The Triumph of Derrièrism

Last year I identified an important new school of film criticism, which I called “derrièrism,” since all schools of film criticism are supposed to have French names. Derrièrists are inspired by Jack Warner (though some say it was Harry Cohn), who once said that he judged movies by whether his ass shifted in the seat while he was watching them. Like Warner (or Cohn), a derrièrist film critic judges movies by his ass. As I wrote last year: "Derrièrists are tired of liberal elites telling us what is good for us. They are tired of movies that are depressing and pretentious and difficult." At the time Variety magazine hailed derrièrism as “provocative” theory and said my piece “represents to some degree the thinking of the younger male online film community that recently voted for their Top 100 films,” whose virtues I extolled in my piece. While derrièrism was once an esoteric school of film criticism championed by a few forward-thinking critics, this year it has triumphed. Not only has Andrew Breitbart, the conservative Hollywood critic behind Breitbart.com, announced that he will start a new website, Big Hollywood, which promises to be a hotbed of derrièrist film criticism, such respected film critics as Roger Ebert and the critics at Cahiers du Cinema have jumped on the derrièrist bandwagon.

Breitbart’s site will feature film reviews and criticism from some of this country’s leading derrièrist film critics, people like House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner, Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor, Reps. Thaddeus McCotter, Mary Bono Mack and Connie Mack, former presidential candidate Fred Thompson, MSNBC correspondent Tucker Carlson and conservative commentators Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and others. According to The Hill, “If Boehner, for instance, sees a movie, ‘I’d like for him … to do a movie review,’ Breitbart says. ‘Not everything is going to be a political dissertation,’ he says. In that vein, Cantor spokesman Rob Collins says he could see his boss writing a post on the television shows his three teenage children watch and how those programs affect them.” Breitbart wants to bring back the kind of crowd-pleasing movies Hollywood used to make, which encouraged people to pay their credit card bills on time. “The movies used to reinforce good behavior — that you should pay back your loans,” he says, apparently thinking of such films as The Grapes of Wrath, It's a Wonderful Life and Salt of the Earth. Because Breitbart's site will not pay its writers that should encourage good behavior like thrift.

Breitbart also wants Big Hollywood to change the image of conservatives in Hollywood, where they are cruelly oppressed. “We’re not bigoted, homophobic, racist, sexist monsters,” says the new blog’s editor-in-chief, John Nolte, the proprietor of Dirty Harry's Place. Nolte, who says that gay marriage “has nothing to with ‘rights’ and everything to do with hate, the tearing down of tradition, and seeking yet another excuse to attack conservatives and religion,” and who wrote after J.K. Rowling outted Dumbledore, “English and Gay is like Japan and China: you can’t really tell the difference,” is known for his trenchant film criticism. Although he has never seen such minor, really old movies as City Lights and The Passion of Joan of Arc, that hasn’t stopped him from weighing in on such important questions of film scholarship as whether Deuce Bigelow or The Searchers is the best film ever made.

While Big Hollywood should be a welcome relief from critics who think they know a lot about movies just because they have seen a lot of them, even some of the most respected film critics in the world have succumbed to derrièrism and are pulling film criticism out of their asses. Roger Ebert has seen his influence wane since he left At the Movies and was replaced by hipper, younger derrièrist critic Ben Lyons, who called I Am Legend “one of the greatest movies ever made” and named Superbad, which he just happened to have an acting role in, one of the ten best movies of last year. Then in October of this year Ebert joined the ranks of derrièrist critics with a big splash. He wrote a savage one-star review of the gay film Tru Loved after sitting through only eight minutes of it. It was only at the end of the review that he revealed he hadn’t watched the whole thing or even very much of it, so if readers got bored and decided they didn’t want to sit through Ebert’s entire review, they wouldn’t know how much of the movie he hadn't seen. Although Ebert’s editor wanted him to disclose this fact at the beginning of the review, Ebert argued that it would ruin his carefully constructed artistic prose if he did that. “I thought that would have made the review anticlimactic,” he said.

