[PEN-L:4708] Re: Labor Party

[PBurns@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

  Eugene Coyle wrote:

I saw the new movie "The Rock" over the weekend.  I'd be interested in
hearing the analysis of the PEN-L movie critics.  The movie both glorifies
the honorable fighting Marines and emphasizes their betrayal by "The
Pentagon".  But it also reports that the US has been engaged in some dirty
wars --and some clean ones.  I'm not sure if the movie's point is to
support facism or to attack it.  Any help out there?  (By the way, if the
film had been shortened by fifteen minutes by cutting out the repetitive
bodies flying through skylights and windows it would have been better.)


  I saw this movie too on Saturday.  I wanted to see Mission
  Impossible (that was what I thought my father who was over
  visiting from Scotland would enjoy), but it was sold out
  so we settled for The Rock, having been up in San
  Francisco (where the movie is set) a couple of days
  before.  To answer Eugene's question, I thought the
  movie's message was roughly, "Yeah the (Big Bad)
  Government is a Big Bad Thing, so all you right wing
  gun-toting loonies out there have seriously legitimate
  gripes, but killing lots of innocent people is maybe
  stretching the limits of an acceptable response.  So
  here's some vicarious macho-militarism and violence to
  enjoy instead."  Personally I didn't like the movie qua
  movie, and politically it simply pandered to the hate the
  government instincts of angry white men.  I prefer
  pandering to hate the capitalist corporations instincts.
  A better message re government was given in the film with
  Michael Douglas as a liberal president being baited by a
  cynical "family values" conservative while falling in love
  with Annette Benning who eventually provides the necessary
  bit of backbone (The President?).  Did you see that one,
  Bill Clinton?

  Peter