This is something that is more in Roy's wheelhouse, but still, it's damned peculiar, and worthy of notice of some sort or other.
It emanates from a blog called Libertas, subheaded "A Forum for Conservative Thought on Film"; the subject is the departure of Proud Conservative Joel Surnow from his hit program on the Fox Network, 24. The tone of the post is remarkably sullen and paranoid. The author quotes the Hollywood Reporter on Mr. Surnow's decision to quit the show and go off and do other stuff, and detects in this Hollywood reporting an ideological sneer:
And because Hollywood liberals are incapable of even the slightest amount of class the article closes with this bit of snark:
The openly conservative Surnow, who jokingly labeled himself a “right-wing nut job,” has been the most visible of the masterminds behind “24.”
He hasn’t shied from speaking his mind and made headlines in November when he said: “Are we nuts thinking Hillary Clinton could be president of this country? Honest to God, just stand back and think about it.”
Ironically, the upcoming seventh season of “24,” slated to debut in January 2009, features the first female U.S. president, played by Cherry Jones.
Hmmm. I believe I know from snark, and I don't quite see where it comes in there. Perhaps in the adverb "ironically"? Somehow?
All of which seems like no more than garden-variety sniveling about perpetual victimization, an inevitable component of "conservative" identity politics. What's interesting though from a clinical perspective is the specifically aesthetic angle.
All I can suggest to any network executive out there, cable or otherwise, is that you need to let Joel Surnow be Joel Surnow. Yes, “24″ has a dynamite premise that, until season six, was equally great in the writing department, but the real reason “24″ worked so brilliantly was because Surnow has a unique sensibility that understands ideological purity is the death of drama.
Well, sure, I don't disagree about the need for artists to reject "ideological purity," necessarily (though to be fair there are some nice moments in Henry V, I wouldn't deny it, a play that most certainly rests on some very firm ideological foundations). But I do worry that this Libertas blog draws the water for its theories of legitimate artistic production from stagnant, unreflective critical puddles.
What I mean is, you can't pretend that simply saying the literal opposite of certain idées reçues is the equivalent of a properly Flaubertian aesthetic detachment. Or, well, you can, but you just come across like a petulant dickhead:
Before Hollywood started working for al-Queda my biggest complaint with them was how left-wing cliches were killing films and television. Once you know how the simple liberal mind works — once you crack that code – you can see plot-twists coming from a mile away. Liberal purity has created more cliches and ruined more thrillers and action films than I can even begin to count.
I don’t know the man, but Surnow seemed to consciously understand that over the decades a liberal socialization had taken place with television audeinces which would allow him to create truly shocking plot twists by playing on what we’ve expected from liberal Hollywood for decades and then turning those expectations on their ear.
Black presidents torture? Torture works? The bad guys really aren’t white? A black first lady is the villain? The hippie kid really is a snivelling punk? The protagonist loves his country? The guy who played John F. Kennedy is torturing his own son because his country comes first? Terrorism is always a bad thing? Non-white people are terrorists? Guns do good? And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
I suspect that many auditors will find the foregoing just slightly over the top. Or, well, not totally accurate. (Note to Libertas: examples help you prove your case -- it's true! And weren't some Tom Clancy novels made into a successful movie franchise even during the commie Clinton years?) At any rate, I have to admit to not quite getting how you're striking a blow for artistic freedom by making a black woman a traitorous anti-American bitch. I suppose that making the gay guy the real villain of No Way Out was equally daring from a conservative perspective? Freedom!
It really is rather odd to be focusing on the action genre as the locus for a defense of the artistic freedom from ideological pressures. In this regard, Henry V is a good example: you have your kickass hero, lots of patriotism, gratuitous slagging off of the French, a lack of good lines for chicks, desperate battle scenes, regretful but still dramatically satisfying pitilessness on the part of the protagonist, whose nods towards a weenie conscience only make his kick-assery all the more poignant... shit, how daring and innovative is Jack Bauer anyway? I've tried to watch the show and thought it was pretty stupid, though I'm willing to cop to a respect for an ability to tweak an ancient formula in an intriguing manner. But come off it, if you thought the particularly non "PC" elements of 24 made for gripping drama, well, where the fuck have you been since the 17th century?
Anyway, if Jack Bauer were to come out as gay in the last season, that might perhaps provide more of an unforeseen plot twist than the daring move of showing that dusky-hued fellows can, unbelievably, actually be terrorists. Just saying. "Bauer, if you don't suck this cock, millions die by fire!"
Oh, and it gets better:
I knew "24" was something special during season one when Jack’s wife agreed to be raped in her daughter’s place and then it actually happened. What a horrific and anguishing moment that was, and in any other show the rape never would’ve happened because we’ve become so socialized to the conventions of the genre we all knew the "good" bad guy would stop the rape (because we’ve seen it a hundred times before) or something else contrived would save this character we cared about from such a terrible thing. But she was raped and it solidified our sympathy making her death at the end all the more heartbreaking.
More importantly that moment told us all bets are off; anything can happen to anyone. It completely undermined our sense of security about the entire cast. Nothing was sacred. Nothing's off limits. And that is drama.
Yeah, Lord knows the threat or reality of having Our Womenfolk Raped By Bad Guys has never ever been used before in a dramatic production and that when this happens there are never ever any preconceived ideological or political connotations. Also, when a young couple's car breaks down on a stormy night and they seek refuge in a spooky Gothic mansion, nothing eerie will happen to them. And when two very different cops are thrust together as partners, they will not overcome their differences and ultimately unite to confront a wicked crime boss. (Has this idiot ever been to the fucking movies? Or read a book?)
But I am glad to see that rescuing women from rape is a weenie liberal fantasy. Let's hear it for weenie liberal fantasies.
Anyway I don't think Libertas really understands what a genuine artistic interrogation of and liberation from ideological constraints might entail. Just a feeling I have.
Also I'm enough of a commie art for art's sake maniac to suppose that money exerts a more profound censorship effect on Hollywood productions than do liberal pieties. But maybe that's just me.