| | William,
South Park is celebrated by many Objectivists for ridiculing any number of current fallacies with edgy, original humor.
I can appreciate some of the satire, but I find it more insulting than not.
First Hollywood social-engineered themes (All in the Family, et al) depicted Americans as stupid, superstitious, bigots, monogamous, sober, homo-phobic gay-bashing, polluting, greedy, dishonest white males and celebrated the tolerant, multi-ethnic, judgement-averse, partying, promiscuous, effeminate, tree-hugging socialist liberals.
Today Hollywood social-engineering produces themes (Southpark) ridiculing environmentalists (global-warming flood), animal-lovers, metro-sexual, Wallmart (big corporation), Paris Hilton promiscuity, drug using, et.
Ah, what were the words of the prophet?
http://www.cultwatch.com/Devotional7.html :
(Matthew 11:16-19; Luke 7:31-35)
To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
17 “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, [a funeral song] and you did not mourn.”
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking[1], and they say, “He has a demon.”
19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” But wisdom is proved right by her actions.
...
A JUDGMENTAL GENERATION CONDEMNED
Jesus noticed children at play outdoors and drew a parallel with his contemporaries, or “this generation”. They were like complaining and wilful children arguing with one another because some wanted to play a wedding game, and some wanted to a play a funeral game, and some refused to play at all, so the children could not be satisfied with either game. They could not be pleased with anything.
Sorry for the reference to the mythical rebel-hippy Jesus, I can't remember a good Rand quote, although a Hindu? parable about a father and son with a pack-mule comes to mind. Myths are often profound cultural expressions of truth.
The sense I get from mocking Hollywood satire is, "you're extreme, wrong, stupid and evil". Mockers have 20/20 hinesight, always have criticism to offer after the fact on what you should have done, have an excuse why things would be different if you'd just do it their way.
Rick
Snake Plissken pounds Che Guevara and then utterly shuts down overbearing government control and then walks away into the sunrise a free man (keeping his cool new outfit) That's not a win/win for you?
That isn't the way I remember "Escape from LA". Yes, Snake triumphs over the bad guys; Che and the government agents, but he also uses the EMP weapons to destroy the whole worlds technological infrastructure.
The premise behind technology (tool) hating is the belief that humanity is either evil or tragically flawed and unworthy of the power over nature technology confers. Ted (Uni-bomber) Kazinski and eco-freaks come to mind.
In the first movie "Escape from New York", Snake destroys the tape with fusion information that, with the president, was suppose to prevent a nuclear war with China.
So in both movies the world is, if not destroyed, technically pounded and set back several hundred years.
Like Clint Eastwood and Mad-Max movies, there's a counter-culture theme that the system is corrupt, and the heroes in a corrupt system are the rebels.
At least in the Road Warrior movies, there is hope when the children re-start civilization out of the ashes of corruption.
Ross,
Gibson in The Patriot, as memory serves, did not play a particularly romantic hero. I remember being very disappointed in it, especially after Braveheart, due to Gibson's less than enthusiastic depiction of revolutionary heroism
....
This whole subject is a bit like music. I enjoy all forms and I think it comes down to the sense of life the work evokes within you...Is it positive or negative? Is it life affirming or misanthropic? Does it paint man as a troubled & flawed creature incapable of redemption or as a being capable of rising above his circumstances?
Later Gibson, Schwarzenneger, Eastwood movies, as much other TV, all give me the same sense; that the plot has been contrived (by the celebrity star-director) to once again depict the celebrity as heroic for the celebrities fan's vicarious living.
In contrast, Rand doesn't create plots to depict celebrities as heroic, but creates plots to depict heroism by the way her characters triumph.
(The Ayn Rand Letter; "Perry Mason Finally Loses")
"to appear natural, they require unself-consciousness. A hero is not conscious of being heroic: to him, it is just a matter of being himself."
In the Romantic style, man has the ability to triumph by reason, choice and action. In the naturalistic style, the capricious gods of Nature has arbitrarily cast some men as heroic celebrities and others as losers and bad guys.
Scott
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