Jamie Kennedy did not seem prepared to be grilled about his role in the anti-abortion movie
Film Features Jamie Kennedy
We weren’t especially big fans of Nick Loeb and Cathy Allen’s recent Roe V. Wade, granting an F grade to the stridently right-wing (and yet, not even entertainingly bonkers) anti-abortion movie. Indeed, the film ended up seeming far more interesting for its behind-the-scenes struggles than for the highly skewed version of history it was trying to tell; Loeb and co. famously had a very hard time making it, because, as soon as people got a grasp of the movie’s real intent—including actors, crew people, and Loeb’s own original co-director—they bailed on the project en masse. Those who stayed essentially formed a grab-bag of right-stumbling Hollywood and online elites, from Jon Voight, to Tomi Lahren, to the blessedly-mostly-forgotten Milo Yiannopoulis. Oh, and Jamie Kennedy, for some reason.
The Daily Beast tried to get at the core of that “some reason” this weekend, with a probably-much-more-in-depth-than-Jamie-Kennedy-expected interview with the actor and comedian. Kennedy all but states, in a gamely “Well, here we go” fashion, that he accepted, and then stayed on in, the role of abortion rights champion Larry Lader (portrayed in the movie as a get-quick-rich con man looking to profit off the suffering of others) because, well…They asked.
To be honest, I got offered the role. It was a more dramatic part and a real offer, and so I did some research. I knew there was a lot of stuff we were walking into but in other parts in Hollywood, I have to read, read, read, and this was a nice offer…Certain parts in Hollywood make me read nineteen times for the tenth season of a TNT show, and here comes along this detailed character. I’m an actor. I apologize if I’ve pissed people off.
The net result of the surprisingly long interview is to make it clear that Daily Beast Senior Entertainment Editor Marlow Stern has done a lot more research and thinking about Roe V. Wade and its various distortions of history than Jamie Kennedy—which is wild, since Jamie Kennedy’s the one actually in the damn thing, putting his name and reputation on the line in support of Loeb’s fact-agnostic vision. (Among other things, the film repeats in its epilogue the tale of Norma “Jane Roe” McCorvey switching to the anti-abortion side in later years—a decision McCorvey very clearly stated, in the last years of her life, was motivated solely by the money she was being offered to do so.) In his defense, Kennedy takes the questions with a certain degree of acceptance, even as Stern straight-up tells him, “I think you have been sold a false bill of goods here” and describes the film as “a pretty insidious right-wing propaganda film that you’ve found yourself in.”
Not in his defense, though, are his repeated assertions that he’s “just an actor,” and his willingness to take Loeb’s version of history at his word with a minimum of questions about the part he was choosing to accept. Even as he states his own pro-choice leanings, and suggests that his agent semi-forced him to take the part, Kennedy falls back repeatedly on a sort of “Well, what are you gonna do?” response, without ever acknowledging that “Not be in the stridently anti-abortion movie with fucking Milo Yiannopoulis” was, in fact, an option. (One taken, again, by plenty of people involved in the film.) And you can really take as a template for the whole interview Kennedy’s response to a question about the Catholic League, often critiqued for their challenges to free speech, and who provided funding for the film:
I didn’t even know that, and to be real with you, there’s a lot of people that produced this, and… I didn’t even know that. I didn’t know the Catholic League did that. I believe in free speech, too. I just thought it was a very cool role. Did I know how controversial it was going to be? No. Did I know Nick’s background enough? No. Was it directed by a woman? Yes. But she left, and another woman came in. I’m in the middle as a human being. I’m a centrist.
You can read the full interview here.
426 Comments
Jamie Kennedy is kind of a dipshit? No way!
He’s really not. You just got X’ed, my man!!!
Did he say “You’ve been X’d!” before Ashton Kutcher started telling people they’d been Punk’d? I always assumed it was a desperate attempt to copy the later, but it looks like Experiment was on the air a full year before Punk’d so maybe not?Also Punk’d has been revived *three* times?!?In summary this was a productive morning of research.
The dude made an entire documentary on heckling just so he could harass people who didn’t like Son of the Mask.
Never forget the time he absolutely bombed through the center of the earth at E3.
Or the time he hosted a New Year’s Eve show, and couldn’t keep track of the time:Compared to that, a future where he’s only in movies that star Kevin Sorbo, Stephen Baldwin, Gina Carrano, and/or Kirk Cameron is almost dignified.
He really is the picture of professionalism.
this is the one good thing he did.
That’s some teeth-gritting cringe.
He can’t even snowboard.
Yes, it is the same guy.
Age comes for everyone, you know. You’re next.
Yes, people age. Shocking.
Oh jeez is THAT why he did Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamo’s podcast The Bald and the Beautiful? I thought it was an odd choice. Sets him up as incredibly chill and gay/ trans friendly. It did seem slightly like a favor for a friend situation, but I was at a loss as far as who it was meant to benefit, exactly.
Kinda makes me think less of them now. Like they let him go on their podcast as part of a promo tour, even if he doesnt mention it it still is.
So what does being a centrist when it comes to abortion mean, exactly? Is this some splitting the baby down the middle sitch?
I hate to ruin your good joke, but it usually means they favor abortion only in narrow circumstances (rape, incest, to save the life of the mother).
I’m honestly surprised no candidate has run on this exact platform.Both because the Simpsons predicts everything and because… it would probably win!
Speaking about good jokes, there’s a joke among pro-choicers that describes a lot of Americans’ take on abortion: they believe in it in cases of rape, incest, and me.
Why are rape and incest two separate categories? Is there a whole lot of consensual incest going on out there?
I mean, almost certainly
I dunno. Let’s ask Ivanka for her take….
According to the good people of Adult Time, the answer is an emphatic yes.
Ask and you shall receive -https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/02/incestuous-twin-brothers-wonder-if-they-should-reveal-their-secret-relationship.html
But that’s horrifying! Their children will be inbred monsters, like the Royal Family! Oh, wait, twin brothers. Never mind.
It’s a really interesting case of I guess? It seems unhealthy mentally and I hope they don’t… uh breakup? I guess you’d call it that and it seems like a seriously co-dependent situation, but consenting adults? Whatever I guess it’s fine, not my situation and they’re happy.
alabama
More than you might think.
Yes, a lot more than you would think. And no, it’s not just a “hillbilly state” thing.
Yes it’s called European royalty and Rudy Giuliani.
There’s a whole lotta Lannisters and Targaryens out there.
“Why don’t they just call squares rectangles?”
Not for you, buddy, so stop asking. Your sister’s sick of hearing it.
Yes. Incest can be consensual. Rape, by definition, isn’t, so it makes sense to have 2 separate caegories, yeah.
A whole lot? No, I don’t think so. Not even in the states towards which we make jokes about it. (Well, not me, but that’s less a moral thing and more an “I don’t make good sex jokes” thing.)But there is a non-zero amount.
I mean, have you been to Alabama lately?
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Isn’t “Whole Lot of Consensual Incest Going On” a Jerry Lee Lewis song?
This needs so many upvotes.
That’s very kind of you to say. You are certainly the one that put those wonderful words in the right order though!
You ever drive through Kentucky?
This is absolutely fake. Many centrists are pro choice. You just think anyone who doesn’t agree with everything you agree with must be bad.
The rape and incest bit is really unsettling if you consider that the anti choice movement is based on the idea that a fetus is legally and morally the same as a person, rooted in religious ideas about the soul and the sanctity of conception. In that worldview, making an exception for certain fetuses is saying that certain people aren’t actually people. It’s ghastly. It’s also very irritating because it acknowledges that there are situations where carrying a pregnancy to term is simply not the best option, but it limits those situations to ones in which the pregnant woman had already been deprived of a choice in the matter.
I was thinking of that exact thing. I remember reading an explanation of the “abortion is wrong because babies are people! But if they were conceived in certain ways, then I guess they’re not people” principle, and you put it pretty succinctly.
Totally agree. I’ve always been pro choice, but it really became a much more viceral concern for me when there were questions about whether my fetus was going to be viable or not. If I kept the baby, and things went wrong after the 24 week mark but before week 28, (and no one could tell me likelihoods for different outcomes), then I’d have to give birth to a baby with no chance of survival, and then watch her die, which is just completely horrifying. I ended up rolling the dice, and she’s a happy toddler, but I was emotional wreck for the whole second trimester, because of that possibility. There’s a lot more gray areas than just the ones the right likes to admit to.
“Abortion only in limited circumstances” is not “centrism,” that’s a conservative position. “Centrism” would be something like supporting the outcome in Roe v. Wade–few restrictions on abortion in the first two trimesters, before viability, and then limited availability of abortion after viability.
It means he’s aged past the point where he has to worry so much about knocking up a girlfriend but isn’t old enough to be a patronizing old codger who wants to tell all the young people they’re going to hell. And, he’s a man. So he may just literally have no opinion because he doesn’t have to.
Being “a centrist” means prioritising consensus.
“Can we half abort the baby? Is that a thing?”
“Can we half abort the baby? Is that a thing?”I think that’s how you end up with trash commenters like the fake Dr. Lizardo.
A woman does not have more right to choose, more than the person growing inside of her. The government can protect that person and tell you what to do with your body. For instance, it is illegal to sell your body for sex. It is illegal to sell your baby. It is illegal to sell your body parts such of livers and kidneys and bone marrow. It is illegal in some states not to get vaccinated. It is illegal to commit suicide. It is illegal to not wear clothes in public. Etc. The only solution is to not get pregnant in the first place. If you are raped or don’t want the baby the government should pay to deliver the baby and take it from you at birth. And in cases were it would be dangerous to the woman’s health the baby should be removed from the woman with her uterus, so she is never in danger again. Abortion is used by whores to lazy to use contraception.
I imagine an abortion centrist might be either:a) no strong feelings about it (likely as a man) and leaving it for people who have a stake in the issue
or
b) not liking the idea of abortion as a concept but accepting it as necessary in a non-perfect world
Still a more understandable career decision than Son of the Mask.
“I’m a centrist!” tends to be an easy way to admit one neither believes in nor actually stands for anything. At least that’s how I’ve seen it used lately.
“Hey, look a woman director. That’s cool, right?”
“The truth lies somewhere in the middle of nowhere.”
Honestly, the takeaway I got from this was less “Jamie Kennedy isn’t woke enough” but “Jamie Kennedy gotta eat.”
Reading his replies, I was surprised he actually qualifies for an interview for reason other than “why were you in this movie?”
Um…. he was also in the doc The Last Blockbuster, maybe?
I forgot Jamie Kennedy existed, so I would have assumed he was a fry cook by now.
Instead, he’s metamorphosing into Paul Giamatti.
This interview could be characterized as, “Look. They offered me work. Me! Work, in a movie! And, unlike my last job sucking truckers off in the parking lot of a Denny’s, this work was technically legal. I don’t think I asked any questions beyond ‘Do I have to run if the cops show up?’ And Jon Voight told me no.”
I really liked the bit where we he was like “other jobs wanna make sure I’m good at the job before they hire me, and as an actor, I just find that really annoying.”
“Hey, c’mon guys, it was this or another Asylum movie. What do you expect me to do?”
The Asylum movie, Jamie. You may not get to claim artistic integrity, but you don’t here either and being in this movie also cost you all moral integrity as well.
I always say: There’s really nothing an agnostic can’t accomplish if he really doesn’t know if he believes in anything or not.
While this is a great and funny line and I might use it in the future, I think the whole idea that believing in something very specific while taking for granted that it’s unprovable by design is a far weirder thing that having this sort-of vague feeling that there’s something bigger than us. Part of believing in what you can’t prove is that you can’t state that you exactly know it works.
“While this is a great and funny line and I might use it in the future . . . ”Actually, I believe that’s a Monty Python line. Don’t remember which album, though. Probably Matching Tie & Handkerchief.
Hey, leave agnostics out of it! I might not know if God exists or not, but neither do you, if you’re being honest (faith != knowledge). That has absolutely nothing to do with where someone is on the political spectrum, where all the facts are out there and freely available to take informed stances on different topics.
Because nobody is aproved by you, unless they’re willing to be miserable, lonely, and destined to get fired or death threats?
No. It means you have nuanced opinion and are decidedly not tribalistic.
Hit dog hollers.
I mean, I don’t disagree with the criticism per se, but I don’t know how anyone squares this moral righteousness over an actor taking a role with the fact that actors taking roles in pro-military propaganda blockbusters like Captain Marvel and Zero Dark Thirty never receive a fraction of this criticism. In fact, we’re supposed to pretend that it’s “harassment” whenever anyone points out their complicity.
Jesus, two years later and I’m never going to stop feeling vicariously embarrassed by people calling Captain Marvel’s 90 seconds of air force content that’s entirely about how they’re a bunch of misogynist pricks ‘military propaganda’.
RIP to the rest of you I guess, but if someone showed me propaganda I would simply say no thank you.
I mean, they did pay to run Air Force commercials before the film:
Not in the theater I saw the movie in. (But then, Arclight doesn’t show any commercials at all before movies, and no more than 3 trailers.)
Aww, I miss the Arclight.
Yeah. I looked at their website recently and… it’s still functioning, but there’s no showtimes and no messages about “Hey, we’re still here and waiting on X condition before we reopen!” which makes me a little nervous. They were hosting/promoting drive-in movies during much of the pandemic, but it’s been awfully quiet lately.
I just hope that my favorite local Arclight bartender, who always made my favorite off-menu drink without being asked the moment I sat down, was able to weather the pandemic. People like that guy were always on my mind this past year.
I’m too much of a misanthrope to connect with service personnel, but I hope he’s back too 😉
It’s brand name/equipment/uniform/representation use: all gov’t agencies, the biggest of which are DoD, have entertainment sections – like hell the USAF was going to allow anyone, even Marvel/Disney, use their name, their uniforms, their planes, their lingo, and their bases without some gimme. And given the era portrayed – early/mid 1980s to mid-1990s the Air Force had be out there going “well, we’re letting women in combat roles now!!!” to counteract the AF is a Dick To Women Who Just Want to Fly messaging.
