminar held last year is also documented in the report, at which executives admitted they would broadcast images of the Bible being thrown away but not the Koran, in case Muslims were offended.

During the seminar a senior BBC reporter criticised the corporation for being anti-American.

The report was jointly commissioned by BBC managers and the board of governors and will be published by the BBC Trust, which has since replaced the governors.

The article reports that various BBC bigwigs said that the organization is going to strengthen impartiality, etc., it the organizations coverage of issues.

We'll see.

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Nancy Drew, the new theatrical film based on the classic girls' book series (the first theatrical film adaptation since the 1930s), has opened to lukewarm reviews.

Of course it's just a silly child-oriented adventure-comedy on the surface, and glittering things are all that nearly all critics see today. But underlying the frivolity is some very sound thinking and solid values. It would be a pity for people young and old to miss them because of a snobbish preference for sophisticated surfaces empty of real goodness.

The film includes a very fun and reasonably well-pursued murder mystery, which of course involves Nancy in several harrowing scrapes, few of which are presented with relentless plausibility.

Yet this mystery has strong thematic elements that tie it very nicely to the main story . The mystery involves the death of a famous movie actress a couple of decades ago, and the discovery of a possible unacknowledged daughter, whom it turns out she had given up for adoption. This, of course, would affect the disposition of her considerable estate.

As is the case with all mysteries involving crimes that have gone unsolved for a long period of time, the mystery in Nancy Drew focuses our attention on the way history always exerts its hold on us. None of us is fully autonomous, much as we'd like to think so and as much as our current culture tries to persuade us so, and a healthy respect for what has gone before us is essential to a full understanding of our current circumstances.

That's why the film's other theme works so well. Nancy, being raised alone by her widowed father, is independent in all the right ways and thoroughly respectful of traditional values. Coming from the small, Midwestern town of River Heights, Nancy has been brought up in a culture that clearly values community and that teaches simple values that time has proven effective.

She is never in the least priggish, however, and Emma Roberts, who does a terrific job in the title role, projects her sincerity brilliantly.

Compassion for others less fortunate than she is what motivates Nancy to delve into mysteries, even in (very reluctant) defiance of her father's explicit directive. The film shows that this sympathy is clearly rooted in good part in her feelings of sadness at the early loss of her mother. Yet she never dwells on her own feelings, preferring instead to get on with life and try to help those less fortunate than she.

The film's use of unwed mothers as a thematic and plot device is particularly smart in laying out the differences between Nancy's ways and those promulgated by most of modern American society. It is a superbly revealing contrast indeed as the movie presents it.

As one manifestation of her intense desire to help others, Nancy has taken CPR and emergency medicine training, in addition to her amateur detective work. Emma Roberts' performance emphasizes the cheerful and indomitable side of the character—as opposed to Bonita Granville's amusingly bristly and self-assertive Nancy of the 1930s films—and the contrast with the self-absorbed, materialistic, hedonistic Hollywood society to which Nancy and her father have moved at the beginning of the film is very strong and pointed.

It will, in fact, be too strong and pointed for many adults in the audience, especially those whose values don't exactly shine as brightly and laudably as Nancy's, but the message is perfectly pitched to get through to young girls. Nancy wants to do right more than she wants to be liked. That's a lesson we all have to learn, and Nancy Drew makes it quite clear. In pursuit of what is good, Nancy likes much that is old and far out of fashion, especially her clothes but also including music, movies, food, exercise, and the like. Her manners are old-fashioned and extremely appealing. She is also unlike her peers in genuinely enjoying reading.

In the end, Nancy's traditional values and classic style win the day, as everyone ultimately realizes that her ways have much to recommend them, from the hip salesgirl at a trendy LA clothing shop to Nancy's sniping, intensely fashion- and status-conscious female classmates. Good manners, traditional values, and hard work win the day.

That's a fine lesson for an aspiring young lady to learn—and it wouldn't do the rest of us any harm, either.

Recommended.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes ignorance helps. Not being a regular viewer of The Sopranos, upon viewing the end of the final episode, it appeared very clear to me what it meant. I had no preconceived notions about how the show should or might end, so I just read the events as they occurred.

To me, it indicated that when the screen went black, we were seeing things from TonySoprano's point of view, and that he had been killed.

It appears that that was indeed producer-writer David Chase's intention. Reuters reports:

Fans of "The Sopranos" are seizing on clues suggesting the controversial blackout which abruptly ended the TV mob drama meant that Tony Soprano was rubbed out, and HBO said Thursday they may be on to something.

One clue in particular, a flashback in the penultimate episode to a conversation between Tony and his brother-in-law about death, gained credence as an HBO spokesman called it a "legitimate" hint and confirmed that series creator David Chase had a definite ending in mind. . . .

