Regarding Sith.......another Newsweak "journalist" illustrates why we can't trust this source.
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Newsweek Critic Ansen's Changing Approach
to Star Wars Movies
It's not a retraction, just a contradiction. On Monday's Today show, in a story re-aired on MSNBC's Countdown and Scarborough Country, Newsweek film critic David Ansen read modern politics into the upcoming Star Wars film, with President Bush in the Darth Vader role: "It's clear that there's a parallel between the Bush administration and the rise to power of the Empire, the Evil Empire." He also asserted the film suggested a critique of the Patriot Act. But during the Clinton years, Ansen lamented that the original Star Wars film in 1977 signaled the resurgence of conservatism: "It marked a fundamental cultural shift that anticipated Ronald Reagan's politics of nostalgia and brought back the tyranny of the happy ending." In another article, he wrote that all war movies became anti-war movies after Vietnam, so "the spirit of gung-ho heroism had to flee into the future -- into boys' adventure fantasies such as Star Wars."
[The MRC's Tim Graham submitted this article for CyberAlert.]
On Monday's Today, the MRC's Geoff Dickens noticed, Katie Couric introduced the Star Wars segment halfway through the show's first half hour: "May the Force be with you, you and you. The last of the Star Wars movie, hit movies, hits theaters everywhere this week. It's one of the most talked about films of the year but now some critics are claiming it's actually a thinly-veiled lightsaber attack against President Bush. NBC's Michael Okwu has the story."
Okwu began: "It is the much-hyped, highly anticipated final episode of a decades-old drama. But this week the buzz about Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith, opening in days, it may take shots at the Bush White House."
David Ansen, Newsweek: "It is clear that there's a parallel between the Bush administration and the rise to power of the Empire, the Evil Empire."
Okwu: "It's been major chatter in the blogosphere and beyond. First the film's theme. In the movie a warmongering chancellor of an intergalactic republic asks the Senate to give up their liberties and to give him more power under the guise of being under attack."
Movie clip, Obi-Wan-Kenobi: "We are at war, Anakin."
Ansen: "It appeared to be a reference to the Patriot Act and to our sort of giving up our civil liberties in the name of national security."
Movie clip, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine: "All who gain power are afraid to lose it."
Okwu: "Many are reading into key lines and their real-life references. This quote from Anakin Skywalker, about to become super-villain Darth Vader. 'If you're not with me,' he says, 'then you're my enemy.' President Bush in November 2001."
George W. Bush: "You're either with us or you're against us in the fight against terror."
Okwu: "In an interview, director George Lucas said he was less inspired by the current wartime climate than by the Nixon-Vietnam era. 'When I wrote it,' he said, 'Iraq didn't exist.' A full throttle, hair-raising climax now raising eyebrows. For Today, Michael Okwu, NBC News, Los Angeles."
Ansen carried the same theme into his review in the May 16 edition of Newsweek: "It's hard not to feel that Lucas's engagement with this story has a contemporary urgency, as line after pointed line invites us to see a parallel with today's wartime climate. As the Senate cedes power to Palpatine under the guise of intergalactic security, Natalie Portman's Princess Padme exclaims bitterly, 'So this is how liberty dies -- to thunderous applause.'"
But during the Clinton years, Ansen lamented that the original Star Wars film signaled the resurgence of conservatism. In the January 20, 1997 issue, Ansen trashed the George Lucas films. In an article titled "Dark Side of a Hit," Ansen began: "Is Star Wars the movie that destroyed Hollywood? A lot of people in the movie industry would say yes."
Ansen asserted that the ground-breaking 1970s work of directors Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Mazursky brought a refreshing "new tone and style in American films, a determination to rethink and subvert the old narrative formulas." That style also often rethought and subverted everything that Americans loved and respected.
Ansen then complained: "Star Wars, on the other hand, with its mythic battle of Good and Evil, looked back to every time-honored genre. From Westerns and war movies to Flash Gordon serials and even [the Nazi propaganda film] Triumph of the Will, Lucas pillaged Hollywood history to produce what was the first postmodern epic. But this was postmodernism without irony, designed to evoke longing for the 'innocent' childhood experience of watching movies. It marked a fundamental cultural shift that anticipated Ronald Reagan's politics of nostalgia and brought back the tyranny of the happy ending."
In a July 13, 1998 article titled, "Celluloid Soldiers," Ansen returned to the complaint that Star Wars did not present an anti-war theme, but a pro-war theme which failed to subvert rah-rah pro-military themes:
"After Vietnam, filmmakers had no stomach at all for full-tilt heroism. John Wayne had come to symbolize the never-say-die American fighting man, particularly with 1949's The Sands of Iwo Jima. Now Wayne had become an object of scorn to some. In 1989, Oliver Stone subverted the rah-rah spirit of Iwo Jima with Born on the Fourth of July, the story of paralyzed Vietnam vet Ron Kovic. The symbolic debate between these two kinds of war movies -- the inspirational Iwo Jima and the angry Fourth of July -- has raged for three decades. Since Vietnam, nearly all war movies have called themselves antiwar movies, whether they were traditional (A Bridge Too Far) or surreal (Apocalypse Now). The spirit of gung-ho heroism had to flee into the future -- into boys' adventure fantasies such as Star Wars."
Ansen has regularly offered a classic example of the liberal film critic who judges movies first and foremost on whether they aid and abet his ideology. Films that might boost conservatism, intentionally or unintentionally, symbolize for him the "dark side" of Hollywood. But Ansen should try to explain how the Star Wars films are both pro-war, and now suddenly anti-war.
-- Brent Baker
mrc.org |