You almost always kind of have to agree to that sort of thing if you’re going to in any way use any part of the military as part of your movie’s story with actual military props and insignia (REAL ones, not the made-up universe ones) in Hollywood.In this case it’s questionable whether it was even an effective “partnership” for the Air Force, because while they did get to run free recruitment ads aimed at mostly young women, a major thrust of the movie’s story is the running narrative that the Air Force is a misogynistic and sexist organization that’s not welcoming to women.
People throw the word “propaganda” around pretty recklessly. Military propaganda movies are movies like “Why We Fight” where the army goes to a filmmaker and says “we want to make a movie that delivers x, y, and z message, and that’s your primary goal” and then they go and make that like an advertiser delivering for their client. A movie made for entertainment purposes or for some other artistic end that just so happens to also not make the military look terrible, even one where the military is pleased enough to provide some assistance, is not automatically “propaganda.”
It’s one of the words that are part of the “Boogeyman” list of words, like fascism. People use them with little regards to their actual meaning, redefining them for a more emotional context.That said, there was plenty of military propaganda surrounding Captain Marvel- when you have a biased source taking part in media to convey a certain political viewpoint, you got yourself some propaganda. I just think getting angry about it, if you’re the type that disagrees with that propaganda, is wasted energy- the MCU is built from a character that doles out extrajudicial violence on the auspice of having an indispensable amount of money. These films have never been about progressive messaging.
What about a movie like Top Gun, which wasn’t produced by the military but was heavily influenced by the military (including the right to review and censor the script)? The Navy’s intention to use Top Gun for recruiting purposes and it’s resounding success in that regard is well documented. I would argue that it is both – obviously not commissioned by the state as propaganda so you can’t say it’s exclusively propaganda but it was clearly used as such so it’s arguably both independent entertainment and military propaganda.
The difference is that Bruckheimer, Scott, and the writers didn’t make that movie out of any desire to help the Navy, they made it because they thought it would be cool and that this was the depiction of the military that the public wanted in Reagan’s America and they were largely indifferent to the fact that the Navy would use it as a recruitment tool since, well, helping the Navy recruit during peacetime wasn’t exactly a problem for them. By all accounts most of what the Navy wanted changed were details no one cared about like making Kelly McGillis a contractor instead of an officer and moving one dogfight into international rather than Cuban waters. Those were not things they wanted to fight over, but I suspect if the Navy had asked for something bigger to be cut they would have just said “see you later” and made the movie without them. Something like that actually happened with Independence Day, which was actually made without the cooperation of the military (despite being, you know, Independence Day) because the military insisted they cut Area 51 out of it and that was too big a part of the story for them to agree with that.
Those were not things they wanted to fight over, but I suspect if the Navy had asked for something bigger to be cut they would have just said “see you later” and made the movie without them.Top Gun couldn’t have been made without the Navy’s participation, unless Bruckheimer and Scott were going to be OK with it looking like Iron Eagle. Rhe movie was made from the very beginning with the Navy’s cooperation, and things like sunset catapult launches in the opening scene were essential to the movie’s sucess. I’m sure they understood that the Navy wouldn’t approve a story that was critical of the Navy, which is why the only cuts needed were relatively minor issues. Independence day isn’t a great comparison becuase they didn’t need military cooperation – it wasn’t primarily a story about the military to begin with, and they did the dogfights with CGI anyway.
“I’m sure they understood that the Navy wouldn’t approve a story that was critical of the Navy, which is why the only cuts needed were relatively minor issues.”If they were the kind of people who had been interested in making a movie that was critical of the Navy they probably wouldn’t have embarked on making the movie Top Gun in the first place. I’m pretty sure the chicken came before the egg on this, Bruckheimer knew there was money to be made selling jingoism in the 80s and the military was more than happy to help him do it. The film that started this whole talk, Captain Marvel, is almost certainly closer to the Independence Day example; the military was a small part of it and they had the resources to walk if they wanted to. Insomuch as they did play extra nice with the military on that one I kind of have a hunch it was a cynical ploy to score points with the middle-America types who were going to call them “SJW cucks” for making a superhero movie about a woman.
Isn’t that the “good” kind of propaganda though? We want to recruit more gay guys into the Naval Air Force. In the same way as Captain Marvel (apparently, although not to my eyes) is supposed to increase the number of women signing up.I’m not pro-military but if we’re going to have one it should at least be more inclusive.
lol, reminds me of the throwaway line when they’re setting the bet in the bar at the beginning of the movie, and Goose says “You have to have carnal knowledge, of a lady this time, on the premises.” – I know it’s just a throwaway joke to us but Goose isn’t saying it as a joke, he’s discussing the terms of the bet. So it’s not just subtext; maverick’s at least bi enough to get with a guy just to win a bet.
There are countless big budget movies where military involvement is sought, the military is given script approval and the result is a rah-rah bit of wildly pro-military jingoism. The kind you describe is extremely rare. The other kind is extremely common and, yes, can absolutely be considered propaganda.
This is just wrong lol “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”
If Captain Marvel is ‘Military Propaganda’, what the hell are Transformers films?! (or any Michael Bay film for that matter)
Also propaganda, but with a “your own damn fault for seeing a Michael Bay movie” disclaimer
A lot of Michael Bay’s films are propaganda too, yes. Two tossed-off examples do not imply that there are no other films that fall into this, it’s like most action blockbusters that do at this point.
There can be more than one example of a thing.
Jesus, two years later and I’m never going to stop feeling vicariously embarrassed by people calling Captain Marvel’s 90 seconds of air force content that’s entirely about how they’re a bunch of misogynist pricks ‘military propaganda’.With Air Force approval. Literally – The Pentagon gets script approval for military-related scenes on any project in exchange for access to military resources and personnel. $1000 an hour for a real live Army tank. $25000 an hour for an actual F-15 complete with active-duty pilot. All you have to do is make any changes they demand sorry, “request” (or face total instant withdrawal of all military resources). And they get to use your film for advertising synergy.This is SOP for Hollywood films. For example, Independence Day: Resurgence had the same kind of ad campaigns, and an online game based around recruiting for “Earth Space Defence” that lead players directly to military recruiting sites.The premiere of Captain Marvel included testimonials from active duty pilots.
They created an “Origin Story” theatre ad campaign to coincide with the film’s release.And it worked. Thanks in part to that “90 seconds of… misogynist pricks”, the Air Force reported an uptick in female recruitment after Captain Marvel released:https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/01/05/captain-marvel-effect-air-force-academy-sees-most-female-applicants-5-years.html
Well, the inspiring tone of that part where Carol changes the colors of her uniform from those of an imperialistic, war-mongering political entity to those of the US was really funny as a non-American.
??? I wasn’t aware gold was a part of the US flag. Here I always thought it was white. Guess I’m retarded then.
The US isn’t the only country with those colors and using primary colors for heroes is quite common in media.https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PrimaryColorChampion
She picks those colors because of an Air Force T-shirt Monica is wearing.
I learned now that this was a thing and I very badly want to go back to the time where I didn’t know this was a thing.
And there’s also the bit about how Starforce, framed as the standard rah-rah patriotic military heroes, are actually the bad guys. Media comprehension is hard.
They ran Air Force ads before the film bud. They had Larson literally sitting with Air Force captains and shit and talking about how they wanted to make a film that would honor them. You’re not looking very closely if you don’t think that a film that had an extensive deal with the Air Force wasn’t at least partly created to propagandize for it.
Shift away from Captain Marvel, then.
Howsabout, say, Bradley Cooper playing Chris Kyle? There’s a meaty one.
I don’t get how anyone can say it’s not, though? Anytime the US military appears on screen, it’s been done through the PR office. PR offices are literally propaganda mills, that’s what they do- propagandize their side of things. I guess folks don’t want to call it “propaganda” because that’s got negative connotations of repressive states indoctrinating citizens by making them have an outsized respect for the military and their defense of “our values” oh wait…
Because almost every depiction of the military in the MCU is negative, with them being incompetent or outright villainous.
“Collaboration between Hollywood and the military is nothing new. The Department of Defense has long had an arrangement that, if a producer wants to feature actual U.S. military equipment in their film, the department will provide them funding and resources in exchange for following strict regulations on how the military is portrayed. This is often connected to some sort of recruitment campaign.” https://www.cbr.com/captain-marvel-mcu-military-relationship/Just cause they look goofy doesn’t mean it’s not propaganda.
The mere presence of the military does not propaganda make. The article you linked to even stated that the MCU movies were anti-establishment movies first and foremost. Outside of the Captain Marvel movie, none of the MCU movies were part of a recruitment campaign, and even CM doesn’t give the Air Force a totally flattering light.
The presence of the military done with the cooperation of the military is absolutely propaganda. It’s product placement, which is in it of itself a type of propaganda. I think we may have differing notions on the narrowness of what is defined as “propaganda”. If you see propaganda as being a sort of blunt instrument – say, leaflets dropped from planes over occupied Iraq proclaiming that they are now free but not as something more subtle, then sure, I guess it’s not propaganda. Edit, because I just remembered- the Air Force directly alluded to Captain Marvel and the fact that she was a female fighter pilot as part of a whole faux-feminism “empowerement” ad campaign- how is that not propaganda? They even had a commercial play before the movie in theatres.
https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1775393/airmen-fly-higher-further-faster-as-captain-marvel-extras/
Exactly. It isn’t like Captain Marvel is Top Gun or even Iron Eagle.
marvel/disney literally collaborates with the department of defense on the movies they make. they receive money and equipment in exchange for depicting the military in a positive light. anything you see has been directly signed off on by the military industrial complex. the DoD does this because see the movies as a recruiting opportunity. this isn’t nerds being haters, it’s reality. one scene in one movie does not change this reality
Then good on Disney and Marvel for pulling a fast one on them, getting the military to fund a movie where they’re depicted as assholes. Telling me that drug cartels funded Requiem for a Dream doesn’t magically make the movie pro-drug.
Every time some refers to Captain Marvel as military propaganda I feel like they’re a child misusing a new word they just learned.
I think it’s a lot to do with them making videos for the military as part of the Captain Marvel shoot (Brie Larson at least shot some in costume) and also that the Pentagon gives Marvel military weapons and vehicles as props as long as they get a look at the script / runs and gets a say. It’s a bit chilling.
It’s literally funded by the Air Force.
Defence contractors have better lawyers and lobbyists than your average celebrity.
What makes Captain Marvel pro-military propaganda? I haven’t seen it since it was in theaters, but I thought there was some obvious ‘boys club’ sexism in the Air Force scenes, keeping Carol out of a combat role, etc. I might not be remembering that right, but I don’t recall it being very flattering towards the military.
There is none but people keep saying that for some reason.
It was more to do with marketing tie-ins than the film’s content:
“It was more to do with marketing tie-ins than the film’s content”The military did have a say on the script though, which is why I find so hilarious how some people try to convince themselves that the movie “is anti-military actually”.They rather sooner believe that the military donated millions of dollars in equipment in exchange for input in its script and production, and somehow made something anti-military by mistake, than to acknowledge that the military got their money’s worth and the propaganda is going over their heads.
Except MCU films, because they have zero propaganda, apparently.
After the whole deal with SHIELD and now SWORD, I have no idea how people can say the MCU is free of propagandist elements. Not to mention Tony Stark and his whole deal.
Marvel fans still tying themselves in knots to avoid acknowledging that they love a piece of propaganda.
I mean, it’s closer to anti-military than it is pro-military. The Air Force itself is only involved in, like, 2 scenes and both of them were flashbacks. Iron Man 2 is more pro-military than Captain Marvel.
that the military got their money’s worth and the propaganda is going over their heads.Okay, but you still have to point out which elements in the movie are actually pro-military. “The Air Force would never approve a script that painted them negatively” doesn’t really mesh with the fact that the movie paints them negatively.
Okay, but you still have to point out which elements in the movie are actually pro-military. “The Air Force would never approve a script that painted them negatively” doesn’t really mesh with the fact that the movie paints them negatively.Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeaux. The Air Force used them as examples of what the Air Force is. They crafted “Origin Story” ads to go at the start of the film to encourage women to see themselves as the next Maria or Carol. They had female pilots providing testimonials at the red carpet premiere to strengthen the association.It wasn’t just “We let you hire some of our gear, then we made some ads.” The Pentagon got script approval. Every resource, every single personnel came with a caveat – do it in a way that we can benefit from, or we pull out. There was continuous cooperation at all stages of the film’s production, release, and promotion. And it worked – they had more female recruits in the year after Captain Marvel released than in the five years prior.Sometimes they go blatant, like Transformers. Sometimes they’re a touch more insidious. They’ve had 80 years to perfect the formula. They’re very good at it.
I’m aware of all of that. But that still doesn’t answer the question of what elements of the actual movie itself function as pro-Air Force propaganda? Everything you cite is auxiliary material that is not in the movie itself: ads that aired before the movie (but not in my theater), red-carpet interviews (that I didn’t see or hear about), etc.To flip sides, it could easily be argued that it’s disingenuous to separate the auxiliary materials from the movie. Sure, the movie itself on balance depicts the Air Force more negatively than positively. But without the movie, the other materials would not have been possible, and supporting the movie is implicitly also supporting the associated pro-Air Force messaging. Nonetheless, there’s still a distinction between whether the movie itself functions as propaganda, and whether the movie was used as part of a propaganda campaign. When I re-watch Captain Marvel now on Disney+ or whatever, nobody is exposed to any of those auxiliary propaganda materials. The only messaging is that the Air Force is a bunch of misogynist dickheads.
