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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / You’re in the wrong neighborhood, pal

You’re in the wrong neighborhood, pal

by Tim F|  March 9, 20158:43 pm| 37 Comments

This post is in: Popular Culture, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing

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Okay, you all know that I admire like tolerate Dreher, most of the time, admittedly in large part because his pundit niche, unironic devout Catholics on the culture beat, otherwise ranges from Ross Douthat to Bill Donohue. And I mean in all sincerity that sometimes he has interesting things to say. Someone has to gently persuade conservatives of things that a year-old Dachshund should understand. I have lost many an hour without much to show for it, and if he makes even a small dent then he is doing the lord’s work.

But dude, if you write a five thousand word post about a Euro-drama and this is your nugget point, I mean, jesus christ.

You might be thinking: this sounds exactly like the kind of movie Rod would find interesting. What’s the problem? The problem is that there is no real redemption for Jep.

Watch a few European movies and you will quickly see they do things different over there. American audiences expect a certain arc from inner crisis to redemption in every. single. goddamn. film. from romantic comedy to epic horror. That stereotyped story structure strikes most art consumers across the pond as juvenile and a bit trite. In a European movie Ripley throws the cat to buy herself a few seconds and then gets caught anyway, because that alien is an apocalyptic Lovecraftian horror and you don’t beat those. I promise that even sincere European Catholics enjoy films with more moral depth than a Saturday morning cartoon. You don’t have to agree with European standards to review a movie, but it helps to at least acknowledge them.

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Reader Interactions

37Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    March 9, 2015 at 8:45 pm

    What does this have to do with Hillary?

  2. 2.

    muddy

    March 9, 2015 at 8:49 pm

    And knowing is half the battle.

  3. 3.

    ThresherK

    March 9, 2015 at 8:52 pm

    “In a European movie”?

    All I can imagine is Milhouse van Houten, nearly in tears, saying “When are they going to get to the dinner party?”

  4. 4.

    Ruckus

    March 9, 2015 at 8:53 pm

    Now I know why I don’t appreciate most Hollywood movies.

  5. 5.

    Chris

    March 9, 2015 at 8:54 pm

    American audiences expect a certain arc from inner crisis to redemption in every. single. goddamn. film. from romantic comedy to epic horror.

    And if the redemption moment IS awesome, Lucas will go back and ruin it with a “NOOOOOOO!!!!” copy-pasted from ROTS.

  6. 6.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    March 9, 2015 at 8:55 pm

    The summaries I’ve seen make it sound as though it shares some themes with one of my favorite Hollywood movies, “Letter From An Unknown Woman,” where the hero “redeems” himself at the end by setting himself up to be killed in a duel he was originally planning to avoid. It is, of course, a film made by a European refugee director (Max Ophuls), not an American one.

  7. 7.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    March 9, 2015 at 8:59 pm

    Also, too, I should probably get back to writing my Pre-Code Hollywood blog one of these days so I can keep pointing out that our insistence on redemption in American movies is a hangover from decades of censorship that dictated such things. One of these days …

  8. 8.

    Mike J

    March 9, 2015 at 9:02 pm

    Wow. Gravity Falls just gets better and better. Maybe the best show on TV.

  9. 9.

    ThresherK

    March 9, 2015 at 9:09 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Please do so. I can’t reeducate every whippersnapper on Jeanette MacDonald’s Lubitsch-era sex appeal all by myself.

  10. 10.

    DougJ

    March 9, 2015 at 9:10 pm

    Dreher’s an idiot. Why do you waste your time?

  11. 11.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    March 9, 2015 at 9:11 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): You had a blog before there was code? How is that not the real story here!?

    Oh code, right, got it. A blog about pre-code Hollywood, not a pre-code…. right.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    March 9, 2015 at 9:12 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): But is it truly a hangover from censorship or a logical corollary arising from our ExceptionalismTM?

  13. 13.

    Pogonip

    March 9, 2015 at 9:14 pm

    @Baud: And where are the puppies?

    And where is the mustard?

  14. 14.

