If someone made a movie about Jeffrey Dahmer which had nothing to say other than “what he did was bad” and ended with 10 minute scene explicitly showing him murdering, then eating a victim, I’m willing to bet it would be derided as exploitative and might be compared to pornography.

Tom_Shipley on June 29, 2009 at 9:30 AM

OK, movies like Soraya and Gibson’s Passion are denounced for their graphic violence; but movies like Reservoir Dogs are not. I guess violence is acceptable in movies only if it has a nihilistic tinge.

The one-or-two-in-six-billion sub rosa gay urban cannibal problem doesn’t require the same “consciousness raising” as the state or community sanctioned public practice of stoning in some muslim countries. Political awareness and pressure can actually do something about the latter. Or is “consciousness raising” no longer fashionable in your set?

This review is reminiscent of the left’s dumping all over Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her genitals were mutilated apparently in the name of Islam, but lefties were upset with her talking about it not with those who did it to her and wanted her to shut up about it. They suppressed her by giving her well written autobiography crappy reviews. Why the left didn’t side with Ayaan — a black, female, sexually liberated, intelligent, atheist, intellectual refugee from religious oppression — and instead sided with her theocratic oppressors is a mystery. Ayaan had all the characteristics that should place her in a protected category and her oppressors had all the characteristics that should make liberals anathematize them, yet liberals somehow reversed the polarity on that and were quite comfortable with allowing their hypocrisy to bend the fabric of space-time if that’s what their narratives needed in the short term.

The movie, whatever its merits, wants to agitate people to be aware of this problem and do something about it. To call it “agitprop” might be a fair take — but to call it “porn”? And as someone else pointed out, lefties supported the message of Boys Don’t Cry which had the same message as Soraya (“The community must put a stop to this!”) but had to construct a straw man to do it. When confronted with the real thing of modern day stoning, all the talk shifts from theme to aesthetics.

Liberals regularly taunt their fellow citizens in the West with whom disagree they as “knuckle-dragging neanderthals,” but when confronted with a barbaric practice that is going on today in the Third World, they don’t feel like being outraged and instead get all nuancy. Want lower taxes? Outrage! Stoning a woman to death? Well, who was doing it and was he wearing a dish-dash while doing it?

Maybe it’s not that great a movie — I’ll see it this week — but the left’s ideological discomfort is already apparent in their reaction to it.

Yes, it’s that liberal non-judgmental thing. Of course, that is reserved for use against foreign tyrants only. Republicans, they’re Satan!
PattyJ on June 29, 2009 at 11:24 AM

Liberals love terrorists and dictators for the same reason that teenagers like rock stars — because of their “stick it to the man” attitide.

Liberalism is the cult of the ego. It makes them feel good about themselves to beatifically excuse acts of horrific barbarism. In fact, that’s their biggest thrill — it’s like being God, except without any of the concomitant responsibility.

The only people liberals ever hate are the ones who make them feel guilty. Nothing kills the buzz of hubris quicker than that. And when it comes time to judge American conservatives, liberals always turn from self-congratulatory libertines into 16th-century Quakers at the drop of a hat.

Of course, that is reserved for use against foreign tyrants only. Republicans, they’re Satan!

The Church of Liberalism recognizes only one Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Judge.

It’s a warped and twisted theology. The only thing liberals ever feel is wrong… is feeling that something is wrong. This creates a closed circle of intolerance toward any sort of societal norms, with no fear of ever being held personally responsible for anything liberals ever do or say.

And anything that breaks that circle; anything that shows liberals that some things are unequivocally wrong, and must be opposed instead of simply whined about; is anethema.

This movie forced the reviewer to realize that he should care about something other than his own ego for eight minutes in a row.

And to a liberal, eight minutes of self-examination is eight minutes in Hell.

haha, funny. no, it’s ‘vagi**l mutilation’ that is filtered here.

Hmmmmmm…..

It’s cool to show mind-warping, gratuitous violence in films with no social merit or reality(SAW), but to show a realistic depiction of the kind of torture that is common-place in much of the world is controversial.

why aren’t my posts being displayed?

ThackerAgency on June 29, 2009 at 10:31 AM

Well, Thacker, I briefly seized control over the system. See, I have some concerns about your opinions and I wanted to run them past a few people before I let them go through.

But we’re still good, right, you and me?

There are Iranian ‘women’s rights’ activists who will nuance an answer when asked whether or not stoning should be allowed in Iran for adultery.

Again, I can’t explain it as well as that actress could. She cited many many examples when where challenged, the ability to stone women was encouraged in the Islamic world. It is like ‘honor killings’. People in the west think that it isn’t common and is widely condemned. . . but it is not.

Stoning is horrible. Stoning of women is even worse.

Again, I can’t explain it as well as that actress could. She cited many many examples when where challenged, the ability to stone women was encouraged in the Islamic world. It is like ‘honor killings’ and ‘vaginal mutilation’. People in the west think that it isn’t common and is widely condemned. . . but it is not.

Stoning is horrible. Stoning of women is even worse.

There are Iranian ‘women’s rights’ activists who will nuance an answer when asked whether or not stoning should be allowed in Iran for adultery.

Again, I can’t explain it as well as that actress could. She cited many many examples when where challenged, the ability to stone women was encouraged in the Islamic world. It is like ‘honor killings’ and ‘vaginal mutilation’. People in the west think that it isn’t common and is widely condemned. . . but it is not.

Stoning is horrible. Stoning of women is even worse.

“The Stoning of Soraya M.,” a true story of religiously sanctioned misogyny and mob violence in an Iranian village, thoroughly blurs the line between high-minded outrage and lurid torture-porn.
Not since “The Passion of the Christ” has a film depicted a public execution in such graphic detail.

Hmmm – what do these two films have in common, that a liberal would want to trash them?

He always falls back on his primitive fetishes and treats them as intellectual categories that he mistakenly thinks everybody thinks in terms of.

The usual preoccupations are homoeroticism, sadism, and pornography because, unfortunately, libs have been conditioned to believe these are the uncaused causes of all else in human nature. Libs are pretty gullible that way.

So, this style of critique refers at best to an adolescent mindset. Primitive, self-centered, and terrified of truth.

Now, I haven’t seen Stoning, so I’m obviously not able to accurate comment on what’s in the film, but my guess is — from reading reviews of it — that the film has no point aside from saying “stoning, and a system that uses it is bad.” As the subject of an “artistic” work, that’s pretty lean. “Art” inherently is a deeper study of life. There doesn’t seem to be much “deep” study going on Stoning.

Maybe you should see my review. There’s a lot more going on in this movie than “stoning is bad” — group psychology, the outcomes of power disparities, and the corrosive influence of corruption, and more. And how can you make that statement without having seen it?