Chase himself suggested as much in an interview Tuesday with The Star-Ledger newspaper of New Jersey when he said of his end to the HBO series, "Anyone who wants to watch it, it's all there." . . .

The biggest hint, according to a consensus taking shape on the Web, is a scene from an earlier episode in which Tony and his brother-in-law, Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, muse about what it feels like to die.

"At the end, you probably don't hear anything, everything just goes black," Bobby says while they sit fishing in a small boat on a lake.

The Reuters article alludes to an important clue from the series' final episodes: 

That scene is recalled briefly in a flashback played at the end of the penultimate "Sopranos" episode, as Tony is lying in the darkened room of a safehouse clutching a machine gun to his chest in the midst of a mob war.

"I think that is one of the most legitimate things to look at," [HBO spokesman Quentin] Schaffer said when asked about theories that the Bobby Bacala flashback was meant to foreshadow Tony's death.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For those who have not yet seen it, here's my contribution to today's National Review Online symposium on Fatherhood, in honor of Father's Day, which is of course this Sunday. The full symposium is available at National Review Online here, and is well worth reading. . . .

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the clever things leftists do is take good words and pervert them to mean the exact opposite of what they normally mean. An excellent example is in an editorial from today's Boston Globe, "When a Penny Saved Is Taxed."

The editorial uses terms such as "incentives," "saving," and "innovation" in order to make a case for huge new government expenditures under the guise of fairness:

SAVING MONEY is supposed to help Americans afford their own futures. But a new study shows that poorer, younger people are often punished for saving by kinks in the tax code and in federal program rules. To fix the problem and encourage saving at all income levels, Congress should change the rules and seek out innovations.

The editorial comes to the not-exactly-astonishing conclusion that it's easier for wealthy people to save money than for poor people to do so:

The end result is that most people face some disincentive to save—but the system tilts in favor of the rich. . . . Fixing this system would give people a fighting chance to save.

In this way the editorial reveals the the authors' real agenda: egalitarianism. Dressing it up in free-market lingo is no more honest than wrapping a rotting fish in a page from the Wall Street Journal.

The talk about incentives certainly sounds nice, and the editorial is correct to point out that incentives matter. Surely there are ways the tax code can be altered to encourage saving among lower-income individuals—and everybody else.

But it’s poverty, not welfare policy, that keeps assets low. A study in the Winter 2006 Journal of Human Resources found, “Consistent with other recent studies, . . . little evidence that asset limits have an effect on the amount of liquid assets that single mothers hold.”

All incentives count, and the possibility of losing one’s welfare check is not only a disincentive to saving, it’s a disincentive to staying on welfare. That was the aim of welfare reform in the first place. Welfare is supposed to be temporary help that enables people to get into the workforce. Staying on welfare will keep one poor regardless of how much the program “allows” one to save.

Incentives matter to everybody, and the huge tax increases that would be caused by a return to the old welfare system and addition of further opportunities for wealthy elderly people to hide their assets so as to get more taxpayers’ money would do infinitely more harm than good.

No amount of deceptive language will change that reality.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathryn Lopez, editor of National Review Online, is one of the very best interviewers around. Her conversation with former Wall Street Journal writer-editor Amity Shlaes is a fine example of Kathryn's work. Shlaes's new book, The Forgotten Man: A History of the Great Depression, published just yesterday, "serves up the Great Depression as you’ve never known it — challenging conventional wisdom, telling a gripping story of the triumph of the American spirit and the folly of big government," as Lopez smartly describes it.

It's a fascinating interview, and one part of it is especially interesting.

The teaser on the NRO front page sets this up nicely:

Amity Shlaes tells the story of the Great Depression through a classical liberal’s keyboard.

Then, in the body of the interview, the following exchange takes place:

Lopez: Could your book be subtitled The Case for Classical Liberalism?

Shlaes: Yes. Where is it in our lives? I’m a liberal. It was a big error to use the word “liberal” to smear other people with. We’re the liberals! We stand for individualism – U.K.-Whig style. The liberal in this book is Wendell Willkie; as part of his political education, his girlfriend, Irita van Doren, made him write book reviews about Whigs.

And Shlaes says, 

Wendell Willkie was my surprise hero.

Shlaes' declaration, "We're the liberalis!" is one with which readers of this site will of course be quite familiar. The true liberals of our time are on the right, and the stubborn, hidebound conservatives are the "progressives" on the left.

I'm delighted to see Kathryn and her interviewee tackling this issue.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

If you liked the 2001 remake of Ocean's 11 and didn't hate Ocean's 12, you'll probably enjoy Ocean's 13, now in theaters. It has the same breezy attitude as its predecessors, with the same big stars portraying members of Danny Ocean's gang—George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, etc., plus the same solid character actors as in previous installments, including Don Cheadle, Elliott Gould, Carl Reiner, Bernie Mac, and Andy Garcia, again under the capable direction of Steven Soderbergh.

