Jonah Goldberg’s Critical Roots

Wondering about the models for the cultural criticism generally favored by today’s conservatives? (“Are George Lucas movies ideologically incorrect and therefore bad?” “What are the 50 most conservative episodes of Three’s Company?”) Wonder no more, as one of our ace commenters his discovered what I can say without hyperbole the best site on the intarwebs ever: the archive of the Maoist Internationalist Movement’s film reviews. How, for example, will the critics deal with John Singleton’s undoubtedly well-intentioned and undoubtedly atrocious Higher Learning? The answer may not surprise you!

Higher Learning is a progressive movie which takes on many political issues, including those which relate to gender, nation (“race”), class and sexual orientation. This upsets many bourgeois film critics, who prefer “art for art’s sake,” and therefore consider artists like Singleton “preachy” for addressing the issues of the day.

However!

One of the worst things about Higher Learning is that in some places, it lends itself to a liberal individualist analysis. One example of this is where we are told that a character who becomes a violent white supremacist was beaten as a child. The issue of individualism is also raised by quick scene changes which seem to indicate a symmetry between supporters of white power and supporters of Black power.

Ah, well, I guess I’ll wait for it to come out on VHS. Now let’s move onto bigger game, the immortal cinematic classic Patch Adams:

Some of Patch’s criticisms of how medicine is structured agree with the proletarian perspective of medicine. The bourgeoisie puts great emphasis on technical training and puts this above common sense and contact with the masses. Consistently, Patch Adams makes it clear that just because medicine has “always” been conducted this way doesn’t mean that it always should be. In the film, Patch makes great solidarity with the 1970s era nurses, who are portrayed as better health care providers because they are not as divorced from their patients as the doctors.

All and all, I think this is the greatest treasure trove for connoisseurs of Zhdanovism since Michael Medved warned us about the wrongthink of Kangaroo Jack.