It would be more accurate to say that “Captain Marvel was part of an Air Force propaganda campaign at the time of release,” rather than “Captain Marvel is Air Force propaganda.”
Great post. I seriously think some people in this thread think it doesn’t count unless the can of film has “PROPAGANDA(tm)” stamped on the back in Third Reich red.
they’re white knighting the airforce online on their own dime and it apparently hasn’t occurred to them that they may have been had by an extremely well oiled propaganda machine.
people should stop saying “donated” since they still own the hardware when the movie shoot is done. try the word “loaned”
I think the military cares much less about the portrayal of sexism than they do about the fact that a protagonist is shown flying a fighter jet and looking badass while doing so. Also, that protagonist ends up being an incredibly powerful superhero by the end of the movie, and the sexism is portrayed in the past and the protagonist manages to easily overcome it. It actually kinda works to dismiss the sexism altogether.
The military did have a say on the script thoughAnd are depicted as misogynistic assholes.
Interesting, thanks for that link. I don’t remember seeing that before my screening, but decent chance I just didn’t notice. Since the character’s history as a fighter pilot is decades old, I took it as a given that we’d see fighter planes and whatnot in the film, but wasn’t aware of any larger context.
the idea that the movie is teenage girl material instead of creepy basement dweller who threatened to boycott the movie which means only seeing it twice in the theaters instead of five times.. thats funny lol
I think the Air Force (as well as the military in general) has canny and up to date philosophies on marketing and branding. They used the movie to acknowledge the sexism in their past (the implicit message being AF has evolved since then) and simultaneously celebrate female aviators (it is literally the subject of a video on the CM dvd), combining a pro feminist and pro military branding.
Are you from the US? They ran ads for the Air Force before the film played in theaters and on television (at least after the films release) using footage from the film.
I am, but I don’t remember seeing those ads. Probably looking at my phone until the theater lights went down 🙂
I have no doubt that that’s true, but it seems pretty obvious to me that there’s a distinction between “the movie is propaganda” and “there’s propaganda ads that use material from the movie.”
“there’s propaganda ads PLAYING BEFORE THE FILM that use material from the movie.” that shifts the needle a little, no?
I’m going to guess it’s yet another disingenuous ‘criticism’ that their lot think would hide the real reason they harassed Brie Larson and review bombed the movie. “It’s about videogame journalism” lives on in many forms among these alt right nerds.
Imagine thinking a left-wing criticism of military propaganda in popular films is somehow an “alt right” stance.
I only bothered to watch this on stream, didn’t know there was an actual Air Force ad that ran before the movie in theatres. My bad.Even then though, that isn’t something that’s part of the film itself. So this comparison still reeks of disingenuous criticism that’s part and parcel of nerdom’s imagined culture war in pop culture.
You can still insist that this is about your left-wing criticism of pro-military propaganda though, I’m sure every asshole who comments on any Brie Larson-related news or media can relate with it. Totally not because you’re mad she’s a woman you perceived as an SJW in a movie you imagined to be too feminist, it’s because Captain Marvel is just like Zero Dark Thirty!
*sees a post about some C-list comedian participating in right-wing propaganda*Yes, this is an opportunity for me to make my left-wing criticism of Captain Marvel. Nothing strange about this at all, I’m very left-wing you see.
Well man all I can tell you is that I don’t really don’t give a shit about “nerd culture” which is why of the two films I mentioned only one is a “nerd culture” film and I picked it in part because those “nerd culture” films are basically all of fucking popular film at this point. I don’t watch the Marvel films in part because I was already put off by the right-wing propaganda and thinking behind them well before Captain Marvel ever came out, and also because universally they’re boring slogs with awful CGI and thin characters that do nothing but say the same boring Whedonesque quips over and over. (And apply that same criticism to DC or whatever other huge “nerd” franchise you can name right now, honestly fuck ‘em all, I only use Marvel as a representative example and because they dominate like five of the top ten box office slots every single year. It’s inescapable no matter how little I care about it.) And I mean, hey, on some level that’s fine. People can enjoy something that I don’t care for and in a vacuum I don’t really care about that, but I do care about the fact that a lot of them are explicitly designed to argue for the goodness of American might at a time when America is easily the biggest threat to the safety of the world, and when some of them (like, sorry, Captain Marvel) are explicitly designed as recruitment tools. I’d love to say this shit doesn’t matter but the Air Force reported an uptick in recruitment for the first time in several years following the release of Captain Marvel (similar to Top Gun back in the day) so yeah, it kind of does matter. I don’t want people joining the Air Force so they can bomb brown people. Call me a toxic nerd all you want, I don’t give a shit, but I’m not going to stop saying that these films themselves are as “toxic” as anything can be in the popular culture when they’re having that demonstrable effect.
And it’s really really funny and sad that you’re this fixated on the Marvel/Brie Larson aspect of my criticism WHICH IS JUST A NOTABLE EXAMPLE, and not even the only example I used, as if I was not making a broader point about the complicity of basically all of blockbuster Hollywood in the military industrial complex and the lack of “accountability” towards any of the people involved in those productions. Between the two of us I don’t think I’m the person who has a problem with being overly defense of some nerd shit that I’ve decided to take too personally.
Sorry to inform you that I’m still not convinced despite all those admittedly legit grievances about this particularly type of blockbusters. I mean, you specifically zeroed in on those two movies because they involved women you thought were impervious to criticism due to your thinking people are being overly woke. In fact, you equated the harassment they faced, Larson in particular is still the most harassed female celebrity online, with legit criticism of their perceived complicity—the majority of them were clearly not about that unless you consciously chose to not see them.
Just to add to this, if you can forgive Jamie Kennedy for just taking a role to earn a paycheque even if it were for a particularly icky right-wing propaganda film, why the moral righteousness for the people involved in the two movies you mentioned? (Which, again, curiously involved two prominent female figures in Hollywood who have spoken up against sexism in the industry)
I’m sure you’re an expert on whatever is inside my head at all times. They’re high profile movies. I like Larson a lot as an actor and my stance is not necessarily that I think she should be treated like someone who did the Watergate break-in for taking an acting role. It’s just that if I take the stance that it’s just a role and she should be left alone, that also has to apply to Jamie Kennedy and others, yes even if they appear in this dogshit movie. You’re the one trying to draw a distinction that isn’t there.
I’ve heard people argue that because the Air Force got script approval, therefore the movie must be propaganda. (The US armed forces will apparently not cooperate with any movie that doesn’t give them script approval.) But if you actually watch the movie, all you see of the Air Force is… yeah, them being misogynist dicks. (And harboring an alien scientist with no qualms about the danger she’s evidently putting everyone in.)
Except to the target of audience of potential recruits, showing the Air Force as misogynist dicks may be a positive (“A place where I can be a REAL man!”). The fact is the Air Force approved the script, so they must think it is a net positive for them.
Except to the target of audience of potential recruits, showing the Air Force as misogynist dicks may be a positiveThis is interesting; it could be true, and if it is, it raises the question that if propaganda appeals to one group, but repels another, how effective is it really as propaganda? Sure, maybe they increase recruitment a little, but maybe they also increase resentment among other sectors of the population, who then are more likely to badmouth the military, or vote for politicians who want to weaken the military, etc. The latter effect would be pretty subtle and hard to quantify but it could easily still be there. I know I didn’t come out of Captain Marvel thinking anything positive about the Air Force.The fact is the Air Force approved the script, so they must think it is a net positive for them.Agreed, but “they think it’s a net positive” and “it is quantifiably a net positive” are not the same thing.
I think, in most cases you are correct, that the Air Force – and more generally the US Military – will not cooperate in movie productions depicting them unless they get not so much script approval, but veto power on problematic story points.Given how stridently Captain Marvel goes in on the misogynistic nature of the Air Force, I find it hard to believe that this isn’t one thing they would have insisted that Marvel tone down on.Except, this is Disney/Marvel, and that was the literally the second biggest movie of that year, and playing the role of laying the red carpet to the biggest movie of the year, and (until a couple of weeks ago) of all time.I could easily see an exchange going forth like this :-Disney : “We’d like your cooperation in this movie since the Air Force is a big part of Carol Danvers backstory”Air Force : “Can we get a look at the script?”Disney : “Sure”Air Force (after looking through the script) : “Yeeeeeah,….we don’t like all the misogyny and sexism you’re showing us having. Can you take all that out? We can’t cooperate until you do.”Disney : “Is any of it untrue? Because we HAVE spoken to your female pilots and former pilots…”Air Force : “Not really, but…..”Disney : “So here’s the thing…… Script’s not changing. Like we said, the Air Force (and the concommitant misogyny) are a HUGE part of her backstory, so we’re not going to show one without the other. But if you really feel strongly about not being part of this movie that’s probably going to be seen by more people than any movie this year, and who will be eagerly anticipating the biggest movie of all time coming a few short weeks after this one, then we understand and we’ll just create a fictional “United States Air Command” type organization to use, and then give all that free Ad time for before this movie and after the movie (as well as some Ad spots for Avengers : Endgame) to Buick or Audi or some other company.It’s your choice.But script’s not changing”Air Force : “Fuck!” Where do we fucking sign?”Disney : “We thought you’d see it the same way.”
You honestly think that Disney strong-armed the US military? LOLThat’s almost as hilarious as thinking Disney would sacrifice money for artistic integrity. Or that they honestly care about misogyny.
Do you honestly think that that was a seriously written comment about a seriously real exchange that happened between Disney and the US Air Force or is having things go way above your head a combat sport you enjoy participating in?“LOL” indeed.
I’m not laughing at your corporate fanfiction exclusively. I’m laughing at the whole idea behind your post.
Cool story, bro.
I don’t believe for a second that “Disney” has spoken to female Air Force pilots.
Perhaps I should have written that comment in “Tongue-in-cheek” font seeing as its general …….um……tongue in cheek nature flew too high over your head.I’ll be sure to remember that next time.
Buddy, the tongue in cheek nature was obvious. So that should say something when what breaks the believability of a hypothetical meeting between a giant corporation and the U.S. Air Force is Disney saying, “Well we spoke to the female pilots.” Just a little constructive criticism is all.
It wasn’t really supposed to be believable, but you know what? Thanks for the criticism. Appreciate that.And for the record, I don’t believe Disney give two fucks whether the Air Force were upset at their portrayal in the movie any more than they gave a shit about actual misogyny and sexism in the Air Force.Likewise, I don’t think the Air Force gives nearly as much a shit about their portrayal in the movie (particularly as pertains to how they sexist they supposedly were in the ‘90’s) enough that they would look down their nose at the opportunity for free (recruitment) Ad time in a major blockbuster movie, with Ads in which they are controlling the message.
She literally had to leave Earth to be taken seriously as a military warrior.
Like literally everything about it.
https://www.thewrap.com/air-force-captain-marvel-recruit-women-sexual-assaults-martha-mcsally/
If it goes through the armed forces PR dept, which all of the Marvel movies do for sure, then it’s propaganda. That’s what propaganda is.
NO. No, it isn’t.
https://www.cbr.com/captain-marvel-mcu-military-relationship/
Overall, I completely agree with you, and the following may actually be the ol’ exception that proves the rule, but didn’t Jessica Chastain face some criticism for that pile of hagiographic horse shit Zero Dark Thirty?
I posted above, but I think it did harm to Kathryn Bigelow’s career. She’s never quite risen to the level since Hurt Locker and ZD30, and has made only one film since. You think she’d be a lead pipe cinch for a Marvel or DC film, but her career has been rather inert.
Yeah, that could definitely be the case. I’m always shocked that she hasn’t directed more films.
She should go back to vampire movies. I don’t know why “Near Dark” is kind of forgotten. In terms of 1980s vampire movies I think it is better than “The Lost Boys” which is the 1980s vampire movie everyone remembers.
Near Dark was actually my introduction to Ms. Bigelow—in a film class no less!Fantastic movie.
WAIT WUT! she directed Near Dark? tres kewl
You could also just as easily chalk that up the her being a woman as you could any blow back for ZD30 (or both). It’s not like woman directors are tripping over offers.
Possibly, but I thought it was really odd that Patty Jenkins was picked for Wonder Woman, since her only previous credits were one drama (Monster) and some television work, whereas Bigelow’s body of work was more extensive, and far more indicative of a director accustomed to directing action. Which isn’t to say that Jenkins was a bad choice, but just not the one I would think of in a world where Bigelow was an option. And now with Chloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell both helming comic book movies, it seems even stranger that Bigelow hasn’t been tapped, despite her eminent qualifications.
You seem to be assuming that Kathryn Bigelow even wants to direct a superhero movie, which I’m guessing she doesn’t. You’ll notice that no Oscar winning director has ever directed an MCU or DCEU movie; they don’t really want people who are going to exert artistic independence and have the clout to fight them on things, they want “go with the flow” mercenaries.
Kenneth Branagh directed Thor.Also Ang Lee did the pre-MCU Hulk.
I think that the “no Oscar winners” principle MJS mentions (“they don’t really want people who are going to exert artistic independence”) would apply to nominees, as well. (It’s not like winners are substantially more “artistic” than nominees. Clearing either bar puts you in rarefied company.)For the record, here’s the MCU directors who have been nominated for Oscars, in the order of their first MCU film:Kenneth Branagh: 5 noms (including Director for Henry V), 0 winsJoe Johnston: 1 nom, 1 win (Visual Effects for Raiders of the Lost Ark)Taika Waititi: 3 nom (including Picture for Jojo Rabbit), 1 win (for Best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit)Ryan Coogler: 1 nom (pending), for Picture for Judas and the Black MessiahChloé Zhao: 4 nom (pending), all for NomadlandThe ones nominated before they were ever hired for a Marvel film were Branagh, Johnston, and Waititi. Only Branagh and Zhao were nominated for Director, but only Branagh was nominated before he was hired for a Marvel film. Several MCU directors (including some not listed above) have directed or otherwise been above-the-line talent on films that have been nominated for Oscars. Limiting the claim to only “MCU directors who won Best Director before being hired” is a pretty narrow field (only 70 individuals have won Best Director and only 33 of them are still alive).