Ebert was slammed by some critics such as Margaret Nowak, who gave a derrièrist critique of Ebert’s derrièrist review: “After learning that Roger Ebert defends writing a full-column review based on an 8-minute scrap of film, I don't feel so bad about not reading movie reviews. I give a cursory glance to the score rating the movie received, and move on.” Ebert, however, was not amused: “I find it charming that Margaret Nowak was able to arrive at her scorched-earth opinion of me without reading either the review in question OR my linked blog entry that was posted simultaneously with the review on the same page.” He called her review of his review a “cheap shot.” If Nowak had just spent eight minutes reading the beginning of Ebert's review, she might have seen the error of her ways.

Unfortunately, under pressure from anti-derrièrists, Ebert eventually apologized for the review, watched the movie and wrote a new review. Derrièrist Ann Althouse was disappointed by Ebert’s capitulation to the anti-derrièrist mob, writing, “Walking out is an important form of judgment.” Althouse is one of the leading proponents of the idea that you don’t have to see or read something or really know much about it at all to criticize it, which has given hope to other aspiring critics who, like her, have the attention span of a two-year-old.

Unlike Ebert, Cahiers du Cinema had the courage of its convictions and defended its list of the 100 greatest movies of all time. Abandoning its support of the tired old theory of auteurism, the critics at Cahiers put together a list steeped in derrièrism, which included not a single boring Tarkovsky film or any British movies at all, relegating such tedious efforts as Brief Encounter, Lawrence of Arabia, The Third Man, and The Red Shoes to Le ashbin de l'histoire.

But it wasn’t just snooty French critics who embraced derrièrism. Entertainment Weekly published a list of 100 “classics” of the last 25 years that included only six excrutiatingly dull foreign movies. By redefining the word classic, EW was telling us that we don’t have to bother watching dreary old movies when we can watch such new and improved “classics” as The Breakfast Club, Naked Gun, The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Ghostbusters instead. Meanwhile, Premiere.com, which started out as the website for a print magazine whose articles no one ever finished, this year introduced a new and improved template for film reviews made up of what bitter former Premiere writer Glenn Kenny calls “thematic modules.” But even Kenny could not resist the derrièrist onslaught and gave this ground-breaking approach to reviewing a shot, applying it to one of the most boring films ever made, Au Hasard Balthazar:

"The Pitch: A donkey in provincial France gets passed from owner to owner until it, like, dies.
What It Really Is: Apparently, a "meditation" on life, suffering, and grace, and that kind of stuff….
Can We Be Serious For A Moment?: Seriously? What this movie really needed was for Andy Samberg as Mark Wahlberg to show up and have a nice little chat with Balthazar."

Kenny has a long way to go before he reaches the scholarly heights of one of the deans of derrièrist film critics, John Podhoretz. Podhoretz didn’t bother to see Stop-Loss, yet another anti-war-in-Iraq movie, before he reviewed it because what would be the point? “It is high time to cease the armchair analysis of those who refuse to attend war-in-Iraq movies and ask them directly to explain their behavior,” writes Podhoretz, who then moves from the armchair to the divan to begin his analysis by interviewing himself. “I'm about to turn 47. I have seen thousands of movies in my time. Life is too short to spend even two hours in a theater watching Stop-Loss. Its virtues are, I expect, that it is very well made, with vivid scenes of terrifying battles in the streets of Karbala or Falluja--and touching moments of reconciliation. There's probably a well-done scene in or just outside a Wal-Mart. Its failings are that it tells a schematic story that stacks the deck.” Podhoretz was able to figure all this out from “three trailers and a few minutes watching Showbiz Tonight.” Podhoretz also wrote an entire column extolling the virtues of watching movies on an iPod: “Say you're watching a bad or boring movie on a subway train, a movie you nonetheless want to get to the end of. A distraction or two is not a bad thing; the movie turns into a radio show for a moment as you survey the other passengers. And if a homeless guy comes through asking you to help him in the name of Jesus, you can turn right back to the iPod, confident he will pass you by.” Isn’t that what movies are for anyway, to distract you from homeless people?

