[lbo-talk] Hurt Locker

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Mar 11 15:29:09 PST 2010


Michael Pollak wrote:
>
>
> I don't think it's a very important movie. I very much enjoyed watching
> it, and I think it's a interesting innovation in action movies, comparable
> to, and more successful than, Ang Lee's Hulk. But probably about as
> memorable.

We can't get hundreds of thousands of people marching in D.C. against the war two or three or four times a year, but we sure can be hell on movies we can dub "conservative."

I know this runs against over a century of left critique of the arts, most of which is grounded in the (false) assumption that the politics of a work are intrnsic to the work; neertheless, I would argue that the poliitcs of a work are to be judged not by anything 'in' it (movie, novel, poem, ballet) but by the conversation the work generates. And as fasr as I can see (going back to discussions of Independence Day on the Spoons marxism list) all the movies that have generated good left discussion have been movies which have been condemned as reactionary or conservative. "Progressive" or radical movies don't seem to generate much worthwhile discussion.

Carrol
>



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