Bloggasm

It’s always humorous when a conservative tries his hand at a film review, mostly because of how adept conservatives usually are at ignoring all artistry and filmmaking techniques at the expense of their political ideology. Like the mainstream media, academia, and just about any other intellectual institution, a conservative can only address films through his paranoid ideological victimhood lens, either lambasting the film for its left-leaning story line or noting that it’s “one of the few” Hollywood films to favor conservative politics. Mike Riggs addressed this issue in a post titled, “Why Conservatives Suck at Culture Criticism.”

Another problem, and one that is tied closely to the point above, is that conservatives insist on defining their work as Conservative, and thus write about culture, art, and entertainment only insofar as each pertains to their politics.

In fact conservative criticism suckitude is so predictable that I was able to guess the contents of this post at conservative site Hot Air before I even opened it up: Gran Torino, Dark Knight shut out at the Oscars

Likewise, the shutout of Gran Torino does not surprise me. The politics of the movie run counter to Hollywood’s taste for the most part, although the theme of the futility of vigilante justice should have gained it some notice. I think Gran Torino is easily a better movie than Button, and for that matter, so is Doubt. Both have more conflict, more drama, and more reality than the elegiac Button. The only conclusion I can reach is that Oscar voters didn’t get it, and got too hung up on the rough edges of Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski. Either that, or they were too busy fawning over the politics of Frost/Nixon and Milk to notice.

It’s victimhood, plain and simple. Never mind Eastwood’s previous Oscar wins, Hot Air wouldn’t let a little thing like that get in the way of its confirmation bias.