Sadly, one of the great proponents of derrièrism, Libertas, went defunct this year, but not before its founder Jason Apuzzo denounced the film WALL-E, which attacked everything derrièrism stands for. “Conservatives are understandably up in arms about what is apparently depicted in this film,” wrote Apuzzo before he had actually seen it. In the film humanity is depicted as a bunch of dim-witted, materialistic couch potatoes, which derrièrist film critics saw as a personal attack on their lifestyles.

Patrick Goldstein said the film slandered “the American way of life.” “If Michael Moore, or Oliver Stone, or, God forbid, some effete French director, had crafted a feature film that was a thinly disguised political broadside portraying Americans as recumbent tubbos who moved around on sliding barcaloungers with built-in video screens and soft drinks always at the ready, don’t you think there’d be some sort of notice taken?” wrote Bill Wyman, who is no film theorist. “I’m no film theorist, but I think what director Andrew Stanton is trying to tell us is that we humans eat so much and limit our movements to such a degree that we will soon become immobile whales unable to focus past the video screens permanently affixed in front of our field of vision.” Shannen Coffin lamented, “From the first moment of the film, my kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind.” And a reader of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism blog helpfully pointed out the film’s fascistic elements, such as the use of the color red, which was one of the colors on the Nazi flag and should never be used in a film unless accompanied by the colors white and blue.

Next year promises to be even better for derrièrism as many critics realize, like John Miller, that you don’t actually have to sit through all four hours of Ché to attack it. And who really wants to see crazy left-wing actor Sean Penn kiss a guy in Milk no matter how good his performance is supposed to be? I’m sure most critics would rather watch over and over again the oiled-up, musclebound actors of 2006's 300, a “classic” that brought back the “lost art of cinematic masculinity,” according to John Nolte, and wasn’t the least bit homoerotic no matter what left-wingers say. Why doesn’t Hollywood make classic movies like 300 anymore?

Crossposted at Newcritics

Update: The left-wing New York Times weighs in. And Roger Ebert replies: "The acid test of the ancient distributor's definition of a great picture--'a tukkus on every seat.'" Meanwhile, Josh Taylor writes "Note To Awards Givers: Ignore The Dark Knight At Your Own Peril," which may come to be known as one of the great manifestos of derrièrism: "Film critics can no longer afford to champion pet films which no one has ever seen, at the expense of what even they have to know is probably the better film. Here’s why: They’re all about to be out of a job....For print critics, a vote against The Dark Knight is a vote for your own irrelevancy. It’s a vote for the unemployment line."

Carnivals: Movie Monday Carnival, Pajama Party Flick Picks

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The Russert Rule

Universally acknowledged by Washington's elite to be one of the most important people who ever lived on Earth, if not the most important person, Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert was given a state funeral yesterday that rivaled the send-offs for such beloved and powerful men as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The impact of Russert's death on humanity is only just beginning to be felt, but one of its most immediate and profound effects may be on the U.S. election.

Russert's friends and colleagues were understandably shocked by Russert's premature passing. If an overweight workaholic with diabetes and a history of coronary artery disease can suddenly die without warning, is any one of us safe? Many of the pundits and politicians who spoke at Russert's funeral and during the hours and hours and hours of cable news coverage must have been wondering, for the first time in their lives, Am I, too, mortal? Tom Brokaw has never looked so human.

