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Samizdata quote of the day Are Ridley Scott’s falling petals, which he seems to like so much that he puts them in his films over and over again, anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation?
– Rick Moody, in a Guardian article entitled Frank Miller and the rise of cryptofascist Hollywood
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, âPorcupinesâ, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty FrĂ©dĂ©ric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Lord almighty. What kind of petals has he been smoking, precisely?
By ROBERT LINDSEY, Special to the New York Times
Published: September 01, 1987
Under his gavel, the city has legalized the sale of ice cream cones, provided more public toilets, built new stairways to the town beach and expedited previously stalled efforts to expand Carmel’s library.
Nuanced cryptofascist reactionary Clint Eastwood could not be reached for comment.
I thought he would have liked 300 đ It’s about a band of ultra-collectivists who hated economic growth, despised wealth, banned free enterprise and trade, had very progressive views on M/M sexuality and enforced strict equality in barracks and refectories. A previous generation of lefties were happy to call themselves Sparticists. What’s for a liberal not to like, huh? On the other hand, why the allegedly right-wing Miller should idolise them defeats me.
I’m more of a Salamis man myself.
Rick Moody slags off Under Siege; well he can go and fuck himself, frankly. Seagal and Tommy Lee Jones are great in it.
The film is superb as a sort of late-80s feel-good action flick. It is not meant to be taken seriously. But it does celebrate the rugged hero: which is presumably why Moody hates it.
“I’m just a cook”.
Much truth in your comment, Corsair, but on a point of pedantry, the Sparticists were surely named after Spartacus not Sparta.
He’s just copying the article Propaganda from Miller’s own website but trying to argue that Hollywood is actually mostly right-wing, rather than mostly left-wing. Miller may be a bit of a nutter but this is a rather slanted reading of reality to say the least.
JP
Agree about Under Siege. It contains one of my favourite movie one-liners. Erika Eleniak having previously stated that she has a rule, no two rules: “I don’t date musicians and I DON’T KILL PEOPLE”, and then she kills someone who is about to kill Seagal, and Seagal says: “Next thing you know, you’ll be dating musicians.”
It’s funnier than I made it sound, because these two bits are several minutes apart.
Samizdata – home of closet Seagal fans. Surely the ‘who are we’ section of the website should be updated?
A broken clock moment there.
Smited?
Anyway, I can’t stand Seagal, no matter how much I tried. “True Lies”, OTOH, was great – Schwarzethingy is much more effective in comic setups than he is in “serious” action flicks.
I have pity for a guy like Rick Moody- he must be a very sad individual and unhappy at the world and his life. I wish him good luck and good cheer and hope that someday he can overcome his anti-social personality disorder and love people again.
This makes me think of P. J. O’Rourke’s comment “…that some people cannot experience the slightest of life’s pleasures without being thrown into frenzies of analysis.”
Natalie: OMG. omg. You’re right. That had never, ever occured to me! I’ll go and shoot myself now đ
I’m rather glad that the poor dear doesn’t go to see the manly action/adventure flicks at the theatre. I would hate to sit in a seat he had previously occupied, his obvious propensity for panty wetting being so clearly revealed. I imagine him much more comfortable at a chick flick, weeping quietly into his hanky, alone, in the dark.
“Is it possible to think of a film such as Gladiator outside of its political subtext? Are Ridley Scott’s falling petals, which he seems to like so much that he puts them in his films over and over again, anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation?”
Yes, if you’re a cunt-fuckwitter who ought to be made to eat his own feet in a rational world. Without ketchup. And if he didn’t say “Thanks!” for it he ought to be de-bollocked with spoons. And then his entire family burnt to death and his house knocked down and his cat put in a blender.
Just to confirm the secret that has been discovered about Samizdatistas, I think Under Siege is great, too. In a period of film history that contained many ripoffs of Die Hard, it was one of the very few that was actually any good.
True Lies has some splendid moments, but also has some misogenistic undertones that I don’t really care for, so it isn’t really my favourite movie. Avatar is basically Dances with Wolves in space, and shares that movie’s patronising pomposity.
Bad day, Nick?:-)
“Avatar” was so flat, even 3D couldn’t save it…
I much prefer “Fern Gulley” to “Avatar”.
“Under Siege” also featured some sweet knife fighting.
Twenty years from now, someone is going to print a history of the centennial of comic books and super heroes. Frank Miller will figure prominently. I will be surprised if Rick Moody is remembered two decades from now.
Of course Fascism (i.e. collective control of the individual in the name of “social justice”) is more a description of Rick Moody’s politics (and of the Guardian generally) than of some of the people he attacks.
Of course Mussolini was killed by Marxists – but that was very much an internal faction fight. Mussolini was a socialist to his dying breath – he was just a heretic in the eyes of orthodox Marxists (as he had been a leading Marxist himself).
I doubt that Mr Moody even understands that Fascism is a Progressive political (and cultural) movement.
However, most of Hollywood is closer to Rick Moody’s own Red Fascism than they are to the poltics of someone like Frank Miller.
Would it was not true – but it is.
As for the history of “Liberal Fascism” in the United States – see Jonah Goldberg’s book by that name.
Although I think his attacks on Hollywood (a small part of the book) go too far – by pointing at virtually everything as “Fascist”.
Much as Rick Moody would – although from a very different (and much better thought out) point of view.