Jojo Rabbit came out after Ragnarok, technically.
Not an Oscar winner Wouldn’t be an Oscar winner until Brokeback Mountain two years later.
Wes Anderson should do a superhero movie. But all quirky and with a pastel palette.
An Astonishing Assemblage of Exceptional Beings
The way Anderson tends to frame shots is much more indicative of a classic comic book panel to me than when Robert Rodriguez and Zack Snyder just used the actual panels as storyboards for Sin City and 300.
is Fantastic Mr Fox not a superhero?
I don’t buy that. The fact that no Oscar winning director has done a MCU movie doesn’t really mean anything. For one, how many Oscar winning directors are even active today? A dozen? Twenty? It’s not exactly a big number. But more importantly, Oscar winning directors tend to want to make Oscar winning movies. And “comic book movies” don’t get Oscar nominations no matter how good they may be. Hell, look no farther than Oscar Winning Director Scorcese’s comments about how they aren’t “cinema”. The stupid pseudo intellectual stigma around super hero movies probably has more to do with it than anything else.Also, Shane Black did Iron Man 3 and Brannaugh (Oscar nominated director) did Thor. So it’s not even really accurate. Those guys are HUGE names and could easily have “artistic independence” (whatever that means).
It doesn’t happen because, frankly, most of these directors are over-qualified. Why pay Peter Jackson to make Spider-Man: Homecoming when you can get Jon Watts for cheap.Generally speaking the directors Marvel gets fall into one of two camps: young filmmakers trying to break into bigger budget filmmaking (Watts, Boden/Fleck, Scott Derickson, etc) or people with some pre-existing nerd cred (Joss Whedon, James Gunn, Taika Waititi). There are some exceptions, especially during phase 1 when they were still working things out, and occasionally they’ll bring in someone like Shane Black to appease a star or bring in a ringer like Peyton Reed to save a troubled production, but it’s not hard to see a pattern.D.C. seemed was a little less obvious in their workings, seemingly kind of trusting Snyder and some of the other producers to let their whims decide these things, but after the Justice League debacle they seemed to settle more into the MCU model of getting younger directors who will be “team players.”
Well, Kenneth Branagh is the closest thing MCU got to prestige award type of director (He directed the first Thor). While Taika Waititi actually does win an Oscar, but that happens as a result of his rep is rising since Thor: Ragnarok.
Maybe Bigelow doesn’t want to direct a Marvel or DC movie.
She doesn’t.She said so herself – not specific to Marvel or DC, but rather that comicbook movies were not her thing.
Bigelow doesn’t like comicbook movies.She stated as much in interviews when her name kept coming up in interviews and interviews for choices to direct Wonder Woman and the clear implication that DC really wanted a female director to do it.In fact, I’d be willing to bet you that her name came up before Jenkins and she was probably even approached first (I mean,…come on… a multi-Academy Award winner?).It’s the same reason you now also never see her name come up even when there’s a potentially female-centric Marvel MCU movie coming up.Because everyone now pretty much knows.
Bigelow’s directing career is so oddly full of fits & starts. She barely directed anything in the years leading up to Hurt Locker, then she immediately got those two high profile projects, then not much else.
She’s never done a Marvel or DC film because she’s very clearly stated that she’s not a fan of comicbook movies.The topic came up when the question of who should direct Wonder Woman came up and her name was one of the first names popping up in everyone’s lists.And then in an interview she said she had been offered some movies (she wasn’t specific, but it was clear which), but she turned them down since that genre is not to her speed.Also somewhat related, she also come off a bit as someone who is very selective in the movies she chooses to direct which might be why you haven’t seen her direct much since Zero Dark Thirty.Studios are not going to bend over and offer you a movie that fits perfectly to your exact taste, and that’s the reason you often see some directors working more than others even in movies that don’t seem like them.
Not until after the Oscar win.
Haha, good point.“Here’s your Oscar… now HOW DARE YOU?!”
Bigelow did, but not the actors so much. I think it was generally agreed that they were just actors taking a role and couldn’t be held accountable for what the creators of the film did. Which, I’m not saying I agree or disagree, but if we’re holding actors accountable for taking roles in an anti-abortion movie I don’t know why we aren’t doing it with other films that spread messages that are just as noxious. It’s an inconsistency.
Yeah, like I said, I agree with you. I don’t find it to be a “false equivalence” as someone up-thread does.And I read that young female recruitment to the Air Force definitely went up after Captain Marvel.
If you’re looking for pro-military propaganda blockbusters, a better example would be Transformers where Michael Bay actively gives a handjob to the armed forces for most of the movie.
Michael Bay is often a military propagandist yes. I just picked random examples. However, especially given the production practices used on them I don’t think it can be denied that Captain Marvel and Zero Dark Thirty were explicitly propaganda films.
well, he’s contractually obligated to. if you want American military hardware in your movie they get the right to object to the script. its why some movies (transformers included) have weird nebulous made up military forces instead.
Did you really just compare Captain Marvel, a movie about a former Air Force pilot who is granted super powers in a freak accident during an unauthorized intergalactic incident, with Zero Dark Thirty, a movie about the VERY REAL killing of America’s most feared terrorist leader?
Both are propaganda, so yes.
“the VERY REAL killing of America’s most feared terrorist leader?”You forgot to add:“and ex-CIA asset”
Fair, but honestly what current enemy of the state didn’t receive (directly or indirectly) CIA training in the 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
You’re right. The comparison is unfair. The military propaganda is a lot worse because it actually convinces people. No one who isn’t a right wing psycho already is going to view this abortion movie, ever. Meanwhile, children are watching the Avengers movies by the millions ever year and learning the goodness and necessity of American military might around the world.
What American military might? Outside of the First Avenger cast, Sam, and Rhodey, the American military is consistently portrayed as inept at best and antagonistic at worst. Hell, they were the BAD GUYS in Civil War and dismissed outright in Infinity War. Their main representative in the MCU is Thunderbolt Ross, who is a jackass, and in WandaVision their main representative is the secondary Big Bad. In the entire MCU, it’s shown again and again and again that the American military is useless, and their members don’t get to achieve anything until AFTER they leave said military.
Pull your head out of your ass and actually watch the goddamn movies instead of preaching like an idiot on your sanctimonious high horse.
No, UN oversight was the bad guy in Civil War.And their main representative in the MCU is Captain America.
I’ve watched a bunch of them, and you’re not watching them closely enough (despite evidently thinking about them way more than is healthy) if you think that movies that receive Pentagon funding aren’t propaganda.
In actual terms, they Avengers ARE the military in their universe. Sure they’re their own agency or whatever but the point is the same. They are meant to be the stand-ins for the army in our own world. They’re part of the goddamn government, I mean that is the entire point, man. Even to the extent that individual chapters of that machine are shown to be incompetent or bad (always because of one “bad apple” dark horse villain abusing them, of course), the message of the film is still always that overall American might is good and righteous and necessary to protect the world from bad guys. It conditions you to think things like “okay, the Iraq war was a mistake, but overall the military is good” rather than “maybe the U.S. military is just a criminal enterprise that is designed to kill people to protect imperial interests.” And that difference matters.
That the films sometimes build in plausible deniability by showing members of the military apparatus doing bad things occasionally so that people like you will defend them does not actually rebut the argument that they are propaganda. It makes them more effective propaganda. I assure you, the Pentagon is not providing funding and hardware to Avengers 8 1/2 unless they think it ultimately portrays them well and functions as useful propaganda
I think that might only be working on Americans then. I’m a fan of big dumb action and at no point do those films appear to be doing that to me.Sure, they tell the story using big fights but the military aren’t portrayed as the good guys. And sometimes The Avengers are the bad guys. The US government is infiltrated by Hydra. The Sekovia stuff, Civil War… I dunno but I feel that the message is usually more along the lines of “fuck you American military – we’re going to do what we think is right”. They try to arrest Captain America in two of the films.And they made the military straight up psycho evil in Wandavision. Shoot those kids, buddy!EDIT: sorry – everyone else has already made these points far more eloquently than I. I’m just adding to the noise, ignore me 🙂
I mean hey I love big dumb blockbusters too lol. I’ve been pretty critical of them in a lot of my comments (and the Marvel ones are all straight up trash IMO, and not just for their politics) but I came back from Godzilla vs. Kong today and honestly I had a pretty good time. I’m not against those movies as a general principle or anything. And I don’t believe big action blockbusters HAVE to be right-wing either. James Cameron’s, notably, really are not (with the unfortunate exception of True Lies, which I’ll still admit is a hugely fun film).
But I do think part of what you’re responding to here – and this is reflected in your comment about “good” propaganda below I think – is the fact that a lot of these films are constructed in such a way as to have plausible deniability, i.e. to be more effective in their purpose as propaganda. When the Pentagon’s PR team approves film scripts, they actually apparently are as much averse to providing military gear to films with overly “positive” portrayals as they are to those that depict the military wholly negatively. The obvious reason for that is that if you don’t include some stuff that on its surface is negative – think Captain Marvel superficially overcoming “sexism” from her wingmates or whatever – the audience will pick up on the fact that it’s propaganda WAY too easily and quickly. It has to be more subtle. Propaganda that is too obvious is usually not effective, because it’s far easier for the audience to dismiss it outright as such. (Related to the article, this is also why the abortion movie basically doesn’t matter; since it’s constructed entirely for the purpose of lecturing the audience, no one who doesn’t already agree with it is going to care or be convinced.)
The message of most of the core Marvel films is basically along the lines of “the American military machine has its problems. There are some bad actors, and bigots, and sometimes it messes up trying to protect the world. But at the end of the day, American might is necessary and good and keeps people safe.” The Avengers, far from being separate from the military machine, are explicitly part of it in their universe, and basically stand in for the actual army in ours. That’s the slight of hand. They’re training people who would otherwise think more critically about the American military to hear criticisms of it and still think “well, they sometimes mess up, but overall they’re good and necessary.” Which is something that I would personally argue is not true, and very purposefully not true. The only good thing that military could do at this point is start to wind down, and a lessening of recruitment numbers would be a positive step.
Excellent points, well made. It’s (obviously) not something I’ve thought very hard about and if it’s an action movie I don’t even really look for a message or morals. I like the Marvel stuff because it looks cool (especially that purple colour they use) and some of the fights are impressively staged. But I suppose if you are young and impressionable (ie the target audience) these things can have a serious impact.Being a middle aged hippy I think I’m fairly immune to these things. It’s all just fluff. I didn’t get that we were supposed to idolise the Spartans in 300, for example. They seemed like dickheads.Predator and Commando are in my top 5 films. I hope that’s still cool. Shit, maybe I’m beginning to reach that age where I’m just automatically wrong about stuff. It took several months of actively thinking about it to stop saying “actress”.Anyway, thank you for the thoughtful response.
I realise that everyone is now clamouring for the other 3 films from The Top Five.Cannibal! The Musical. (duh)Life of BrianSpinal Tap
(Sorry this is late, I disappear here for a while and then catch-up sometimes) For what it’s worth, I love a lot of action movies lol. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m attuned to it in the way I am. I watched Commando actually a few weeks ago and it is definitely deeply problematic and troubling in its politics, but I also won’t lie and say I didn’t have a lot of fun watching it. The action scenes are outstanding and stupid in the right way. I also think Predator is great (I actually don’t know if I would say that has reactionary politics honestly, other than that they have to be former ops for the plot to work). I also don’t think all action movies are that way. With the exception of True Lies, a lot of James Cameron’s films (just for example) could be analyzed as critiques of capitalism, colonialism, racist power structures, etc and his comments about them support that. Say what you want about Avatar, but the whole last third of it is about the heroes kicking the shit out of the American military for interfering in and destroying their home, and you’re supposed to cheer them doing it. I think it can be done without the military propaganda, it’s just that the military propaganda is an economical decision in part because by doing that you get free gear to put in your movie.
I’m definitely not against enjoying stuff. I’ll go to my grave loving Ghostbusters, which is a movie in which the villain is government regulation. I just think it’s healthy to look at this stuff honestly for what it is and what the messages are. More so when it’s films that (unlike even Predator and possibly Commando) are made in part with the cooperation of particular entities that want the film to be a certain way.
Like, if someone just likes this dogshit abortion movie purely as a movie, well, I think that’s weird but I’m not stopping them. I would just hope they’re watching it with an awareness that it’s spreading a particular message and that there are people behind it with a vested interest in doing so. And also be aware that they’re not necessarily righteous for taking down Jamie Kennedy when they won’t ask the same questions about things they’re more biased in favor of due to personal enjoyment.
Idunno, I feel like the Zero Dark Thirty people got quite a bit of flack for being CIA propagandists. It’s debatable whether it did actual harm to Kathryn Bigelow’s career. She’s only directed one film since, and it was a major dud.
I would argue that the “one film since which was a major dud” likely had a lot more to do with it than ZDT.
Bigelow and the producers did, but I’m referring to the actors who were pretty unscathed by that whole thing.
I’ve also never quite squared that criticism of Zero Dark Thirty with the movie itself, which is kind of a nihilistic labyrinth of violence. I guess as a procedural it makes the CIA look awfully competent, but I feel like the upshot of the movie is to highlight what a hollow victory killing bin Laden was. That might just be me, though.
Pro-military vs anti-abortion… Discuss.
I support aborting our troops!
Suborting?
Well with the former you just end up killing all the babies when they grow up any way, so I’d call it a wash.
Kennedy sounds kind of clueless, but I don’t think anyone’s pointing to him as the biggest problem here. This interview only exists because there is some confusion about why he was in it.