Russert brought something to television journalism that had never been tried before. Instead of asking questions off the top of his head, he had his staff do research on his interviewees and actually used some of that research in his interviews. Many politicians had never been confronted with their own words before and his unique interview style caught many of them off guard, but it also gave them a chance to look good by showing that they could withstand tough questioning by giving vague, noncommittal answers. Unfortunately, Russert's shoes will be very hard to fill because while many television journalists do have staffs that have access to LEXIS/NEXIS, few of them know what follow-up questions to ask after an interviewee gives his boilerplate answer and will simply go on to another topic. Russert's ability to ask the same question over and over again using different words is one that has sadly died with him. He will be missed.

Doing research and asking follow-up questions were not Russert's only journalistic innovations. Russert invented a new rule of journalism, which should be called the Russert Rule as a tribute to him. As Russert explained when he testified in the Scooter Libby trial, "My personal policy is always off the record when talking to government officials unless specified." For years journalists considered all conversations with public figures to be on the record unless it was made clear before the conversation took place that it was off the record. This made many politicians understandably distrustful and wary of journalists. But Russert, in a flash of brilliance, realized that it would be much easier to cozy up to politicians if he simply reversed this rule making all conversations off the record unless everyone agreed they were on the record beforehand. This reversal of journalistic precedent changed the way journalism is done. Politicians could feel safe confiding in Russert and didn't have to worry that their secrets would get out too soon, or at least that they could be traced back to their source. Scooter Libby felt that he could depend so much on Russert's omerta that he told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first heard that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA from Russert, and it was only because Fitzgerald forced Russert to testify that Russert reluctantly contradicted Libby's alibi. Quoting Greg Mitchell quoting the Associated Press quoting Russert, he testified, "I did not know she worked at the CIA. I did not know any of that until the following Monday when I saw all in (newspaper columnist) Robert Novak's column.... We simply did not know it. I wish we had." (Please don't sue me AP!) If Fitzgerald hadn't forced Russert's hand, you can be sure that Russert would have kept Libby's secret. We will never know how many other secrets died with Russert.

The fact that politicians could trust that Russert would safeguard their secrets instead of releasing them to the public prematurely where they might get distorted made him the go-to guy for administration officials who wanted to get their side of the story out without having to worry about being contradicted or embarrassed while still looking like they were being vetted by Russert's very tough-looking questions. When Dick Cheney wanted to sell the War in Iraq to the American people, his staff immediately called up Russert to book Cheney on NBC's Meet the Press (which Cheney's communications director called "our best format") to say that Saddam Hussein was trying to build a nuclear bomb, citing as evidence a story that appeared in the New York Times that morning, which his assistant Scooter Libby had conveniently leaked to reporter Judith Miller. He knew that citing a Times story he himself planted would be all the evidence he would need and he wouldn't have to worry about Russert asking the kinds of skeptical questions that might throw him off message.

In one of the many moving tributes Russert received, Chris Matthews pointed out that one of the secrets of Russert's success was that he was not smarter or more sophisticated than his audience. "It may be tricky to say this," Matthews said, "and I'll say it, when we went to war with Iraq, he and I had a little discussion about that, and this is where Tim is Everyman, he is Us as a country. I said: 'How can you believe this war is justified?' And he said: 'The nuclear thing. If they have a bomb that they can use, we gotta deal with it. We can't walk away from that.' And that, to me, was the essence of what was wrong with the whole case for the war. They knew that argument would sell with Mr. America, with The Regular Guy, with the True American Patriot. They knew the argument that would sell, that would get us into that war. Tim was right on the nail. He was Us, the American People. . . . That was the thing that sold America, and the guys who wanted the War used that one thing that would sell the Patriot in Tim Russert." What could be more patriotic than a journalist who believes what the government is telling him instead of questioning it like some reporters used to do back in the 1970s before they got columns and wrote best-selling books? And if there is anything members of the Washington elite hate it is someone who seems too elite by looking like they are intelligent and thoughtful and not the salt of the earth. Perhaps there is no greater tribute to Russert than the fact that the Washington elite accepted this humble man from Buffalo as a member of their club and went on television and showed up at his funeral to proclaim in unison, "One of us! One of us!"