    Mike J

    March 9, 2015 at 9:15 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    is a hangover from decades of censorship that dictated such things. One of these days …

    It reminds me of the kerfuffle over Websters Third Edition dictionary. Many Americans believe dictionaries are prescriptive, dictating what is proper and improper English, rather than descriptive, showing English as she is spoke. Check out The Story of Ain’t.

    In the early 90s we had to hear about how horrible rap was because it described ghetto life without making any moral judgement. Movies, books, music, it happens everywhere in the US.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    March 9, 2015 at 9:16 pm

    @Pogonip:

    Good questions. Where indeed?

  16. 16.

    divF

    March 9, 2015 at 9:18 pm

    Being on the East Coast for a few days, I now have a better understanding of the quotidian ebb and flow of this blog. Mid-evening (all times Eastern) we get a couple of think pieces from our esteemed front-pagers, along with the occasional curmudgeonly screed from our host. Later, AL puts things to bed with a late-night thread, which is mainly a forum for loose associations and pet pix from commenters in the Western hinterlands plus the odd insomniac from New England or Florida.

  17. 17.

    Tim F.

    March 9, 2015 at 9:24 pm

    @DougJ: To be fair, he mostly gave me an excuse to talk about something that I find interesting anyway. And the fact that I actually like AmCon, usually quite a lot, makes it worse when they crap out a turkey.

    Then again I mostly skip grampa Pat (seriously, try to get more than six lines into his thing on the DOJ Ferguson report) so I can probably memory hole Dreher as well.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    March 9, 2015 at 9:25 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    You can’t really separate the two, because conservatives are pining for a world that literally did not exist anywhere but on the silver screen, and that world was created through strict censorship that started at the story phase and went all the way through to what publicity shots were allowed to be made public. The “exceptionalism” they claim to know about was a product of the censors.

  19. 19.

    raven

    March 9, 2015 at 9:31 pm

    yuk

  20. 20.

    srv

    March 9, 2015 at 9:32 pm

    @Tim F.: The men who bleat womyn! and the men who love them.

  21. 21.

    Redshift

    March 9, 2015 at 9:32 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Wow. That really is a fascinating thought.

  22. 22.

    JDM

    March 9, 2015 at 9:42 pm

    I guess Dreher liked the second version of The Vanishing better than the first, and Point of No Return better than La Femme Nikita.

  23. 23.

    Taylor

    March 9, 2015 at 9:42 pm

    Interesting. Neither Breaking Bad nor Boardwalk Empire ended with redemption for their central protagonists. One was content to be damned at the end, the other had his bad life choices blow up in his face at the end.

    Perhaps, at least in some places, American TV drama has grown up.

  24. 24.

    Neddy Merrill

    March 9, 2015 at 9:45 pm

    RD is a serial religionist. He’s no longer Catholic. Switched teams to Eastern Orthodox, his third choice, back when Catholic child rape was in all the papers.

  25. 25.

    Corner Stone

    March 9, 2015 at 9:47 pm

    @Mike J: I completely freaking agree with you.
    “It’s worth less than nothing, my boy!”

  26. 26.

    Calouste

    March 9, 2015 at 9:51 pm

    I’ve seen La Grande Bellaza three times, and it is a gorgeous movie. Beautiful cinematography, amazing shots of Rome, strong dialogue, some wicked characters and scenes. And yes, it doesn’t have a story with a beginning and an end and that is one of its attractions. You can watch it and you don’t know where its going to take you and it’s obvious from very early on that you don’t know where it’s going to take you. Things happen, and they don’t happen for a reason or to advance a story line, they just happen.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    March 9, 2015 at 10:09 pm

    @Taylor:

    But “Breaking Bad” had to end with an episode where Walt wrapped up loose ends, got revenge on his enemies, and died surrounded by his true love, tanks of crystal meth. He still won everything that mattered to HIM, which is what made it a very American ending. He got the redemption that he wanted.

  28. 28.