Ocean's 13 definitely lacks originality in this third go-round by the same group in a genre, the heist film, that has been done countless times before. And the central heist is not really a heist but more of a con plus a smash-and-grab, and it is even less plausible than the ones that preceded it. But the film does have two things going for it.

One is a superb villain, a hyper-rich, uber-arrogant hotel owner played by Al Pacino. Pacino makes the character thoroughly plausible and entirely despicable. Watching the gang work to take him down gives the film a satisfying central conceit. In addition, Ellen Barkin provides a vile and yet charmingly vulnerable top hench-person. They make the film go.

The other good thing about Ocean's 13 is that it tries to motivate the heist more satisfyingly than was done in Ocean's 12. The team's money man, played by Elliott Gould, has been destroyed by Pacino's character and has fallen into a serious illness as a result. In order to bring him around again, the gang decides to take down Pacino's character.

Certainly the morality is more than a little skewed there, but at least their black idiot hearts are in the right place. These days, that's above average.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new wave of movies aimed at young girls is coming, starting this Friday with the theatrical release of Nancy Drew. The director of that film, Andrew Fleming, points out that the recent preteen and teen culture presented models of behavior very different from that of the children at which they have been aimed and which most of their parents would endorse.

The LA Times reports the good news that this is about to change somewhat:

WITH former tween starlets in court and rehab, daily turning up in tabloid stories more suited to Tom Sizemore than perky pink Elle Woods, Hollywood is rediscovering the appeal of a fresh-scrubbed, wholesome face. As "edgy" heads over the cliff, it's time, it seems, to give girls a few new plotlines.

The good girl-versus-mean girl high school dramas that have played out at the multiplex over the last decade are being pushed aside in favor of stories that let their heroines do more than shop, snipe or try to throw the nearest rival in front of a bus.

Starting this summer, a new crop of tween movie characters with big-studio backing — some endorsed by actress-producers Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster and Charlize Theron — are emerging. There's a girl detective who runs circles around her local police force, a dancing high schooler who by force of sheer exuberance integrates her local TV station, and a little girl who survives alone on a remote island, a pocketknife around her neck, in the company of a sea lion and iguana. That last heroine, played by Abigail Breslin in Fox-Walden's "Nim's Island," planned for release in the spring, also has the distinction of being the first girl at the center of a kids' action-adventure film with a blockbuster budget.

Andrew Fleming, co-writer and director of "Nancy Drew," the first of the films to test the waters when it opens Friday, thinks the generation of girls weaned on the spiritual worlds of "Harry Potter" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" is hungry for an alternative to the "umpteenth expression" of Madonna's material girl.

"Young female culture has swung so far out now, with Lindsay, Britney and Paris being the center of attention, in a very self-absorbed and worrisome way," Fleming said. "So many girls are more like Nancy Drew, but they're living in a world right now where they don't get any kind of validation for being kind or thoughtful or conscious of right and wrong."

The story lines in the new ripple of girl movies suggest that it's harder but ultimately more satisfying to do the right thing, and those behind the new films repeatedly mention their desire to offer better role models for children. Conveniently, there's also money to be made. After all, 6- to 14-year-olds represent about $51 billion in annual purchasing power, according to market research firm 360 Youth. Mainstream media executives have been all but bowled over by the phenomenal successes of tween fare such as "The Cheetah Girls" and "High School Musical," which began on TV. But studio execs have puzzled over how to parlay those titles and stars into big-screen fare that breaks out across age and gender lines.

It's good to see high-profile Hollywood actresses such as Mss. Roberts, Foster, and Theron stepping up to support a better culture for young females. As the LA Times story notes, the people producing these films expect to make money from them, but we certainly should not hold that against them. After all, big financial losses seldom stop Hollywood from churning out crude, socially and morally corrosive nonsense. The new girl movies constitute a positive development regardless of the precise mixture of motivations involved.

Whether this is a long-term trend or just a brief respite remains to be seen, but it is certainly a welcome development. It is now up to the public to ensure that the trend stay strong.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Jenny Morse is an excellent libertarian writer and thinker, with a Ph.D. in economics, who holds to traditional moral positions and points out that government in the United States is a huge factor contributing to the undermining of the moral values that make freedom, economic productivity, and social progress possible.

Jenny has written a very pointed and correct letter to the editor in response to a syndicated cartoon by Berk Breathed. I reprint it here for your edification:

ACTION ALERT: Take a Stand for Fatherhood!

Yesterday's 'Opus' comic strip by Berkeley Breathed really had me broiling. What a horrible depiction of men and fatherhood, as is becoming all too prevalent in societies all over the world. If you haven't already seen it, you can find it here. I wrote the following letter to the editor of my newspaper. I hope you will do so as well, urging them to cancel this cartoon in their newspapers.
Keep your eyes peeled on Townhall.com and nationalreview.com for my article in response to this trash.