And as a lot of people have pointed out, Captain Marvel serves less as military propaganda than something like Dunkirk or 1917, which won a buttload of awards. So the short answer is that most military propaganda is much better made.
Captain Marvel is just an obvious example, in part because there was a big “woke” fight over it and also because there was an explicit deal with the Air Force that the film would be used as a recruiting tool. (Air Force promos featuring Brie Larson before the film at all screenings, etc.) But sure, those films also could be held accountable for the same thing. The point is that basically none of these films really are, while this abortion film is singled out. I’m sure the abortion movie is noxious but the overwhelming glut of pro-military films are no less so, and much more dangerous because there’s no real pushback on most of them and they’re so ubiquitous.
I basically agree with you that the standard approach to even “anti-war” war films is problematic. Realistically, there are two reasons why these kinds of movies aren’t received the same way, one political and one artistic.
Politically, the American left’s anti-war messaging is pretty milquetoast at this point. They agree that war is bad, and they generally agree that in some wars, American leaders were acting unjustly, but you virtually never see a film that suggests that joining the military to help fight an unjust war was potentially an unethical decision at the individual level. This leads to some pretty incoherent positions like “This is war is a crime against humanity, but everyone who signs up to fight it is a hero.”
And that’s the American left; the right is usually even less conflicted than that. The truth is that a movie that is just broadly, non-specifically pro-troops without other explicit political messaging has no significant opposition. It’s partly why none of the examples we’ve cited are about conflicts or actions that are truly controversial today.
Artistically, this movie appears to have been constructed backwards around a political agenda, with “making a good movie” a distant third or fourth on the priority chart. People are engaging with its polemics because that was, first and foremost, what the filmmakers wanted, and they’re so cinderblock obvious that it’s impossible to do anything else. You can write a cogent critique of Captain Marvel as a movie without engaging with its position on the military at all, and most reviewers did. Can you imagine even attempting something like that with this movie’s position on abortion?
I don’t really believe Disney or Christopher Nolan sat down and said “Let’s make a two-hour long commercial for the armed forces, and if we can stick some C-list celebrities in there, great.” However you interpret the ultimate outcome, it’s pretty clear their main goal was making a movie that people might actually want to see. Juno is arguably pro-life, and it was criticized for that, but the AV club gave it a B+.
“I don’t really believe Disney or Christopher Nolan sat down and said
“Let’s make a two-hour long commercial for the armed forces, and if we
can stick some C-list celebrities in there, great””
I actually agree with that (and a lot of your comment), but part of my point was that I don’t really think Jamie Kennedy (the directors, sure, but not him) necessarily joined the film because he genuinely wanted to spread some anti-abortion point, and yet the whole premise of this article is that he should be held accountable for exactly that. Which, fair enough, I don’t even necessarily disagree, but I just don’t know why people involved in these explicitly pro-military films aren’t similarly held accountable as long as we’re holding a D-list actor accountable for appearing in some movie no one will ever see.
Like, I don’t think Disney explicitly cares about propagandizing for the military either, but I think they’re fully cognizant of the fact that they are doing that as part of the deals they make with the DoD that allow for funding and real military supplies that greatly cut down the costs of their films. When the Air Force comes to them and says “we’d like to use Captain Marvel as a recruiting tool, and if you let us film a bunch of advertisements with your lead actress and agree to run them before every screening for the film, we’ll give you a lot more of this stuff and cheaper,” I don’t think Disney is agreeing to it because they really care about the AF’s recruitment numbers, but it’s not like they don’t know what the deal is. They’ve just agreed to it as a rational economic decision. Which is also the DoD’s calculation in making these offers, knowing that studios and filmmakers will agree to it. And while the directors and actors aren’t necessarily making these deals, they are or should be reasonably aware of what they’re participating in in the same way that Disney is, or Jamie Kennedy is.
If the stance was either consistently “actors can’t be held accountable for the messages in the films they appear in” or “actors should always be accountable” then I could live with either one. What we have here is a stance that actors are accountable if it’s a fish-in-a-barrel situation of some film no one would otherwise care about, but not if it’s a huge hit film that we’d all prefer not to think critically about. It doesn’t work.
If you make no distinction between something that has some unfortunate implications by the nature of its story — or in the case of Captain Marvel, one that an organization capitalized on midway through production — and something that was deliberately crafted as essentially a cinematic manifesto, then at that point, you’re going to have to call out every actor whose name you know. The action, horror, and romance genres are rife with problematic tropes, as well as every comedy made before about two years ago.
And maybe we should! But it’s going to have to be a much larger, more sweeping conversation about the direction and role of cinema in American society, and it’s going to have to include us as the audience, too.
For what it’s worth, I’m with you that doing Air Force commercials in America’s current environment also falls into the “questionable direct messaging” category, but our first step there is going to have to be convincing most people that that’s actually a problem.
I mean, to begin with I would question the assumption that something like Captain Marvel – or more to the point, something like Zero Dark Thirty as well – was not created as a cinematic manifesto. The Marvel films and many other films have explicitly right-wing politics to them. They’re right-wing viewpoints that are generally more unquestioned in the culture than something like the abortion debate which is more culturally contentious, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are taking a viewpoint and arguing it. In the case of basically every Marvel film, that argument is basically “no matter how flawed American might may be on occasion, it is necessary and ultimately a good force for keeping the villains of the world at bay.” That’s a right-wing argument, period, and one just as forceful and delusional as “Roe v. Wade should be overturned because zygotes are people.” And both the examples I cited are films I picked specifically because they were designed from the beginning to have involvement with government agencies that were largely involved in shaping them; they weren’t hijacked in the middle of production, that WAS the production from the beginning.
And I mean, sure, we could also theoretically hold actors accountable for tropes and stuff (I would also question the assumption that comedies being made now are actually less problematic than ones made years ago; if anything they’re probably a bit worse in some respects, particularly as they’ve started to pose as “important” and enlightened). Sites like this also rake cartoon voice actors over the coals for doing comical voices of characters of another ethnic background and whatnot, so, that is already happening as we speak, while again, contentious interviews with Robert Downey Jr. and Brie Larson for their involvement with the brown-people-killing machine’s PR wing are not. I’m not taking a position on whether actors should be held accountable or not. I think there are good arguments for it on either side, but none of them work as long as they are inconsistent. When a site runs articles about how “important” movies like Black Panther and Captain Marvel are for representation and for children to see, then I’m sorry, but I cannot take them seriously when they complain about Jamie Kennedy appearing in the abortion movie. They have to pick a lane.
Do you really think Fiege and Disney sat down and said “let’s make a bunch of superhero movies to prove how great America is”? My strong sense is that it was more “Favreau’s Iron Man did pretty good; let’s make a dozen more of those things and rake in a shitload of cash.”
Because the people who made this almost definitely sat down and said “Let’s make a movie that shows how the pro-choice people are liars, crooks, and murderers.”
An underlying theme of nearly every action movie is “violence is a valid and often highly successful solution to life’s problems,” but I don’t think proving that was most of those films’ explicit goal, more of a byproduct of the ticks and biases inherent in the genre. There are arguments to be made about them, but I don’t think it’s inherently crazy to treat them differently than a serial killer’s manifesto.
Sorry this was a while ago, catching up. No, I don’t think they sat down and decided to do that per se, but I also don’t think it really matters. As I’ve said in other comments, I don’t think they care that much about propagandizing but I also think they see it as a legitimate thing to do if it makes money (in that way, a studio releasing an anti-abortion movie they probably don’t actually care about, knowing that a certain guaranteed audience will gobble it up, is fairly analogous). It’s an economic decision. When they make the deal to have Captain Marvel advertise the Air Force or whatever, I don’t think Feige cares about the Air Force no, but I think he’s willing to pitch to them “we will make the Air Force look really good and advertise recruitment so you can boost numbers” because that’s how you get them to agree to send the planes and stuff. Whether they really care about it is sort of immaterial. For one thing, these cultural things can have unintended consequences, but more importantly I think they know what the consequences are, they just don’t care. It’s an economic calculation they’ve made. And when the military gets involved, they absolutely do care. And when they’re driving a lot of the decision making, does it actually matter that much whether Favreau or whoever sat down and said “I want to make a military propaganda film”? (Never mind that that does happen, too: Patty Jenkins made that pretty clear with regard to her upcoming Rogue Squadron movie, in the announcement video she made for it.)
I also don’t think reactionary politics are necessarily inherent to the genre. James Cameron’s films (well, aside from True Lies) notably aren’t that way. And I love action movies, even a bunch that I would say have essentially reactionary, right-wing politics in them. But even those aren’t always made with Pentagon involvement.
None of this is the excuse the abortion movie. Just that I think these distinctions between the abortion movie and the Pentagon movies are basically meaningless.
I’m not sure I’d call Dunkirk or 1917 military propaganda, since their message was essentially “war is horrific and traumatizing.” The movies were well done (and spoke well of soldiers), but I’m not sure anyone came out of those movies thinking ‘yeah, that’s what I want to do for the next 4 years / isn’t combat awesome’.
Almost every serious modern film takes the starting position that war is bad, but almost all of them highlight the heroism of soldiers, rarely make bad ones the main characters, and never question their service. The recent spate of WWI & II movies just sidestep the question entirely by portraying conflicts where people generally won’t ask uncomfortable questions. You don’t necessarily come out of these movies thinking war would be fun, but there is a strong bias toward a portrait of it as inherently ennobling. The message isn’t “war is great” but a vibe of “how dare you question our fighting men?”
And even the movies that really work to avoid that, like Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now (which are decades old now, it’s worth noting), tend to paint the main tragedy as the loss of innocence of American soldiers, not all the dead foreigners.
“This war is wrong, and therefore the act of going to fight it is wrong at a personal level” is virtually unheard of in mainstream cinema.
I can generally agree that war movies focus on ‘good fighting men,’ and that “war is bad” is a different message than “war is wrong.” That said:- I think we’re defining “military propaganda” differently. Are we talking about films that get people to want to join the military, or films that influence the general populace to think well of soldiers, or films that support war, or…? – Even under a broader definition, I still wouldn’t consider Dunkirk and 1917 to be pro-military. Yes, they ennoble soldiers. But those soldiers aren’t fighting and dying to save a village or beat the villains or win the war – the big victory is that they manage to save some of their fellows from disaster. In 1917 in particular, we’re shown a lack of cohesive strategy, he doesn’t even manage to save the first wave, and there’s no sense that the attack (or preventing it) even accomplished anything. The message isn’t “war is noble,” it’s “we need to think long and hard about whether these boys had to die.” Short version: I don’t think “war had damn well better be worth the cost” is necessarily a suspect message.
For me, military propaganda is a work that valorizes a military career above others and avoids or actively discourages criticism of the choice to become a soldier, which is distinct from and can exist within a movie that criticizes command decisions or is, on paper, anti-war. A movie that for almost all of its run time is about the bravery and heroism of individual soldiers but than says “but also, it might not have been great that we/our leaders made them do this” is pro-military.
And again, it’s fine for a movie to have a perspective. But nearly every war movie for the last twenty years has had this one, and at that point, it’s an informal campaign.
I’d go even further and ask can you imagine grilling, say, the actors in any civil rights movie about the nuances of the movement, and not getting blowback? The Daily Beast reporter is by far one of the most irritating people in journalism, and this mostly felt like shooting fish in a barrel.
Yeah I’d love to see someone grill any of the actors on that terrible Sorkin Chicago 7 movie lol. No leftist was happy with that piece of shit, it basically co-opted a group of leftists to make a centrist liberal propaganda movie, but no one involved was asked any tough questions about it.
Captain Marvel’s not really military propaganda, though. Yes, Carol and Maria met in the Air Force and there were a bunch of AF ads, but the movie itself painted the Air Force as extremely sexist and terrible. The only sympathetic military character besides Carol and Maria is Mar-Vell.
If the film is receiving Air Force support and has a deal to do Air Force advertisements with the main star, it is Air Force propaganda. It was constructed specifically around the fact that the Air Force was having trouble recruiting women, so the whole idea of it was to show a character overcoming obstacles to encourage other young girls and women to do the same. Good propaganda usually puts some “negative” stuff in the film in order to create plausible deniability, otherwise it’s too obvious to the viewer. Like Zero Dark Thirty showing torture to be harrowing, but still ending essentially with the message that however awful it may be, it was necessary and useful in capturing Bin Laden.
If Captain Marvel was supposed to be military propaganda, it did a pretty shit job at it. The few times we see the Air Force, it’s full of sexists and misogynists. Carol and Maria spend the majority of the movie OUT of the Air Force, with Carol obviously MIA and I believe Maria was discharged. If anything, the film itself is extremely ANTI-military.I mean, fuck, BATWOMAN is closer to military propaganda than fucking Captain Marvel, and the Batwoman writers couldn’t even look up what qualifies for a dishonorable discharge.
Whatever the effectiveness of it, it was created with explicit involvement and funding by the Air Force, and Brie Larson did advertisements with them that aired in front of every screening. Maybe they did a bad job at making propaganda, I don’t know, but propaganda was clearly someone’s intention.
But sure, Batwoman is probably propaganda too. (I don’t know as much about it.) These were just representative examples. Probably the majority of American action blockbusters are at least a little guilty of this.
How is Batwoman military propaganda?
Like Zero Dark Thirty showing torture to be harrowing, but still ending
essentially with the message that however awful it may be, it was
necessary and useful in capturing Bin Laden. Er, maybe I’m misremembering, but I thought ZDT showed torture producing no useful intelligence, and they only got actionable intel once they stopped using torture and started treating the prisoners like they were human.
