No. *watches as you disintegrate and disappear into the abyss*

Yep, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have notoriously been equal opportunity offenders and have gone on the offensive to both liberals and conservatives, although their libertarian leanings do put them in the camp where their punches directed toward the left seem to sting a lot more than their punches directed toward the right.

I've always thought of Clint Eastwood as a middle of the road filmmaker politically. I admire him a lot, both as a filmmaker and from what I know of him, as a person. The classic film, Dirty Harry, got a lot of blowback at the time of its release and even today when viewers are discovering it for the first time (especially in a post BLM environment) as being fascist, a right wing wet dream, and on and on. Although any criticism of Dirty Harry seems to completely miss the whole point that Eastwood was not, even in 1971, endorsing AT ALL the character he was playing. Magnum Force tried to clear some of that up as he battled the police hit squad and Magnum Force was darn near as good as the first Dirty Harry. Unfortunately he spent the next three Dirty Harry Films trying soften and humanize the character even more, which is a shame because they just aren't good movies. Sure they have their moments, but are pretty throw away in his filmography and a pandering to the crowd that can't seem to separate a filmmaker from a character they play, nor did they get the message of the original film - which in my mind is pretty down the middle politically.

That's actually a very VERY common thing and I went through all of that and, in part, no longer have my career because I tried existing in a world that progressively moved very VERY far left and was ground zero when all the Covid and post-Covid madness started.

For some reason and again I know many people who are on the right and who are conservative are guilty of it, but there is also less of an acceptance of the arts, literary analysis, film criticism, etc among Republicans.

This always put me in a weird no man's land. People who share my interests and passions don't tolerate my conservative viewpoints and not only that, but will often times actively go after people who disagree with them, and people who I agree with philosophically in regards to government's relationship to man, don't tend to go into the same career or similar careers that I was in for 14 years.

So most of the people I could talk to about film with, I can't let them know who I voted for or just ignore the conversation or hide when it turns political and most people who I can talk about politics or ideology with, I could never share or discuss my love of film with or go into depth about a Werner Herzog movie, etc.

Which specific "right" leaning stances are they afraid of voicing? Which "groups of people" are they afraid of voicing them around?

Around my area the big one is if someone is pro-life, or even if they don't support late-term abortion while supporting early term. That is easily the biggest issue. Gun rights and ownership is probably a strong second. The flow of the conversation usually matches what Keyser was talking about, which starts with someone maybe mentioning they like smaller government or complaining about the altering of the local curriculum with strongly progressive materials that take focus away from more standardized methods, which then leads to questions about the issues I just mentioned above. Very quickly, this person is put into a category of being a far right moron or a "Trumper" or something of that nature, and are aggressively gone after. For the record, I haven't personally seen this happen at my place of employment, and we have a fairly diverse group politically where I work. I have seen it out and about otherwise, though. Again though, I live in a very liberal area.

As for the groups of people: They inferred it was certain, more left-leaning groups of friends or colleagues at work.

To highlight an instance I witnessed personally: I used to do some freelance design work for a board game company, and a fairly large portion of the staff were strongly left-leaning activists. The owner of the company was more of a church-going conservative, but for the most part, was not politically active. Board game companies are constantly running play-test weekends as we iterate and test games. On one particular Saturday, a couple of younger interns caught wind of the owners political leanings and started sort of going after the guy pretty aggressively.

I am going to stop here, because this is the sort of topical divergence that tends to send these threads sideways, as people being to take up defensive stances of their politics when they perceive an offhand comment as a specific attack on a specific ideology, or on them personally. This thread will stay open as long as we stay focused on the original topic, but even a bit too much drift into volleys back and forth about left vs right or conversations of that nature with see this thing locked down pretty quickly.

Back on topic: I tend to find the same as Viddy, in that quite a few right-leaning people I know do tend to casually write off the arts, and especially film, which tends to have me on the defensive when they start ragging on cinema.

Re: The Elephant in the Closet - Conservativism in film and Hollywood
 

On my first ever forum this would've erupted and deleted within two hours of the OP posting. Nice to know that movie buffs are much more analytical than that.

Yeah, it happens. There are some art films or I should say critically praised films that do have conservative messaging in them, but not nearly as many it seems like as those that have messages or values that go the other way. A lot of films of course are a-political, but I know at least a few of my top 25 that will show up in the 2010s thread have clear political bents to the left of center. John Milius is perhaps the most notorious of conservative filmmakers/writers... he wrote Dirty Harry and Magnum Force and Apocalypse Now, Conan the Barbarian, and a handful of others. It's too bad that Red Dawn was the film that went so far to the right that he lost a lot of opportunities or the brilliance of some of his earlier stuff. And I imagine by the 1980s some of his stuff was too "arty" for a more conservative leaning audience, so he went the route of Conan and Red Dawn

I remember when Juno (2007) came out - I was really expecting a pro-abortion movie since it was coming from Hollywood. Turned out it wasn't. It also wasn't a conservative movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it did feature a story where abortion, although an option, was not the choice for an unwanted pregnancy.

