Soccer Dad

Against paradise

The Oscars will of course be filled congratulatory remarks. Usually self-congratulatory remarks. About how brave they are to take on "tough" issues or "dissent" against President Bush. Mark Steyn (h/t Marlyand Conservatarian) cuts through rhetoric in Clooney Tunes

He was brave enough to make a movie about Islam’s treatment of women? Oh, no, wait. That was the Dutch director Theo van Gogh: he had his throat cut and half-a-dozen bullets pumped into him by an enraged Muslim who left an explanatory note pinned to the dagger he stuck in his chest. At last year’s Oscars, the Hollywood crowd were too busy championing the “right to dissent” in the Bushitler tyranny to find room even to namecheck Mr van Gogh in the montage of the deceased. Bad karma. Good night and good luck.

But as Maryland Conservatarian notes Hollywood has Conscience ... just ask them, not everyone is so clear thinking. He observes that David Ignatius engages in a bit of puffery

Meanwhile, David Ignatius at the Washington Post sees this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees more thoughtfully – seeing them as a “journey inward.”

, but it's hard to know exactly what Ignatius is talking about since he's so busy shaking his own hand.

Or maybe, Ignatius lets us in on his thinking a bit in Hollywood Wars

In this war year, the Oscar nominees include two antiwar films, "Munich" and "Good Night, and Good Luck." Each chose an oblique way to express the anger and confusion that Americans feel about Iraq and the war on terrorism.

Yes I do feel anger and confusion, but not at the administration. So when Ignatius refers to Americans, you can be sure it is some subset of Americans. The money tells a different from the awards, as I noted before that the Wall Street Journal reports

The combined U.S. box-office revenues of all five nominees, "Brokeback Mountain," "Crash," "Munich," "Capote" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," added up to some $185 million in 2005. "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" made twice that. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," which opened only in November, has pulled in about $285 million.

To draw a conclusion from the opinion of the Information-Entertainment complex is folly when it denies the much larger ticket buying public. It would appear that introspection is the occupation of a minority; escapism is what most people seek. (Oh that and wanting to see the good guys win.)

Charles Krauthammer is quite sharp in his response to the Ignatius kind of nonsense as he skewers George Clooney in Oscars for Osama

The most pernicious element in the movie is the character at the moral heart of the film: the beautiful, modest, caring, generous Pakistani who becomes a beautiful, modest, caring, generous . . . suicide bomber. In his final act, the Pure One, dressed in the purest white robes, takes his explosives-laden little motorboat headfirst into his target. It is a replay of the real-life boat that plunged into the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 American sailors, except that in the "Syriana" version, the target is another symbol of American imperialism in the Persian Gulf: a newly opened liquefied natural gas terminal.

The explosion, which would have the force of a nuclear bomb, constitutes the moral high point of the movie, the moment of climactic cleansing, as the Pure One clad in white merges with the great white mass of the huge terminal wall, at which point the screen goes pure white. And reverently silent.

But it isn't just the glorification of fictional terror that's troublesome. It's the glorification of real terror that is evern more reprehensible and yet, a film that does that, stands to receive an Emmy in addition to its previous Golden Globe. (This film, Paradise Now, was discussed at the beginning of the Krauthammer column.)

But the father of a suicide bombing victim has said "Enough." Read about the 17 year old "Blondi", Asaf Zur who was killed by a suicide bomber 3 years ago and sign the petition to ask that "Paradise Now's" Oscar nomination be revoked. It won't change the minds or hearts of the arrogant elitists who run Hollywood. But let it be a testament that you don't approve the glorification of terror.

UPDATE: My friend Elie's Expositions has picked up the ball and asked others to sign this petition. Elie's Expositions also wonders what sort of outrage there had been if the bad guys in Mississippi Burning had been treated sympathetically as opposed to being portrayed as brutish louts. (There were some complaints that the FBI agents were the good guys.)

I'd also extend this to David Ignatius. I notice that he doesn't draw any great significance to the nomination of "Paradise Now," just the movies that say what he wants them to say.

Others who have done this independently (and even before me) include: Israel Matzav, Joe Gringo, The Bullwinkle Blog, Right, Wing-Nut, A Lady's Ruminations, Orange Squeezed Red, Dhimmi Watch, Solomonia.

UPDATE II: I realize that there are some moral idiots out there who consider this petition censorhip. It is not. As I've learned Academy voting is ended. This will have no effect on the vote. (And even if it was before the vote, it would have had little or no effect.) But it should stand as a rebuke to those high minded folks in Hollywood who are confused about right and wrong and those just don't care.

UPDATE III: SarcastiPundit comes out of the woodwork to post on the Oscars. A commenter writes

There is no Israel, only Zionist Occupied Palestine.

And that's the view that the nomination was supporting.
Fortunately, Meryl Yourish tells us that it did not win; still it's jarring to see its country of origin listed as "Palestine."

Technorati tags: asaf zur, Paradise Now.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 5, 2006 9:20 AM