What Constitutes A Conservative Film?

If politics is a highway, Hollywood is in danger of driving off the far left shoulder. Almost every new film oozes with far left thinking. Not only do they openly jam films full of left wing messages, but even the assumptions upon which most films are based lie deep within the leftist mind. But conservatives have begun to fight back. They are starting to make conservative films, and conservative critics are trying to identify conservative films that are worthy of support. Unfortunately, this effort is fraught with sloppy thinking that keeps it from becoming effective.

Is It Wrong To Want “Conservative” Films?

Many on the left like to talk about the conservative “obsession” with finding conservative films. They whine that it is somehow improper for conservatives to want films that fit conservative thinking, and they label any such films as propaganda. Are they right? Hardly.

First, there is nothing wrong with trying to find films that have a message you agree with. This is the same instinct that draws Christians to see movies about Christianity, Jews to see movies about Judaism, minorities to see movies about the countries of their ancestry, and deranged liberals to see movies about Nixon. Further, with Hollywood having moved so far left and politicized itself so thoroughly, it is natural for conservatives to want to find movies that aren’t left wing propaganda.

Moreover, it is disingenuous for liberals to act as if this were somehow a uniquely conservative idea. Liberals have been playing this game for years. If a movie doesn’t feature enough blacks, women, gays, handicapped, or other members of the victims du jour, the left turns out with protests and boycotts. Oh, you’re doing a movie about the five survivors of a Nazi U-boat and the whole thing takes place in a life boat? Well, you better find a way to cram some women and blacks into this movie or you’ll be sorry. Come to think of it, better make the first officer gay.

Liberal reviewers play this game as well. Many reviewers openly talk politics in their reviews. And even when they aren’t doing it openly, their bias is obvious: a soldier in a movie dies horribly and as he dies, he blames George Bush and Dick Cheney -- that’s an impartial movie with a powerful message that everyone needs to see (like anything by Michael Moore). But if that same soldier blames Obama -- well, that’s pure hate-filled propaganda and the filmmaker “browbeats” his audience with his political views: no one should see this film.

To understand this, understand that liberals live in a bubble. Everywhere they look they are being fed liberalism. Their college professors were liberals. The evening news gives them liberalism on tap, the nation’s biggest newspapers too. Their friends are liberals. They cluster into bubbles where only Democrats get elected and where all their friends squawk the same liberal garbage. . . like a gaggle of idiots. It’s so pervasive in their lives that they can’t even see it. They aren’t aware of the fact that liberal beliefs, as we’ve shown before, are the outlier in this country, because they don’t know anyone who disagrees with them. So when they go to a movie and they hear that familiar echo, they have no reason to think that this is anything unusual or controversial.

Thus, when a guy like Roger Ebert reflexively gives all liberal “message” films good ratings and describes them as unbiased or fair or without political message, he honestly just doesn’t “get it” because no one in his life has ever told him how far left he is. By the same token, his hypersensitivity to non-liberal films, and his reflexive downgrading of those efforts, just demonstrates how deeply unaware he is of how his political biases sway his thinking.

Supporting The Conservative Film

In any event, let us move on. The first question is, should conservatives support a film merely because it is conservative? The answer is no. To warrant support, a film should first and foremost be a good film. Conservatives should encourage the incorporation of conservative ideas and principles into movies, but should not support a film just because it is conservative -- that reeks of affirmative action. To support bad films merely because we agree with the message does nothing but open us up to the charge that conservatives are incapable of making quality entertainment. So the next time someone tells you that you need to like a crappy movie because it was “conservative,” ask them whether they think the crapfest in question does anything to advance the conservative cause or if it just reinforces negative stereotypes.

How To Spot A Conservative Film

Now we come to the heart of the issue. Right now there are a great number of conservative film critics who play the game of spotting conservative films. Even National Review came up with a list of their top 25 “conservative” films. The only problem was that almost none of the films they identified were conservative. The same is true of the critics; they don’t seem to be able to distinguish conservative and liberal films.