It must be said that what counts as “conservative” depends on context. The Overton Window shifts over time, generally becoming more liberal. Yesterday’s liberal who did not "evolve" is today’s conservative. Also, a lot depends on climate (e.g., is it polarized or relaxed, did an event like 9/11 change the narrative in this period, are the politics implicit or explicit).

Also, conservative in what way? Function? Intention? Reception? In whole? In part? When Hollywood makes a film to make a buck (let’s give the audience what they want to pay these bills!), that does not really implicate Hollywood as conservative. The director who makes the “conservative” action flick is probably funding the liberal candidate. Some films attempt to offer a liberal message, but fail in terms of execution (e.g., High Noon as an allegory for one man standing up to oppressions like House Un-American Activities Committee, but simply being received as a good-old cowboy flick, Starship Troopers is an unironic good time for a good many).

Despite these difficulties, there are conservative themes that have proved to be rather robust.

Guns are Good! Guns solve problems for our heroes. Even if the hero claims to hate guns, unless he’s MacGyver he’s probably going to use one and prove to be a crack shot with them. The industry largely claims to be anti-gun, but damn if there aren’t a lot of guns still featured on movie posters.

Nukes also fit in this category. How many sci-fi movies solve their problems with nuclear weapons (e.g., Nuke the Sun in Sunshine, Nuke the center of the Earth in The Core, Nuke the giant space rock in Armageddon, Nuke the aliens—from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure…)?

Rugged Individualism. Sure, the rhetoric today is “You didn’t make that!” and that if you’re a success it’s either due to systemic privilege or the caprice of chance, but ain’t nobody got time that when it’s dreamtime. Our heroes are big, bold, butt-kickers who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and defy collectivist conventions of the normies. They solve their own problems by defying authority. Mavericks!

Masculine Action Heroes. Give a rugged individualist a gun and you have a Hollywood action hero. They are strong, cunning, brave, overpowering, coercive, and decisive. And this is true even if your hero is a Super-Chick™. Flipping the gender doesn’t flip the function, it just allows for the trumpeting of faux-feminism, a fig-leaf “Finally, girls everywhere are empowered by seeing themselves as violent thugs!” The repeated lie that Super-Chicks™ are empowering subversive empowerment finally unraveled after Jennifer Lawrence stated it for the umpteenth time too flatly and emphatically and all of the sudden people remembered Foxy Brown, Ripley, Buffy, Mila, Dark Angel, Yeoh, Uma, Sarah Connor, Jollie, etc. had also “subverted” the genre.

Military Veneration. This one is wobblier than it used to be. Modern offerings have been criticized as rightwing and even white supremacist (e.g., Top Gun: Maverick, The Terminal List, Jack Reacher). Also, we should remember the spate of Oscar-Bait anti-Vietnam movies. After 9/11, however, we had a spate of Seal Team Wannabe movies, so this still has latent potency.

Punitive Solutions to Social Problems. Get tough Dirty Harry! Stupid libs have messed up San Francisco with their bleeding hearts, which is why we need you to blow baddies out of their socks! And we need tough principals with principles... ...and baseball bats(!) to fix those darned high schools. Fix ‘em good, teach! The cop hero, of course, is a tougher sell these days. The hero cop will probably have to perform some active of contrition and confess and show that s/he is “doing the work” and their “save the dog” moment will be a proof that they’re a “good apple.” Once the cop is established to be on the right side of history, they can start kicking that ass!

To add to the notes of personal experiences, the republicans I grew up with were relatively tame when it comes to these things. My Christian conservative dad took a film school once, and personally recommended Bicycle Thieves to me whenever I asked him about his opinions regarding the "greatest movies ever." My stepdad is a bit different. He's highly critical of artsy movies like 2001, going as far as to call that one of the most boring movies ever. Same with Searching for Bobby Fischer last I remember. But he only mentions liberal stuff if a list ends up being too artsy or loaded with foreign cinema so as to be more accepting.

Conservative Actors: The Has-been, The Never-Was, and the Juggernaut

The scuttlebutt out of Hollywood is that if you're conservative in the 21st century, you'd better keep a heavy tight lid on it. It's interesting to see the trend of fading stars with nothing to lose unmasking as conservative (e.g., Kirstie Alley, James Woods). Did Kevin Sorbo or Kirk Cameron have anything left in the tank for work before they went in the tank for Godsploitation films? Either way, they're has-beens now for sure. It's easier if you're a never-was who appears in conservative fare, or a conservative who appears in a movie made for the Walmart bargain bin (e.g., the Great Value version of Pacific Rim which was made in 2 weeks to compete with the real thing).

