Monday, February 9, 2009

The Corner, our favorite Chamber of Horrors, is apparently listing the greatest conservative movies of the last twenty-five years. One James G. Lakely posts this about Clint Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge, a piece of military pornography that makes Rambo look like The First Wives Club:
Clint Eastwood’s foul-mouthed Marine sergeant Tom Highway makes quick work of kicking Communist Cubans out of Grenada. And, boy, does “Gunny” hate Commies. Not only does he kill quite a few, he also refuses a bribe of a Cuban cigar, saying: “Get that contraband stogie out of my face before I shove it so far up your a** you’ll have to set fire to your nose to light it.” A welcome glorification of Reagan’s decision to liberate Grenada in 1983, the film also notes how after a tie in Korea and a loss in Vietnam, America can finally celebrate a military victory. Eastwood, the old war horse, walks off into retirement pleased that he’s not “0–1–1 anymore.” Semper Fi. Oo-rah!
Some unexpected selections include Team America: World Police ("It’s amazingly vulgar and depicts Americans as wildly overzealous in fighting terror," Brian C. Anderson writes. "Yet the film’s utter disgust with air-headed, left-wing celebrity activism remains unmatched in popular culture") and Brazil ("Terrorist bombings, national-security scares, universal police surveillance, bureaucratic arrogance, a callous elite, perversion of science, and government use of torture evoke the worst aspects of the modern megastate," S.T. Karnick drools).

If you're wondering if any contemporary films made the cut, how 'bout another Eastwood? Gran Torino -- "Dirty Harry blows away political correctness, takes on the bad guys, and turns a boy into a man in the process. He even encourages the cultural assimilation of immigrants. It feels so good, you knew the Academy would ignore it," Andrew Breitbart writes. Yet more examples of the power worship to which a certain kind of conservatism degenerates when it's unfashionable or out of power. Which explains posts like these.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald wonders: "Is it even theoretically possible for someone's brain to allow them to write that last sentence in National Review as listing the hallmarks of "a totalitarian regime" and "the worst aspects of the modern megastate" without simultaneously realizing that this is everything that same magazine has cheered on for the last eight years at least?"

2 comments:

Dave said...

To be fair, I'm firmly behind the assertion that Team America is a fundamentally "conservative" (as in post-Bush neoconnish) film. I mean c'mon, Kim Jong-Il gets off easier than Janeane Garofalo!!

Anonymous said...

Since the only thing I know about Heartbreak Ridge is Pauline Kael's amusement at Clint Eastwood's anal fixation, I'm glad the NRO's quote gave credence to her claim.