Posted on 10/13/2004 4:46:52 PM PDT by Weirdad
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October 13, 2004 | Acton Commentary Scary Movie: Hollywood Humanizes the Despot
As Halloween approaches, Hollywood is set to release a spate of movies designed to frighten moviegoers with the usual seasonal fare of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. But critical accolades are also being paid to another type of horror film, one that shows the allure of destructive economic and political ideologies championed by charismatic personalities. These new films look at a Nazism and Communism that, under the guise of bringing economic salvation, unleashed some of the greatest horrors in human history. Pope John Paul II rightly described these systems as “ideologies of evil.”
A German movie, Der Untergang (The Downfall), depicts Adolf Hitler as a fully realized man rather than the simplistic monster more commonly given us by filmmakers. This is important in that it is crucial to see how one man was able to manipulate the economic depression and rampant inflation of Weimar Germany, as well as longstanding group prejudices. The film shows how Hitler was able to exact his will and hold his countrymen in thrall while nearly succeeding in exterminating Europe’s Jewish population and slaughtering millions of European and American soldiers and civilians.
If The Downfall goes to great lengths to humanize Hitler in order to make more realistic his rise to power and ability to shape world events by sponsoring horrific acts, The Motorcycle Diaries is even more frightening in its attempts to humanize the South American ideologue and revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The film is an attempt to validate the Communist ideology as a cure for the diseases of poverty and illness and as a substitute for the religion that is, in the film’s depiction, petty and ineffective.
The Motorcycle Diaries chronicles the South American trek of a young Guevara and his friend, Alberto Granado, in 1952. Both men are portrayed as handsome and idealistic. That the trip awakened the son of an Argentine aristocrat to the realities of poverty, despair and illness is evident in the title of one of the film’s two sources: Traveling with Che Guevara: the Making of a Revolutionary. The poverty and disease witnessed by Guevara were real. However, the political solutions he eventually devised for these problems were as ill advised as his rejection of religion.
Detroit Free Press critic Terry Lawson concedes that “the perfume of Marxist idealism has long been overwhelmed by the rot of Castro’s Cuba, even for those who still believe Guevara was martyred in the cause of freedom and justice.” But Lawson and a critical cadre in the mainstream press ignore the fact that Guevara used the injustices and inequities he witnessed as excuses for fomenting Communist revolution throughout Central and South America, and for serving as a liaison between Soviet Russia and Cuba.
In one of the film’s key scenes, Guevara flouts the rules of the nuns who run a leper colony in Peru. The nuns have imposed a rule that requires the lepers to attend Mass before receiving food. Guevara, a physician, endears himself to the lepers by examining them without surgical gloves and smuggling food to those who refuse to attend Mass. As New Criterion writer Anthony Daniels noted, the film is rife with ironies, including the fact that “denying food or goods to those who don’t conform ideologically has long been a practice of Communist regimes, including Cuba’s.” Another irony noted by Daniels and not addressed in the film is the fact that trips such as those made by Guevara and Granado are impossible today, largely due to the oppressive governments that rose to power through the efforts of Guevara and his ilk.
The plight of the poor has long been exploited by tyrants seeking unchecked power. The sacrifice of economic and personal freedoms under the false pretense of eliminating poverty is one of the most seductive—and hence frightening—ideologies confronting humanity, regardless of the charismatic, physically attractive, and humanistic faces filmmakers might attach to them. With the Hitler and Guevara films, Hollywood has given us two of the very scariest movies of the Halloween season. |
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Source: http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?id=221
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The "dorm room decoration" is particularly disgusting. It remains interesting that if a student expresses affection for the left wing fascist socialist communist totalitarian Hitler that they invite trouble (understandably), while it's perfectly fine, and almost mandatory at some sorry schools, to laud Guevara. In fact it's hate-speech at some schools to despise Guevara despite the fact that his ideology and methods lead to exactly the same thing that Hitler produced! Maybe the left is just torn about rehabilitating Hitler because it's so convenient for the left to try to redefine fascism as right wing so they can keep making innane comparisons of Republicans to Nazis.
The left's incapability to reconcile with the sheer numbers of victims of the great socialist movements of the 20th century is why I never will support them or the nitwits they admire.
Agreed. College Republicans are truly on the front line of the culture wars, and in enemy territory. It takes no courage to "be outrageous" on any PC campus; it does to stand up and against such an onslaught of liberal BS on a daily basis. By doing so, they are going against the system: therefore I label them true revolutionaries.
Just wait till the Academy Awards....
I'm going to start praying now. Making Che cute and idealistic is a CRIME.
The left always loves evil despots like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Mullamar Omar, Juan Peron and terrorists like Osama bin Laden and Che Guevara. They have one thing in common, they are all leftists.
I deplore Hollywood's fascination with Che....he was a murderer not to mention a collectivist elitist....which is arguably worse.
But...lol....I doubt seriously Hollywood (Mel Brook excepted) will ever sanitize Adolph Hitler....or Germans for that matter.....not in this century.
Che can thank the beard, the hair and the beret for his success....that image really resonated with the unwashed in the 60s....and he got killed...that always helps.
I suppose it won't hurt to show these morons as handsome and idealistic, but I would like also to have the results of their idealism (poverty, hunger, death, injustice) to be shown too. I hope that it will cool off some handsome idealists of today.
I saw Motorcycle Diaries. The movie was excellent. It's only too bad that I had to keep reminding people he went on to do exactly what he wanted to fight against in his life. Like going to Africa and fighting with the communists for instance. Look at the wonderful things communism has done for Africans. I'm glad he lost his head.
The next movie is going to show that side. Unfortunately that one won't be as possible I suspect.
btt
They worship blood thirsty commies but where are these people living!
Along the same lines.. A truly great, if under-appreciated, film is "Chariots of Fire". It gets better and better with each successive viewing.
But I really would like to see in the movies the reality of young dashing, educated, anti-capitalist, anti-established fellows making good on their idealistic views and bringing nothing but horrible sufferings to everybody.
"....millions of Americans voted at the ticket booth and made THE PATRIOT one of the blockbusters of all time."
or
"Too bad, THE PATRIOT didn't become a great hit."
Pick one, please.
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