Definitely not what happens. Torture wasn’t the whole thing but it was shown to be a necessary step. Also, torture isn’t the only thing horribly misrepresented in that movie (the whole raid sequence in itself is offensive). The CIA coordinated with the filmmakers and gave them supposed information that they weren’t even telling Congress. I’m willing to believe the filmmakers were just patsies but the CIA absolutely knew what they were doing.
Okay, well unless I get around to rewatching the movie I’ll take your word for it that I’ve totally misremembered the entire film.
Not to mention that ZDT ends with its main character walking away from bin Laden’s corpse feeling empty and disappointed. The whole final scene reorients the movie into a critique of the War on Terror’s pointlessness, or at least that’s how I read it.
This is what had me confused about that comment.Did these people actually watch the movie?The Air Force does NOT come off well AT ALL in the Captain Marvel movie – particular to the demographic that you’d think they’re supposedly propagandizing to.Young female viewers of military recruitment age.Who would want to join that organization after that?
I get why you want to single out Captain Marvel, since its protagonist is a pilot, but most Marvel productions make nice with the military. One of the few exceptions was actually the first Avengers film, where the Pentagon couldn’t wrap its head around the “unreality” of SHIELD.Marvel Studios is like any other studio in its enthusiasm for shacking up with the armed forces. The relationship between Hollywood and the DoD goes back more than a century. So, necessarily, it’s hard for actors to avoid taking roles in movies that have and want to maintain the Pentagon’s blessing. Not that every movie needs jets or Humvees or bases, but many do.
Yeah Captain Marvel was just an example, the whole Marvel universe is pretty awful in that regard. Captain Marvel was just the most blatant example because of the fact that they literally produced ads in conjunction with the Air Force, and there was a whole “woke” fight around Larson that never really broached her complicity in those ads especially. Avengers wasn’t really marketed as like important for representation or whatever. But I hate those films as well honestly, these were just obvious examples off the top of my head.
A woman does not have more right to choose, more than the person growing inside of her. The government can protect that person and tell you what to do with your body. For instance, it is illegal to sell your body for sex. It is illegal to sell your baby. It is illegal to sell your body parts such of livers and kidneys and bone marrow. It is illegal in some states not to get vaccinated. It is illegal to commit suicide. It is illegal to not wear clothes in public. Etc. The only solution is to not get pregnant in the first place. If you are raped or don’t want the baby the government should pay to deliver the baby and take it from you at birth. And in cases were it would be dangerous to the woman’s health the baby should be removed from the woman with her uterus, so she is never in danger again. Abortion is used by whores to lazy to use contraception.
Not my point at all but I hope you get some help.
Whilst they certainly need help it’s probs best to remind that whatever they say isn’t actually real. They hate a poster here (with approximately the same name) so much that they’ve created a fake account to post incendiary opinons as to make the original poster sound bad or something.Definitely a person who needs to address whatever personal issues have led them to get to such a point but there’s no point in actually reasoning or engaging with their arguments. They’re not real.
(Sorry this is late, I’m catching up, and) Thanks for letting me know. I’m only on here sporadically so I didn’t recognize their name or anything.
Fuck you, fake DEL.Piece of shit
LOL! He MAd!
The mindless (not to mention hypocritical) Republican arguments behind banning abortion is exactly why they don’t have a stranglehold over the country. It’s an untenable position to begin with, exacerbated by using pro-abortion arguments to justify not taking a life-saving, life-improving vaccine.
Wait… if I’m raped I have to carry the child of a rapist in me for 9 months? Should be fine. Can’t foresee that causing any extra psychological damage.And if it is causing some damage I lose my uterus, leaving me unable to conceive with my actual partner?Remind me to avoid getting raped in whatever asylum you live in!Also, it is not illegal to commit suicide or to sell your body for sex. I’m convinced you must have seen, or at least heard of, pornography. And maybe even the countries of Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands etc etc…Perhaps your moral code only extends as far as the borders of your country and doesn’t apply to humans. I wonder if you count yourself amongst humanity or somehow outside of it.NB Apologies if you’re coming from a place of having been raped yourself, or are the product of a rape, or something like that which has made you so sore about it. One can’t really put these comments in context and it’s hard to judge other people without having the slightest clue about what may have made them a certain way.Toodle pip!
What ho!Their whole schtick is that they’ve given themselves almost the same name as another poster here and they deliberately post terrible things as to sully the reputation of the original poster. No point in actually arguing with them as I doubt they believe anything they say when they’re this current guise.
Right ho, Gussie, old fellow. I knew I shouldn’t be bothering but this chap does seem a few gallons short in his supply of the milk of human kindness. For some reason I thought he might read my reply and consider at least some small part of it. Like the fucking idiot I am*.It’s particularly odd the way he blames the ladies when so much of his argument revolves around the consequences of rape. A loving couple may have to make the terrible decision to abort and that would be devastating to them both.I’m also curious – do Americans not have easy access to the morning after pill? If I were raped I’d be necking those things as soon as I got out of the police station.Hope the newts are well.*strayed from the Plum style a bit there!
Whether you like the military the films themselves weren’t actually perpuating lies about basic medical procedures. So, fuck you and your hobby horse, you piece of shit. 🙂
No, they’re just perpetuating lies about the goodness of the American military apparatus in spreading Justice™ around the world and the necessity of American might, including torturing, maiming, and murdering furriners and brown people. Including Zero Dark Thirty which was explicitly informed by lies that the CIA funneled to the filmmakers.
I’m not thrilled about the abortion movie. I think the people who made it are pieces of shit. Unfortunately, that doesn’t excuse the role of military propaganda in Hollywood, which is more dangerous because of how ubiquitous and unchallenged it is. (If you want to get to something truly insidious in Hollywood’s treatment of abortion, I would point to Knocked Up which basically spreads an anti-abortion message while under the guise of enlightened liberalism, which makes it far more subtle. This Jamie Kennedy movie isn’t going to actually convince anyone.) I would just like interviewers to maybe ask those questions as well and not just the easy ones they can direct to some D-list celebrity who took a role in a movie no one will ever see.
I wonder if you also think video games cause violence.
No. However, I think there is absolutely a distinction between something like Halo or Grand Theft Auto which are ultimately fantastical (no matter how realistic the violence), versus games like America’s Army, Call of Duty: Black Ops, or others that have explicit right-wing political messaging or in some cases are literally designed to be recruiting tools.
And honestly I’m skeptical of how useful those things actually are as propaganda. I don’t know how well the Avengers movies work either. But, someone clearly thinks they work, or they wouldn’t make them. Same with this abortion movie. I’m skeptical that it would change anyone’s minds, but someone must think it will. And hey, criticize that all you want, I’m just asking for consistency.
I think I’m pretty consistent in that I rarely if ever criticize actors for the morality of a movie they’re in.
And that’s great! But my original comment was directed at this article and website, which are not consistent.
I’m glad you totally care about women over your hobby horse…/eyeroll
My “hobby horse” is caring about women and people all over the world that are slaughtered in cold blood by my government. Not just those here. Sorry if that offends.
Go fuck yourself you self righteous knob.You stole the discussion. Imagine if on this exact subject I derailed the entire comment section with another important issue that receives press and is discussed. How would you feel? You’re the asshole for derailing. You need to own up to it since nobody required your hobby horse to derail a serious subject for at last count more people than US military civilian casualties. The number of people who die from lack of basic reproductive care is more annually than the entire US military Civilian casualties EVER.
“The number of people who die from lack of basic reproductive care is
more annually than the entire US military Civilian casualties EVER.”
Lol, that is almost certainly not true at all. Have you looked up the death toll for the Iraq war alone? I also don’t really care about the civilian vs. combatant distinction because “enemy” soldiers in all the countries we invade are simply fighting to keep us out of their homes, and also would not have “needed” to fight if not for our (illegal) invasions and meddling. This isn’t to minimize the importance of abortion rights, but if “abortion is more important than the lives of people murdered and maimed overseas” is really the argument you’re going with, I think you need to examine your own moral priorities.
I’m not “derailing” anything and I think you’re just genuinely too stupid to understand a lot of these arguments. An article was posted and I responded to it, and an issue I see with the reasoning of that article. You could have not engaged with my comment and you chose instead to, well, “derail” it with bad faith readings of my point. I hope that you can do some actual reading and come to a better understanding of U.S. imperialism (including its role in the reproductive lives and general welfare of women all over the world) and finally understand that it’s no more a “hobby horse” than the one issue you’ve chosen to care about.
You’re arguing I don’t get that your hobby horse had nothing to with this article and is merely an attempt to derail discussion?Go fuck yourself, you stupid twit. I’m an expert in this subject matter, my background is in IR for my undergrad. Now, if you care about women at all, you’ll stop commenting. You can’t bully me over your obtuse anti-war hobby horse.
agreed. their derailing has been very successful while their entire arguement is defeated by googling “Hollywood military propaganda” or “military-entertainment complex” which got me lots of results of what he thinks is missing.
I know that there’s lots of critiques of this stuff dude. I’ve read a lot of it, it’s something I read about and think about a lot, hence it being on my mind here. The fact is, most of these things are academic criticisms and leftist anti-war sites and stuff that are even willing to talk about it. To the extent it filters into more popular mainstream sites like this one, it’s usually an aside, or at the very least there is a general agreement that while you can critique the films in question, the actors aren’t to be blamed for it and the films themselves always seem to garner positive reviews. There are no articles in which Brie Larson or Robert Downey Jr. or whoever are grilled about their decision to appear in a film that ultimately serves to advertise recruitment for a service that mostly exists to murder brown people.
That’s what I’m getting at. The tone of even a critical Marvel article on a site like this or The Daily Beast would be like “it’s good to think about the messages being spread in films like this, but nonetheless, this is a non-stop action thrill ride that is inspiring!” while the tone of articles about this film are “anyone who agrees to take a check on this film must be held accountable for their crimes.” Both takes have their merits. But you have to pick one. Not both.
You’re fucking take time and energy away from a central issue of women’s rights and access to quality Healthcare to bemoan that we aren’t more critical of the military.You’re fucking stealing precious energy and don’t see why you’re the asshole here. I didn’t disagree with your fundamental position but your choice to stomp on women’s rights to do it.
It’s just that he wants to take the air out of the issue on discussion for his pet issue…
What an interesting whatabout. Zero Dark Thirty vs. Roe v. Wade, maybe: both are movies based on real events with a skew that’s not particularly well-rounded towards all factors involved. Throwing in Captain Marvel was a bit of a shit-stir for the sake of shit-stirring the commentariat here. The DoD is a business as much as any other: they put their stamp on uniforms, equipment, looks, etc. – regardless of if the movie is rah rah Go Military-Industrial Complex or Fuck Everything and Everyone Involved. The ‘propoganda’ aspect is less about the cool shit of the military, and more the cool shit of the people willing to be involved in the first place. This is where your argument tying in Jamie Kennedy not browsing Google harder before accepting this crap with Brie Lawson and the folks behind ZD30 shits the bed. He went by the script, which was shit and didn’t dive deep into the man he was playing and the complexities of the position of the role. Shit that couldn’t be properly said for the actors behind ZD30 or Captain Marvel – they had resources and they were used. I mean – Marvel (the comics, not the MCU) picked up steam within the confines of WWII, the pinnacle of Buy Bonds/Go Team Go. But what made Marvel, as a fake universe telling real stories cloaked in superheroics, work was that it was the people and the stories: Jaime Kennedy was right to get shat on because he didn’t given enough of a fuck to dive deeper – he and his agents saw a role that didn’t have him be a goofball and no one hired him. The Avengers cast, because be real – the propaganda was there since Iron Man – had comic lore which was wrapped in the people: A government contractor who profited off of American armed conflicts without seeing it up close sees it up close and is horrified/wants to atone. A man willing to do anything to fight for what’s right through military service only to be disillusioned with said service once he got behind both the propaganda and real shit curtains yet still wants to do right based off what drove him there. A gov’t funded scientist pushed so hard to remake America’s glory days he poisons himself. Two spies/op folks, one bruised by previous blind loyalty to a country she defected from and the other working through his shit. And an Air Force pilot, in that sweet spot of the 1980s/1990s of military women doing more, but still not allowed to do whatever they wanted to. Doesn’t paint the institutions in the greatest light, even cynically glares at the rosy picture of WWII righteousness, but: it was the people.
Mentioning Captain Marvel wasn’t a “shit-stir,” it was a tossed-off but representative example because a) it’s one of the better recent examples of a popular entertainment film that was explicitly created at least in part as propaganda given the deal made with the Air Force to advertise recruitment in exchange for more gear from the DoD and b) relevant to the article, Brie Larson’s direct involvement in the recruitment aspect of the deal, and the “woke” fight over her role in the film that mostly ignored that glaring issue. (Not that I ever agreed with the misogynist assholes upset about a female superhero or whatever, but the film was also playing with the dynamic of that discussion in order to sell young girls on the military.) It was also Just. An. Example. I could easily have mentioned dozens of other films just off the top of my head (and yes, fucking Iron Man remaking a military contractor into a hero would be one of many) and indeed I mentioned another film that wasn’t part of the precious Marvel canon, which makes it seem to me like you’re maybe taking the Marvel part of my criticism a little too personally.
If the actors in the Adventures movies are at all capable of thinking critically, they should be able to recognize that there are aspects of these films and, yes, the lore they’re deriving from that are propaganda. (And RDJ’s father made fucking Putney Swope; he for one absolutely had the upbringing that should enable him to think more critically about this stuff.) In the same way that Jamie Kennedy should be able to do the same. I’m not, necessarily, making excuses for Jamie Kennedy. But it’s inconsistent not to confront them all.
So all of that and ignoring the prior people vs. institution argument? The issue came with Jamie Oliver going “ooo, neat, a role” with not enough curiosity to see that there’s less there there for the character he went with. You, seeking a position of media superiority, went towards a “whatabout” and went towards the military – fine: but with your logic no actor would be in any role, save for jobless monks or anything else where stones cannot be thrown.