The curious cases are those apparently unsinkable conservatives, the juggernauts. If you're an ageing boomer actor who leans conservative, you're probably just a classical liberal (only conservative relative to the contemporary Overton Window) who kept "driving the speed limit" and is now so beloved that it would be hard to dislodge you because of the power of your memberberries. Clint Eastwood could speak at the RNC and still work, because he's Clint F***ing Eastwood. Youngsters face a bit more trouble. Chris Pratt seems to get cancelled on a bi-monthly basis, but he still gets work because he was unmasked too late. He's the conservative who made it big before people figured out he has some conservative views. But he should probably also watch his step. I think you either have to be an older star who is kept afloat by sheer star power, or a Trojan Horse Conservative who made it through the filtering process.

Re: The Elephant in the Closet - Conservativism in film and Hollywood
 

The ground under conservative-liberal-radical-leftist-rightwing-communist-subversive-racist-progressive dualisms has shifted so many times in my life that it seems to be essential to note a time period and which a schism is being portrayed.

Movie backers seem to want to not declare an ideological position since, after all, they are in the business of selling as much content as they can, but to whoever sits on one end of whatever spectrum and is fervent about their position, the movie always seems like the other end since it's all illustrated on the big or little screen, annotated by scripts and actors.

I actually yearn for a moment when people could think of a movie as entertainment and not ideological fulfillment on the big screen.

The movie Citizen Ruth (1996) tried to depict both sides of the abortion issue, by making both sides comically extremist (though I think they tilted against the religious right with the wicked casting of Burt Reynolds as a pro-life preacher). There was one exquisite scene, however: At one point the young white trash pregnant mother played by Laura Dern is being "protected" from the pro-life faction by being given shelter in the home of the pro-abortion camp. She's sitting at the dining room table with a cup of coffee as they are strategizing their next moves. She takes a cigarette out to light it, and one of the Leftists snatches it out of her hand. Laura protests: "What do you care? You don't give a shit about my baby!"

Back in the 80s, William Buckley on his Firing Line show had an interesting conversation about this with Charlton Heston, a celebrity actor who was actually conservative (about as rare as an albino zebra). They didn't really answer why it is that Hollywood is so profoundly saturated with Leftism.

I don't know if conservative actors these days are ultra rare or not. I often read about actors from the 1940s 1950s 1960s and I'm often surprised to learn that an actor or actress is described as a lifelong Republican.

Actually, they spent years relentlessly mocking Christians, Christianity, the Bible, God, Jesus, Mary, the Pope -- but when it came time to mock Islam & Muhammad, they shook in their boots and made one or two limp-wristed gestures. That ain't "equal". As the more honest Leftist Penn Jillette (of "Penn & Teller") put it, when someone asked him why they don't mock Islam as ruthlessly as they mock Christianity in their Vegas act:

"...we haven’t tacked Islam because we have families."

In that same interview, he recounts how, even though their Vegas show ruthlessly attacks & mocks Christians and Christianity, the Christians who come see their show are the nicest people and come back stage to give them gifts and compliment them. Meanwhile, they self-censor about Islam because they don't want themselves and their families to be KILLED.

https://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/2010/j...lebrity-issue/


When I first saw his 2008 movie Gran Torino, I thought he was diluting the message of the cranky old white man standing his ground ("Get off my lawn...!"), where in the end it seemed he had converted to wokism -- but a friend explained that most likely, his death scene lying flat on his back with his arms outstretched like a crucified Jesus was a satirical mockery of the kind of White Guilt martyrdom the character remained adamantly against (even to his tragic end).

Exceedingly rare. And when they speak out against prevailing narratives, the entire Mainstream mocks and demonizes them.


The ones I can think of: Randy Quaid, Jon Voight, Roseanne Barr, Rob Schneider, Scott Baio, Ricky Schroeder. Back in the 90s, when Tom Selleck was on the Rosie O'Donnell show (she's a flaming Lefty), he very reasonably and calmly defended 2nd amendment & guns and Rosie raked him over the coals in an Inquisition; fast forward to a year later, she has Queen Latifah on who jokes about how "in the hood, we blacks have guns all over the place" and Rosie just laughed along. No pushback AT ALL.

Sounds like their problem. You could probably chalk it up to horseshoe theory where either side of the political spectrum ascribes oppositional extremity to an industry that favours capital-based centrism - it does not strike me as an industry that is "saturated with leftism" so much as one that indulges these values insofar as they can prove sufficiently profitable. As I noted in the post you originally quoted, it's also a question of what exact kind of conservatism is allegedly being shunned because I'd argue there's a difference between the actors you named who have leaned into being political cranks and a self-identified Republican like Dwayne Johnson being one of the most popular movie stars working today.

Re: The Elephant in the Closet - Conservativism in film and Hollywood
 

Conservative actors were absolutely not rare at that time either. Hell, a lot of them are still working today, some of them just quieter about their politics than others.

RINO

If the standard for a "true" Republican actor is someone like Roseanne Barr or Rob Schneider then that's virtually a compliment.