Even though Russert was a Democrat and a liberal, he was not one of those radical, un-American liberals. His mentor was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, every conservative's favorite Democrat until Joe Lieberman came along. Moynihan worked in the Nixon administration where he helped develop Nixon's Civil Rights policy of "benign neglect" toward African-Americans where nothing was actually accomplished even though it appeared on the surface that progress was being made. That was the kind of liberalism Russert subscribed to. And unlike many members of the liberal media, Russert bent over backwards to appear to be "fair" by asking liberals harder questions and taking it easy on conservatives, something conservative journalists don't need to do because our views are so rarely aired. Russert inspired a whole generation of liberal journalists who compensated for their partisan views by bashing liberals and praising conservatives whenever they could to demonstrate their objectivity, a legacy that is much appreciated by this conservative. Unfortunately, a new generation of liberal journalists, people like Keith Olberman, David Gregory and Chris Matthews (whom Russert hated), don't believe they have to hide their partisan leanings in order to appear objective and fair. With Russert's passing Fox News may be the last bastion of fair and balanced journalism.

We don't know yet what the impact of Russert's death will be on the upcoming election. Can another journalist take his place and conduct a gotcha interview of Barack Obama or make John McCain seem articulate? That remains to be seen. It was clear that McCain was deeply saddened by the death of his friend and Obama, despite his hypocritical tribute, was greatly relieved. But Russert's death will have far-reaching impact on our planet that will extend beyond this election. For example, Rep. Darrell Issa pointed out yesterday that if Russert were still alive he would have revealed "the truth" about the offshore oil drilling ban if he were still alive and no doubt convinced the American people that ruining the environment is a small price to pay for making sure gas prices are low. This is just one of the ways in which the loss of Russert will be deeply felt. What will future administrations do when they have a war to sell or a political enemy to trash? Will Meet the Press still have the ability to shape the political discourse in a way that is favorable to those in power without Tim Russert at the helm? What will happen to his son, Luke Russert now that he doesn't have his father to plug his work? Will the Buffalo Bills ever have a winning season again now that their fan has died? Only future historians will be able to answer these and other burning questions.

It's hard to imagine what life on Earth will be like without Tim Russert. I'm sure Russert is in Heaven now asking God some tough questions: "In Leviticus You said…." No doubt their conversation is off the record.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Tim Russert, Journalism, Meet the Press, Scooter Libby, NBC, Dick Cheney, Chris Matthews, Politics

Jamie Leigh Jones Undermines the War Effort

Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report, Curt at Flopping Aces and former humor blogger Ace of Spades (who recently won the Weblog Award for Best Conservative blogger) are three of the most respected conservative bloggers in the blogosphere. They will stop at nothing to protect America from terrorists. If they gave medals for bravery in a war you are not actually fighting in, these guys would win hands down.

A recent story sorely tested their dedication to the war effort, but all three stepped up to the plate and showed just how far they are willing to go to defend America. Jamie Leigh Jones, a contractor for Halliburton/KBR, says she was gang raped by her co-workers, locked in a shipping container and threatened by her bosses. She was finally rescued by the State Department after she got word to her father who contacted Republican congressmen Ted Poe. If true, the story makes Halliburton/KBR look really bad and the fact that a Republican congressman and the State Department got involved lends some credence to her story. But Shackleford, Curt and Ace did not let that stop them from reflexively defending the military contractor and accusing this woman of being a liar in order to support the war effort. They saw that there was something fishy about the story, besides the fact that it is bad PR for Halliburton/KBR.