Films portray, the picture they’re willing to portray makes your argument crap: one wanted to turn Roe v. Wade into a betrayal of the sanctity of life, while your sample… did what? “ZD30 glorifies something I disagree with” – ok. “I chose Captain Marvel because of the actor’s participation in USAF stuff” – sure. Ignoring the people aspect of my argument widens the hole in yours: who joins the military? Stan Lee and the folks behind the growth of Marvel and its iconic heroes were products of WWII and the Cold War – of course the source material on their end would be shaped by the thoughts and feelings around it, from the jingoism of early Captain America to the disillusionment of the post-ice Captain America to the fears of the military-industrial complex and the scientific arms race with Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, and other experiments gone wrong or right to the potential for overreach and exploitation via the X-Men. There the government/military/special op agencies are the good guy, the grey guy, the evil villain and everywhere in between. When the garden variety person considers joining the military they run that gamut as well as anyone else because they’re people. Captain Marvel came out right as women were finally being involved in combat roles, not far from them graduating in larger numbers from academies, less trapped by the limits of their gender to enter the roles needed to get ahead and they’re people – in it for the right, wrong, or in between reasons. Based on an era where women who served were not far off from WACs, but were still not meant to be more than transport and support. Which were par for course in the history of Marvel as well. Unlike Jamie Kennedy hell yes Brie Lawson should talk to those in service, get an idea of the whys and who and what-for.
Brie Larson talks to military members not to understand but because it was part of a marketing and recruitment campaign for the Air Force and the Pentagon. And this is not a matter of my simply “disagreeing” with what those institutions do. What those institutions do is murder and war crimes. That is their purpose, full stop. When a film like Captain Marvel propagandizes for them, and aides in their recruitment efforts, what it is doing it helping those institutions to murder and torture more poor and brown people. This isn’t like “this film has a position on the national debt that I don’t agree with” or whatever, this is these films being active participants in the PR efforts of institutions exist only to perpetuate U.S. empire and violence, often in direct contravention to international laws, and which should not exist, full stop.
I honestly don’t know what in your comment you think is a refutation of what I said. Honestly, I’m not taking a side on whether actors should take roles that are morally questionable, or whether they can be blamed as mere players (workers really, albeit often overpaid ones) in the game of, yes, institutions like film studios and military organizations that are really calling the shots here. I think there are good arguments for both “Jamie Kennedy should be held accountable for appearing in the abortion movie” and “Jamie Kennedy is just an actor taking a role and is therefore exempt.” Genuinely. I’m not taking one side or the other on that.
But The Daily Beast and the A.V. Club and virtually every other popular entertainment site covering this ARE taking a side, the former one. And yes, it’s a dubious and unsustainable position as long as it’s blatantly inconsistent. I don’t have an issue with someone taking that stance, but when it comes from sites that ran articles like “Captain Marvel is an inspiration for young girls” and whatever the fuck, I absolutely cannot take it seriously, because those taking the stance don’t have the integrity to be logically consistent.
I don’t know how people square their moral righteousness of looking for shit like this to get upset about. I didn’t know this movie even existed, I’m barely aware that Jaime Kennedy exists, His career is basically non-existent, so why care about what role he takes so he can pay his rent? It’s not some beloved icon betraying your love by campaigning for Trump. It’s a forgettable actor admitting that he took a shitty role in a shitty propaganda movie that no one will see because he needed a job. You want to grill him about a role, interrogate him about why he thought Malibu’s Most Wanted was a good idea.
Yeah that’s part of what makes this so funny and weird to me. This a film that virtually no one is going to see (or at least weren’t before the handwringing articles about it), yet Jamie Kennedy is being grilled about it like he’s the villain CEO in Roger and Me. These superhero and action blockbuster films top the box office every single year, they’re a little more consequential than some film that’s only going to be remembered for its Rifftrax in a couple years!
the marvel zombies insult has never been more applicable than to fans of the MCU that can’t abide any criticism.
Seriously. My comment wasn’t even about Marvel really, Captain Marvel is just a representative example for reasons that should be obvious to anyone with even the slightest awareness of how it was produced and marketed. Almost no one is going after me for mentioning Zero Dark Thirty but they’re all up in arms because I criticized their children’s movie in passing. When the whole damn point was that this is just a broader and casually accepted ecosystem in Hollywood that Marvel is just one part of.
While I will in no way defend the movie in the article, never heard of it and frankly I’m pro choice (well personally I don’t care what you do with your body but it’s not something I think I would lean towards myself but that’s neither here nor there), the problem is it’s an actor taking a role in a right wing or whatever movie. You can’t be republican and an actor and get work. Outside of those horrid Kirk Cameron abortions he calls movies lol. You can look at most any actor that comes out a right leaning publicly, and see their acting credits plummet from that day forwards.
You can’t be republican and an actor and get work.Dwayne Johnson says hi. Also, Jon Cryer was recently on Supergirl as Lex Luthor.
Ok 2 examples, but more to the point generally its much more difficult. Dwayne Johnson is an exception and that’s pretty much John Cryer’s only role of note since 2 and a half men. Actors who are outspoken republican’s generally don’t get as many role’s as outspoken liberals
I mean, I don’t know if I really care about that. I’m not explicitly taking a side on it, but if we all decide that Republicans shouldn’t be allowed to work in Hollywood movies or whatever, then fine I guess. I’m a socialist, if I was directing a film I probably wouldn’t want to work with anyone anywhere to the right of Bernie Sanders frankly, because I doubt we’d be on the same page creatively if nothing else. My problem is that all these military propaganda films are explicitly, and extremely, right-wing, and we’ve just kind of decided societally that those are okay while anti-abortion movies or whatever are not, despite that the former are a lot more consequential in their actual social effects. We gotta pick a lane.
While I am certainly far to the right from you politically, I think I can kind of agree with you to a point. But I don’t know if I would label all military movies as far right wing. It really depends on the film. Something like American Sniper sure that’s pretty hard core right wing, something like Platoon, or Saving Private Ryan, not so much. I don’t think we should really prevent any particular movie from being made, barring something objectively illegal or wrong like child porn or something. But as far as that anti abortion movie, meh I wish it had not been made, but I am also of the mind that the abortion debate should just go away entirely, it’s legal get over it and shut up.
To be honest with you I would probably label Saving Private Ryan as a right-wing movie. I like Spielberg and I even think it’s a pretty good movie, but it ends with the damn American flag. It’s long been analyzed in that light, particularly given that it came out in the late 90s when there was sort of an ambivalence about the U.S.’ role in the world, and you started seeing a lot of WWII nostalgia films that were playing up the heroism of the “good” war, which (whatever the intentions of the filmmakers) served in part to increase support for military actions in Bosnia, etc, when the public was otherwise not really sure what the hell we were doing there.
But I mean, I don’t think all military films are right-wing either. You’re right that Platoon isn’t. But the anti-war films don’t generally get direct military funding. No one was running recruitment ads before Full Metal Jacket, because it was a film that was actually designed to be critical of the military. I would also say Thin Red Line is a great, non-reactionary war movie that came out at the same time as Saving Private Ryan, and is easily superior.
Zero Dark Thirty is absolutely military and CIA propaganda, but Captain Marvel? Come onnnnn!
You sound like a loser.
You sound like a loser.
I don’t think it’s fair ball for troll bloggers to criticize how anyone else earns a living. After all, you do… this… for money, don’t you? You’re not better than Jamie Kennedy, however much you try to fool yourselves. Go give the richest company in the world, Apple, another free commercial for their over-priced made-by-slaves products.Go write another contractually-obligated positive review of some trash CW show.Go copy someone else’s genuine work and add two lines of snark to pretend like you created something. Just stop pretending like you’re even on the same continent as the moral high ground already.
damn, dude.
But BLOGGERS need to eat tooooo!!! If nobody clicks they don’t eat, so they HAVE to do this!! waaaaaaaa
I get your point, and it’s not a meaningless callout. But probably many bloggers are one missed paycheck away from being unable to pay for rent. I make more leeway for people making moral choices about their work in that situation than some guy like Jaime Kennedy who has made millions in his career.
So your counterargument to “Jamie Kennedy maybe shouldn’t have starred in dangerous anti-abortion propaganda without at least doing some research” is “Well, you give positive reviews to Apple products and CW shows.” And, uh, here you are commenting, anonymously, on these blogs, which seems an even worse use of time than blogging…
Nope.
Got ‘em, hot damn
I heard him on the Tiger Belly podcast talk about how he was hired to be the host of a show called ‘Guinness World Records Gone Wild’ on TruTV. After one episode the producers said he was ‘too wild’ and replaced him with Dan Cortese.
Cool story bro.
nobody in their right mind would ever argue that abortion is correct
Kickin’ It Old Skool 2: Roe vs Wade
Electric Abort…a-loo…?
Roe V. Wade 2: Roe Harder!
It’s entirely possible that he just needed/wanted the money. He’s not actually what you would call a star anymore and may have thought that he could get away with doing a shitty film for the pay check and no one would care or notice.
Dude needed a job. Lay off of the poor guy. It’s not like he killed a baby still in the womb.
Someone doesn’t understand anything
We can shut it down folks. The worst take of the day is here
Ha!
Once again, The KinjaAVClub takes it upon themselves to decide who may take which roles.
A woman does not have more right to choose, more than the person growing inside of her. The government can protect that person and tell you what to do with your body. For instance, it is illegal to sell your body for sex. It is illegal to sell your baby. It is illegal to sell your body parts such of livers and kidneys and bone marrow. It is illegal in some states not to get vaccinated. It is illegal to commit suicide. It is illegal to not wear clothes in public. Etc. The only solution is to not get pregnant in the first place. If you are raped or don’t want the baby the government should pay to deliver the baby and take it from you at birth. And in cases were it would be dangerous to the woman’s health the baby should be removed from the woman with her uterus, so she is never in danger again. Abortion is used by whores to lazy to use contraception.
I’m taking you out of the greys just so we can all laugh at you.
Don’t take this harassing troll out of the greys. You’re just enabling them and contributing to the harassment of the commenter they’re imitating.
There isn’t a baby or a person until she delivers one.
Jump through all the hoops and twist all the facts you want. You can not dispute scientific fact. It is a person at the point of inception. If there is no outside force to stop it, the cells will continue dividing and growing until the natural lifespan of the genetic material has passed.
I haven’t jumped or twisted even a tiny little bit; you simply haven’t presented anything that requires me to. Personhood just plain is not a scientifically fixed concept in the way you’re pretending it is.
It is ok for you to be wrong. I won’t babort you. The government has a duty to protect those citizens that can not protect themselves. An in this case, an unborn fetus is a person that requires protection from a murderer.
You don’t understand science. Thats not a scientific fact. Ask any actual scientists.
I am a scientist and a Doctor. It is ok for you to be wrong. I won’t babort you. The government has a duty to protect those citizens that can not protect themselves. An in this case, an unborn fetus is a person that requires protection from a murderer.
Something tells me you’re fine with other forms of ‘murder’, though. The usual incoherent hypocrisy of the right’s idiot ‘ideology’.
Cells aren’t people. You don’t get to make major medical decisions for other people. Sit the fuck down.
Of course I am alright with murder. They are two total different subjects. I am against murder of any living thing without sin. Now do something or commit a crime so heinous it requires your permanent removal from society, then so be it.
the fact that you see no hypocrisy here is evidence that you’re morally bankrupt. but you’re likely just a troll anyway.
There’s two “Emilio”s. One is actually a decent dude and the other “will babort you”.You got the babortionist here.
There is no hypocrisy there. At the moment of conception you are without sin. I will not murder you. But once you are of age to know right from wrong and you commit an act so heinous you need to be permanently removed from society, I will easily put a gun to your head and pull the trigger.
s o c i o p a t h
Stop feeding the fake Lizardo.
LOL! He MAD!
Almost every major biology textbook in the US says that life begins at conception, fwiw
Well…at the point of conception it’s a bundle of multiplying cells that contain human DNA. But then, so’s cancer. I’m pretty sure there’s more to personhood than cell activity, replication and human DNA.Differentiated cells? Ok, but then teratomas have different tissue types and no one’s arguing that they warrant consideration.A heartbeat and brain pattern? That’s where I’d draw the line – a fetus is a person when it has measurable activity in the parts that make it an actual human, rather than just a growing biological object.
Don’t be obtuse. Cancer cells without outside interference are in no way a person. Were as multiplying human cells are.
‘Hoops’, ‘twisted facts’
aka, science, long since decided in consensus by folks who know much more than you on the subject.
The dude took a job. Blame the owners, not the hired help. Also, abortion is a fine choice to make.
Blame Hitler! Not the people just doing their job!
lol what is wrong with you?Completely Brainwashed
Not exactly the comparison I would make.
And Ron Vibbentrop!
Are you seriously? Did you actually? Think Hitler personally shoveled all 6 million jews into the oven by himself?
I think he was being sarcastic to make the point….(…..that “I was just following orders/taking a job” is a shit excuse.)
See, it’s that kind of toxic garbage that makes you human…garbage. I strongly recommend you self-immolate…yourself…ass.
LOL!You were triggered by what, exactly, in my comment which was pointing out an OBVIOUS fact about the original comment that everyone one else seemed to get but you?Could you point it out for us?Actually, no wait…..never mind.Continue being triggered like a pathetic baby and making a gigantic fool of yourself.It fits you much better.Dumbass.
dumbfuckass.
Cry some more.And louder, this time.I don’t think they heard you yet in BitchAssFuckistan.
I will.But you’ll have nothing to do with it.Party on, Gimp.
“it was a job” doesn’t give him some magic pass from accountability. lol
Charging him with a wrong relies on the fundamental assumption that he could have possibly been able to put on a performance good enough to change someone’s mind about abortion in a movie that no one will ever see.Not saying dragging him is the wrong thing to do, but it does seem like a phenomenal waste of energy and bandwidth.