As anyone who has visited Big Hollywood knows, when the question comes up of naming conservative films, people start spitting out the wildest garbage. They mistake conservative messages for “liberal lies” because they fail to grasp the meaning of the film. They identify far left propaganda as conservative because they think they heard one line in the movie that struck them as conservative, like when the cross-dressing, serial-killing sheriff, who is sleeping with his gay cousin, spouts off that he doesn’t trust the federal government to fix the environment (as he eats a child-raping priest). Sure his next line tells us that we must rise up and demand that our government ban the use of fossil fuels, but he said he doesn’t trust the government. . . that makes him a conservative hero. WTF?!

Moreover, every good trait suddenly becomes conservative. Every bad trait becomes liberal. I’ve even heard claims that movies that “kick ass” are conservative. And any film about the military that doesn’t involve an American solider torturing a civilian is conservative? Give me a break.

Let’s get over the idea that a movie can be made into a conservative movie by an errant line of dialog or some strange twisted interpretation of some minor event. And let’s drop the idea that just because we like a movie or a character, there must be some trait that lets us call the character conservative. To be a conservative movie, that movie must have conservative values deeply ingrained within the film. Think of it this way, if you have to sum up the lessons the film taught, are those lessons consistent with conservative thinking or liberal thinking?

A film cannot be considered conservative if it pays lip service to conservative beliefs but falls back on typical liberalism to resolve the films crises -- the lesson of such a film is that liberal answers are the correct answers. Nor can we consider a film conservative if it reinforces the propagandized view of the world that the left espouses, or if it relies on stereotypical liberal boogeymanisms to provide a villain or conflict to be resolved. Nor can we consider a film conservative if it treats conservative values as evil or wrong.

At the same time, we should not consider a movie liberal just because it deals with an issue that conservatives consider unpleasant. You must look beyond the settings and consider the themes and lessons of the film. Take the issue of the pedophile priest. A film that treats the priest as typical of all priests and the church as uncaring likely could not be considered a conservative film, particularly if it further extends that message to say that all religious people are inherently perverted, corrupt or evil. But if the film shows that this priest is not typical of Christians, and that Christianity does not condone his behavior in any way, then the film might be conservative, depending on how the rest of it is handled.

So What Are Conservative Values

So what are conservative values? Sometimes it’s obvious. Some films are intended as a conservative or liberal message movie. Is the movie a direct criticism of certain politicians or policies? Is the point of the film to sway people to a particular set of beliefs? If so, then it is obvious what the film is. What you see is what you get, a political film that will generally be seen only by the true believers.

But more often than not, it is less obvious and we must divine the intent of the filmmakers. In this regard, we must first understand that many values like patriotism, bravery, caring about people, love of family, tolerance, or even religious faith, are not uniquely conservative or liberal ideas. Both sides of the political spectrum love to claim these values as their own and to assert that they are lacking in the other side. But such claims are mere propaganda (excluding, of course, certain fringe elements who specifically disavow certain values). This, coincidentally, is why both left and right see Orwell’s 1984 as a warning about the other.

If you look around the world, you will find that both left and right hold these values in high esteem -- they just tend to define them differently. And that is where you must look to determine the real nature of the film. What motivates their patriotism? How do they interpret their religious beliefs? Does the do-gooder want to teach people to fish or are they demanding that the government hand out fish?

Uniquely conservative values tend to be centered around the “traditional” ideas of (1) faith in the individual over the collective, (2) an acceptance of cause and effect, and a willingness to let people bear the consequences of their own actions, (3) an unwillingness to excuse misbehavior as something beyond the control of the individual, i.e. society made me do it, (4) the idea that respect and dignity are earned, not a right, and must be maintained through appropriate behavior, (5) a belief that truth is absolute, not relative, (6) an acceptance of human nature as it is and not as something that can be changed, (7) a distrust of government imposed solutions, and (8) support for rule of law. Liberal values tend to be the opposite of these.

These are the values that make a film conservative or liberal. So ask yourself when you hear about some new “conservative” film, do the positive characters (i.e. the protagonists and any other characters shown in a good light) share these beliefs and does the film function according to these beliefs? If not, you’re probably not dealing with a conservative film.