Although Shackleford, Curt and Ace don't know anything about the case other than what they have seen on the Internet, they apparently do read mystery stories. Anyone who has read detective novels knows that when all the evidence seems to be pointing one way, you can be sure that what the evidence is telling you is the exact opposite of the truth. Usually, the detective reveals this twist at the end, but Shackleford, Curt and Ace decided to skip right to the last chapter instead of waiting to see what other evidence comes out before drawing any conclusions. Ace, quoting his doppelganger the Church Lady, says Jones' story is "too convenient." Curt, who supports actor Fred Thompson for President, says it sounds "too movie like." Shackleford, no doubt wrinkling his brow and rubbing his beard thoughtfully as the wheels spin in his brain, if he has one (a beard, that is), writes, "It's perfect. Too perfect."

Indeed, if the terrorists wanted to undermine the war effort and destroy Western Civilization as we know it, this would be the perfect way to do it. Find an intelligent, attractive young woman to claim she was gang raped by contractors who work at the Vice President's company, and then get a Republican congressman and the State Department to back up part of her story. It's brilliantly evil and almost foolproof! There was just one thing these clever terrorists didn't count on: bloggers like Shackleford, Curt and Ace who would see right through their fiendish plan.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of credulous people out there even on the right. Chris Jones at Red State says he believes her story and is outraged. He doesn't mind if Halliburton/KBR employees rape and murder Iraqis, but he absolutely puts his foot down when it comes to raping Americans. That is going too far. Ben Domenech says he knows several women, including his own sister, who have told him about the "disturbing" treatment of American women working in Iraq and so he tends to believe her as well. Clearly, Domenech's objectivity has been tainted by actually talking to people who have been to Iraq, instead of just talking to himself like Shackleford, Curt and Ace do.

Because Congress wrote a law exempting the alleged perpetrators from prosecution Jones is suing the company for damages. Halliburton/KBR has offered a fair compromise. The company wants to settle the case in arbitration, where records would be sealed, and spare Jones all the bad publicity that would ensue when they attack her reputation in a public trial.

The more you learn about her story the more difficult it is to believe. Although there was a rape kit that confirmed she was sexually assaulted, it was lost and found again and the doctor who performed it doesn't remember doing it. "I have no idea which rape victim you are," the doctor told Jones, "because so many young contractor girls were raped after drinking with the guys…. I performed so many rape kits in the six months that I was stationed there that there would be no way to recall whom yours was." It seems to me the testimony of the doctor alone casts doubt on her allegations and exculpates Halliburton/KBT. Case closed.

Even if her story is true, you have to wonder why Jones doesn't just keep her mouth shut like all the other women the doctor says have been raped in Iraq. Doesn't she realize that such an incendiary charge just gives aid and comfort to the enemy? How can we convince Iraqi women like the young women of Basra -- where 40 of them have been murdered for dressing contrary to Islamic law -- that replacing Saddam Hussein's secular government with an Islamic government actually makes them more free, if American women are not willing to make a few sacrifices to get this message across?

It's not like we are asking only this woman to make a sacrifice for the war effort. Milbloggers like Shackleford are making sacrifices, too. Shackleford really doesn't like attacking an alleged rape victim and trashing her before all the facts have come out. He would prefer we not return to "the not so distant past when some argued that the victim somehow brought the crime on themselves." He thought that we had moved on from that time. "Questioning a rape victim is akin to a second rape," Shackleford writes. "Or so I was always taught." But if protecting America from terrorists means subjecting a woman to something akin to a second rape, then Shackleford, like Curt at Flopping Aces and Ace of Spades, is prepared, however reluctantly, to do his sad duty. Sacrifices must be made. Things are different now. 9/11 changed everything.

Update: Bob Owens, a.k.a. Confederate Yankee, the blogosphere's Miss Marple, is on the case. If anyone can find a link between Jones and the terrorists, he can.

Update 2: Michelle Malkin and Ted Frank at Overlawyered join the fray.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Jamie Leigh Jones, Halliburton/KBR, Jawa Report, Flopping Aces, Ace of Spades, Iraq
Carnivals: Carnival of the Decline of Democracy, Feminist Carnival, Carnival of Political Punditry, This Is Not My Country