I absolutely agree with you that it’s a waste of time and energy. I just object to the basic premise that because someone isn’t “in charge” they get a pass on being involved in something shitty.
Where exactly do you work? Post it here for analysis or STFU.
I’m not mad at Jamie Kennedy for appearing in a really dumb movie that changed exactly zero opinions on abortion
The Kinja Overlords say you have to.
just seems like someone was happy to get a job and didn’t want to ask too many questions.
foolish but it’s not like he has much standing and once you’ve done Son of Mask most things are gonna look good.
Wow an actor took an acting job? Crazy, now let’s interview and criticize someone for taking a job on amazon or apple
Name one anti-abortion play, movie, spec script, flipbook, comic, papyrus, television show or iChing result put out by Amazon or Apple.
Maybe they haven’t, I don’t know. (They certainly carry such products in their stores, though.) Do they ritually abuse their workers on the lower end of the chain, often to exhaustion and occasionally literally to death, while the upper management decides this is fine as long as the line on the chart keeps going up? Absolutely.
You’re choosing to care about one issue and not others.
>> You’re choosing to care about one issue and not others.How can you tell based on that one single comment that I’m some sort of Apple wageslave? You can’t. But the projection was cute.Grow up.
He looks like he could make a decent living as a Kevin Pollock impersonator.
Bloody hell, Jamie Kennedy’s got old…. (reads caption)…. jeezuz…….
Is this like a Mulan thing in which it’s not the fact that he took a role in a film that’s bad, it’s the fact that the film in question is an abhorrent mess which is bad?
Are people really trying to hold Jamie Kennedy’s feet to the fire for this shit? He has probably crapped out some movies and stand up over the years and nobody gave a shit, but be in an anti abortion movie and he needs to do some explaining to the no existent fans? People are wild.
Could be because Pro-Life and Pro-Choice zealots are fanatical about their positions.
Lol “pro-choice zealots”
There’s nothing worse than some asshole forcing *choice* on you.
I’m sure if anyone would like to make a schlocky pro-choice film or really any sort of political or religious propaganda then Jamie Kennedy is down as long as they’re paying scale, don’t expect great acting and realize that he won’t know what it’s about.
I apologize if I’ve pissed people off.
For a person who recites words for a living, you’d think he’d know how to find and perform an actual apology.
Isn’t it time for a reboot of the Jamie Kennedy Experiment? Or was this role he chose to be in the soft pitch for it? Never mind…
So now he’s been in a movie featuring Ass Blasters… and also Tremors sequels! Heyooooooooooooo!
“I’m an actor.”I mean … are you?
Yes?
If people don’t want women to need abortions, then what about making contraceptives freely available?
Oh wait, what? Republicans are also pulling low-key moves to make contraceptives harder to obtain too?
Here’s my surprised face.
I last saw this dude in a recent rewatch of the awesome Bowfinger. To have avoided this kind of attention, he could have said he declined this movie and they filmed him without his knowledge going about his life.
Jamie Kennedy, an actor who I mostly remember from the height of his career as “Not Seth Green,” took a job that was at least more professionally rewarding than whatever else he’s being offered and it pays his bills for a few more months. Can’t say I blame the guy.
Jesus assfucking Christ, who gives a shit what Jamie Kennedy does?
I guess he considers it a failed Jamie Kennedy experiment.
I had to read a lot of terrible comments to get to this one 🙂
A woman does not have more right to choose, more than the person growing inside of her. The government can protect that person and tell you what to do with your body. For instance, it is illegal to sell your body for sex. It is illegal to sell your baby. It is illegal to sell your body parts such of livers and kidneys and bone marrow. It is illegal in some states not to get vaccinated. It is illegal to commit suicide. It is illegal to not wear clothes in public. Etc. The only solution is to not get pregnant in the first place. If you are raped or don’t want the baby the government should pay to deliver the baby and take it from you at birth. And in cases were it would be dangerous to the woman’s health the baby should be removed from the woman with her uterus, so she is never in danger again. Abortion is used by whores to lazy to use contraception.
The name Atlas Shrugged actors—whoever they were—should apologize, to Joe Biden, personally!
Alex MacTommy’s second girlfriend on 3rd Rock was in one of them.
No! Not, um, Alyssa?
I just read this as the dude took the role because he has to buy grocery’s and pay the rent. I don’t hold that against him. I do hold Son of the Mask against him though.
Who the fuck is Jamie Kennedy lmao
Has-been/borderline-never-was not picky about film roles: more at 11:00.
I mean, I’m pretty sure the real answer is “the check cleared”. Jamie Kennedy doesn’t exactly seem like he’s in the kind of luxurious position where he can turn down work.
But think about how much more of a reach this dangerous film had with the clout of Jamie Kennedy’s name on the poster.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Not justifying it at all. Just pointing out that there’s probably no more reason at the bottom of this than money.(Though that said, the name “Jamie Kennedy” and the concept of “clout” is indeed a curious mixture.)
I was basically agreeing with you from the other end of things. On the one hand Jamie Kennedy has got to eat. On the other hand, it’s not like his involvement is going to have an impact one way or another.The film sounds moronic, but it’s hard to get worked up over a basement-level celebrity cashing a paycheck.
Yeah, TBH it can be a bit hard to tell when someone is or isn’t reacting with genuine quivering fury about something these days…That said, yeah, ain’t no one’s mind being changed on the abortion debate by the endorsement-even-if-implicit of Jamie Kennedy.
I bet he’s in a better position than the fucking PAs who quit.
“ putting his name and reputation on the line in support of Loeb’s fact-agnostic vision”And this is the day AV Club has gone fucking bonkers. Willing to skewer actors for the jobs they take. What a troubling fucking New Puritanism. Just wait till your own tactics are used on you. Remember the shitty logic you introduced into the world.
“Well, I used to believe in a woman’s right to choose, but then the fourth-male lead in the Scream franchise was in a movie I didn’t see, so now I call my girlfriend OfBraxton”
I really feel like there are about 8-10 actors who have legit choices to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however often they want – Hanks, Clooney, Denzel, Pitt, Julia Roberts, Downey, Jolie, Streep, maybe a few TV guys.
The rest of them take work.
I imagine a very long list of B and C list actors declined the offer of this role if they had to go with Jamie Kennedy. The guys from Jackass probably have more acting chops and Twitter followers than him.
what in the absolute FUCK happened to this guys rap career?
Guys be nice to Jamie Kennedy. He didn’t want to eat cat food again this week. Honestly I’ll take an actor saying “It’s a pay check” over one spouting the propaganda off screen as well
I feel like Michael Caine set the standard for this when he was asked if he ever saw his performance in Jaws: The Revenge, and he replied, “No, but I have seen the house that it built.”
Ryan O’Neal *just* said something similar about the sequel to Love Story and the house in Malibu that it helped build. And it’s really expensive to live and/or build in Malibu. Even whenever that was.
Yup. All the people screeching about “Sharia law” ignore how happy they are to impose their own religious beliefs on others who don’t hold the same beliefs.
A central tenet of capital-E Evangelism is exactly that – imposing your religion on literally everyone by whatever means are attainable, and never stop trying to do it to more people. It doesn’t matter if, say, a country’s constitution explicitly says that there is not and cannot be a state religion, and that there can’t be a religious test for office. Their god is more important and man’s laws don’t matter, except as a vehicle to force that god on everyone, willing or not.They’re effectively the Christian Taliban. Their methods are less overtly violent because the US government (and state and local governments) is more susceptible to control via other methods, but the overlap between Evangelicals and gun nuts implies that it’s not off the table if that changes. You can be damn sure that if they could get away with an Inquisition they’d be all over it.
So, 50yo dude with very few kudos in his back pocket decided moral compass was less important than a paycheck (or simply didn’t grasp what he was doing which looks even worse), and assumed since no one has paid much attention to him up to now, why worry?…and then this happens.
Also: who gives a fuck about Jamie Kennedy? Find someone in an actual seat of authority who supports shit pro-life legislation and target THEM.
I’m not defending the guy but, just for the sale of argument, I’m gonna play a bit of the ol Devil’s Advocate.
He says it right there, straight up, he was offered the part. He didn’t audition, they came to him. He didn’t have to go in and read with a casting director’s assistant, and read again with the actual casting director, and read again with the CD and Director in the room, then do a chemistry test with other actors, etc., etc…all the normal shit actors have to do that’s just part of the process. We can count on one hand how many people are banging down Jamie Kennedy’s door (if you take that hand, bend the fingers, and make a circle…it’s zero, if that wasn’t clear). So he got an offer, and apparently the money was good enough, so he took it. When you’re a working actor, especially one as white-hot and in-demand as Jamie Kennedy in 2020/2021, you take whatever you can get because it might be a while before you can book anything else.
Part two, where I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He took the part because he almost certainly had no idea that it actually was not-so-thinly-veiled-propaganda. A lot of times, actors don’t get a whole script, they get their sides that just cover their scenes, and that’s literally all they know of the film until they see the finished product. Hell, it’s entirely possible he STILL hasn’t actually seen it.
Now, obviously a mass exodus of cast and crew when they figured out what the thing actually was should have been a massive red flag…but I’ll point back to the part earlier where, sometimes, you have take the work you can get. Again, he essentially of says as much with the whole “my agent made me do it”. I’m sure the agent did, because if an actor isn’t getting paid, then the agent isn’t getting paid, and if the agent isn’t getting paid for long enough then that actor will find themselves without representation.
Again, none of this is a defense, but people wonder “how” and this could be a possible explanation on that how.
Also, and of course I haven’t seen it, but it sounds like he’s playing the bad guy?
To be honest, I got offered the role. YEP.“Guys, I’m Jamie fucking Kennedy. And I’m saying that in the OPPPOSITE sense: do I *LOOK* like a dude who can turn down work?”
I don’t really begrudge any actors for taking controversial jobs primarily or exclusively for the money, but I also feel obligated to point out to Jamie that you’re Jamie Kennedy—referring to yourself as “an actor” is requiring the word “actor” to do a LOT of heavy lifting. You could have just said “I’m Jamie Kennedy, it was either this or a $400 ‘meet and greet’ at some local bowling alley.”
Laaaaaame.
“I needed the money. Point of fact, I’m hoping it becomes a franchise.”
It’s funny because Jamie Kennedy tricked a bunch of comedians to star in his documentary Heckler under the guise that it was about experiences with hecklers instead of Jamie Kennedy being upset that internet movie critics didn’t like “Son of the Mask”.
I AM SO MAD ABOUT THIS!!!
A man’s gotta eat.
I’m glad he just admitted they were nice to him and he needed a paycheck, it’s not like anyone’s mind will be changed by the movie anyway.
Dude clearly just wanted a paycheck. The ‘Scream/Malibu’s Most Wanted’ days are long past.
Being a centrist doesn’t exempt you from cultures current climate. In fact, it puts you on the wrong side of history.
It’s got Joey Lawrence and Stacey Dash in it. And they came calling for Jamie Kennedy. He was probably expecting little of nobody would even hear about this movie and he could just quietly cash the check.
“Jamie, you don’t have to be in a stridently right-wing, intellectually dishonest anti-abortion movie just because the opportunity came along.”“You know, AV Club, in some ways, you and I are very different people.”
Meanwhile, men are killing millions of Gawds little angels every day and putting them in fake vulvas, tissues, socks and even pies. Someone should do something about all this killing. Ban Wankin’! It kills pretend children!
I just…don’t understand why people capitalize the “V.” when they know that’s wrong or, worse, have the “V” with no period after. Like…even “vs.” is not capitalized, why do people capitalize “V.”?
Now grill the Makeup Department Head, Sound Mixer, Best Boy, and Script Supervisor.
I don’t agree with the moral of the picture and am pretty staunchly of the opinion that abortion rights are necessary.
But I can’t hate on Jamie Kennedy for this. Yeah, dude has a net worth of 10 million. Which is probably wrapped up in property and goods, and not in his bank account. A man needs to eat, and his IMdb page doesn’t show him rolling in regular work in the last decade. And his biggest claim to fame was being the genre savvy nerd in a movie franchise from twenty-five years ago.That, and he’s this jokey non-serious actor. He’s the perpetual sidekick and comic relief. Getting a major role in a drama that lets him be a serious actor was probably really appealing. So he gets this dream role as a real actor that gives him a much needed payday. And he has to choose between that and (potentially) his morals.
In fairness, a lot of D listers and celebrities who’ve seen better days rank up credits and paychecks through VOD and religious movies. It’s a easy way to have constant work. In a odd way, I guess I’m defending Jaimie Kennedy. It’s been a long time since the Jamie Kennedy Experiment and Hollywood giving him vehicles to see if he could be a profitable movie star when he was younger. In a Hollywood “work is work” kinda way, it’s the nature of the beast. Maybe he should of just said what I just said? I’m not George Clooney. I’m not winning a Oscar any time soon. I have to pay the bills.
My take is that the guy has done little of note since Scream and has a mortgage
At least I won’t get him mixed up with Ashton Kutcher anymore.
I really wanted to make a “LOL he looks like such and such” comment, but really, he just looks terrible. Like, he wouldn’t turn down being the last part of a human centipede if it paid well. That kind of terrible.
They are actors, its a movie, nothing is real, everyone needs to get a fucking life. Last time I checked they made a movie a year ago that had Hitler in it as an imaginary character. Moving on.
Hollywood’s not exactly knocking on Jamie Kennedy’s door and he needs to earn a living. And he obviously doesn’t share the fiery moral conviction of William Hughes. So he took what he saw as a good role that pays the bills. In a movie that’s probably not going to convince anyone not already drinking the Kool-Aid. So, whatever.