To the Editor of the San Diego Union Tribune,

The comic strip "Opus" by Berkeley Breathed should be discontinued immediately. This Sunday's strip depicted three characters talking about a child of their acquaintance with two mothers. They speculate "Makes you wonder how he'll do without a male role model in the house." The visual answer to that: an angry, inebriated, misogynist father throwing a TV out the window and swearing at the baseball player.

The comic should be pulled immediately, for these reasons:

1. It wasn't funny.

2. It was mean.

3. It was anti-male, anti-father hate speech. If you doubt that, imagine if the images had been reversed: an innocent white male married father confronts an unattractive out of control gay person. The Human Rights Campaign would go ballistic. In my opinion, this comic is reason enough for happily married women to go ballistic at the intentional assault on their husbands.

4. It was in extremely poor taste to run an anti-father cartoon the week before Fathers Day.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.

I think that Jenny's conclusion, that the cartoon is both stupid and wicked, is quite sound.

Read more from Jenny Morse at here website here.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's probably because I've always hated the popular media theme that all American business is corrupt and gangsters represent deeper truths about business in the United States throughout history. Rubbish. It was nonsense when The Godfather movies popularized it, and it's been nonsense ever since.

The corruption of the American dream is certainly a valid matter for investigation both by artists and social analysts, but it is important to bear in mind that is is not the dream itself that is corrupt, but people's dishonest pursuit of it and the perverted, materialistic view all too many people take of it.

The American Dream is about opportunity, not acquisition.

As a result, the American Dream assumes the rule of law, for without law, powerful and corrupt people can run roughshod over others, denying them the opportunity to use their gifts in pursuit of their own dreams. Hence, crime is not an outcome of the dream but a corrupt use of the freedom that is at the heart of the dream.

To say that America is inherently corrupt, as such gangster fictions tend to do, is a despicable canard.

In addiition, I greatly dislike the overuse of psychology in fictional narratives to explain individuals' wrongdoing. While psychology can be useful in identifying a person's habits of thinking and proposing alternative ways to see the world and respond to it, the use of psychology in fiction is tyically more a matter of explaining away personal responsibility for one's actions. I find that thoroughly repugnant.

Perhaps my acceptance of the truth behind the American Dream and my abhorrence of exculpatory fictional psychology are out of step with our society today, but in any case, they make it clear why I've never been able to enjoy The Sopranos.

I certainly don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of the program, but I simply cannot join in the festival of admiration for it.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

AP reports the horrible news:

Galvanized by the success of "Shrek the Third," Jeffrey Katzenberg says the tale of the green ogre who married a princess will continue.

"More Shreks are coming!"producer Katzenberg . . . said at a news conference in Berlin on Friday.

Not appalled yet? Then consider this:

As for the plot of the fourth installment of the "Shrek" movie franchise, Katzenberg would only reveal that Shrek will have to come to terms with something difficult in his past.

Translation: More psychobabble destroying a perfectly good comic fairy tale.

The first Shrek was fun and had some good ideas, but the sequels have been undermined by this absurd ambition to tart up the series with increasing doses of therapeutic "love thyself" nonsense. I cannot imagine things getting better on the basis of this capsule description of the fourth Shrek movie.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For many conservatives, this immigration business over the last week has felt a lot like the last stages of Bush Estrangement Syndrome. Even though the bill went down in the end, it leaves deep wounds — far from the first. As [radio talk show hostess Laura] Ingraham made clear, many conservatives never really bought into “compassionate conservatism” — conservatism didn’t exactly need George W. Bush to become compassionate. Ending the Cold War had an element of compassion in it, after all. Speaking of wars — God bless him for being a leader, but he’s never quite consistently made the case for the current war as well as others outside the administration have. (And he invited to the White House, for state dinners, editors of papers that leak national-security information.)

Then there was the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind bill. We sucked up the big-government approach, and Ted Kennedy photo ops, “for the children.” But the real breakdown moment between the Right and the president who — we thought — had some respect for us even though he isn’t really one of us came when he nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. His patronizing pitch — she is a good lawyer, for a woman! — followed by insulting name calling (you’re elitists and don’t want her because she didn’t go to Harvard; you’re sexist and don’t want another woman on the Court) was a low point for this administration. You’d think after conservatives forgave and forgot and fought hard for Samuel Alito the White House would consider thinking twice before kicking its friends again. Instead, you’re reminded that — back when the president was governor of Texas — he always prided himself on working with Democrats rather than with his natural allies 

Bush’s conservatism led directly to big-government Republicanism, as I argued in my post-election NRO piece:

After all,