Sunday, November 10, 2013

No more blacklists

This weekend I saw Ender's Game in a theater. I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't heard so many shallow protesters rallying against it.

The skinny is the book is based on a novel written by Orson Scott Card, who is an opponent of gay marriage. While that element makes no appearance in his work, lefties have been leading unsuccessful boycotts of anything vaguely related to him for years.

Which makes simply watching this movie a political act.

While I've been a firm defender of gay marriage for more than a decade, I am opposed to blacklisting art because of the personal beliefs of the creator, such as the ban on Wagner's music in Israel.

Now personally I won't watch a Roman Polanski film or listen to a Chris Brown song. I thought the University of Southern Maine was correct to pull an art show painted by a cop killer. So what's the difference? For one, those are actual illegal actions committed by people, not ideas. At this time, about 40 percent of Americans are opposed to gay marriage and while I reject their reasoning, I find it absurd to treat each and every one of them as history's greatest monster.

Meanwhile, as much as I loathe Marxism, I've never boycotted a movie because an actor in it supports socialism. If I did, I'd have very few movies I could see.

These boycotts of Card's work are a disproportionate response to a common view that is on it's way out. It is troubling that there is more organized opposition to card's film than there is to the ongoing work of an escaped child rapist.

These protests both drew my attention towards the Ender's Game movie and made it into a sort of forbidden fruit. I doubt I would have bothered to see it otherwise.

4 comments:

  1. I think people are boycotting it because he will use the money to financially support anti-gay efforts.

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  2. Did you like the movie? Had you read the book?

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  3. Jake, he won't receive a piece of ticket sales, as he already received a flat fee for movie rights a decade ago. The only gain he makes is in book sales, and these protests are drawing attention to his work and may be increasing book sales

    Chris, I thought it was decent. I have not read the books so I didn't know what to expect. The only thing I knew about the plot was there would be no gay marriage in it.

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  4. http://morepoliticalrants.blogspot.com/2013/08/marxism-basic-guide-for-gullible_24.html

    Go to this link if you want THE best, most original, and entertaining critique of Marxism, liberalism, and what kind of westerners are drawn to left-wing ideology and why. From the perspective of a man who grew up in a communist dictatorship.

    ReplyDelete