    Irony Abounds

    March 9, 2015 at 10:23 pm

    Guess it depends on what you are looking for in entertainment. I kinda like seeing villains get their comeuppance, the likeable couple end up happily ever after, and the mean, amoral bastard see the light in the end (hence, The Christmas Carol being one of my all time favorite stories). If I want to see assholes prevail, senseless killing without any hope of redemption in the end, and loving couples going down in flames, I can get plenty of examples galore in real life (e.g., Republicans winning elections, wars in the Middle East, and any number of marriages with which I am familiar, including my parents). Why on Earth would I want to subject myself to that for entertainment? I’m far too cynical as it is, if I don’t maintain at least a sliver of naivete or hope for the happy ending, I’d go on a bender every damn day.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    March 9, 2015 at 10:43 pm

    @Irony Abounds:

    It does tend to annoy me that a lot of people assume that a downer ending is automatically the most realistic one, and any kind of healing or resolution at the end of a story is a cop-out. They’re mistaking cheap cynicism for realism.

  30. 30.

    Bobby B.

    March 9, 2015 at 10:52 pm

    Then you have blogger James Lileks, who has found a way to politicize movies by condemning downer films as a product of the 1970s and therefore by Evil Hippies (“the guys who beat me up at the playground”) Why can’t we all be more like WWII propaganda posters and WIN!

  31. 31.

    Ken

    March 9, 2015 at 11:32 pm

    I’m not sure American audiences expect a “certain arc”, but most screenwriters follow the “Save the Cat Beatsheet”.

  32. 32.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 10, 2015 at 12:56 am

    @Bobby B.: Lileks probably sat through Starship Troopers and had no idea that it was satire.

  33. 33.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 10, 2015 at 1:17 am

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Pretty much the same sort of thing the Germans had in popular film in the 30’s and 40’s.

    Gosh, isn’t that an amazing coincidence!

  34. 34.

    waspuppet

    March 10, 2015 at 1:34 am

    American audiences expect a certain arc from inner crisis to redemption in every. single. goddamn. film. from romantic comedy to epic horror.

    The bigtime nonprofit theatre is worse. “I don’t see any redemption here,” “What’s the moral?” and “What’s the takeaway?” are criticisms/excuses that my wife and I have both actually gotten from theatres who refused to do our plays. It’s just like Hollywood, only worse because at least Hollywood is following rules that have been proven to make everyone involved millions of dollars; whereas, after the artistic director, who is making about $200K, tells his assistant to send the form letter rejecting you and your play because you’re not following his inerrant, Hollywood-based sense of what his audience wants, he then:

    1) emails the playwright whose play (which he spent five years writing) he IS doing to say the check for, like, $500 is in the mail;

    2) tells an assistant to finish up the grant application asking for more money to support his company’s commitment to daring, rule-breaking theatre;

    3) sets another assistant to work on the fundraising letter because the theatre is out of money;

    4) sets a third assistant to the task of adding you and the playwright whose work he IS doing to the mailing list so you can both can receive the fundraising letter.

    Yes, I’m bitter; hell, I’ve barely gotten started.

  35. 35.

    Paul Harrington

    March 10, 2015 at 4:14 am

    He’s updated his post AFTER he decided to read the book. Now, I watch movies without reading the books they’re based on all the time. And I like them or I don’t. But I would never write a ‘think piece’ about them without the effort. I can’t even conceive of something so lazy and stupid. But once again, Dreher’s got me beat.

  36. 36.

    Visceral

    March 10, 2015 at 1:28 pm

    @Mike J:

    In the early 90s we had to hear about how horrible rap was because it described ghetto life without making any moral judgement. Movies, books, music, it happens everywhere in the US.

    The argument is that anything that’s not explicitly against something is implicitly for it.

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    They’re mistaking cheap cynicism for realism.

    Because not all shallow spectacles need to be positive. We can get just as much of an emotional climax off of blood and tears.

  37. 37.

    boatboy_srq

    March 10, 2015 at 4:30 pm

    @Irony Abounds: A lot depends on what you take away from a story. Wingnuts, for example, see/read A Christmas Carol and reach the end wondering what on earth Scrooge was thinking to be taken in by a bad dream, indigestion and a bunch of takers when Cratchit was getting only what he deserved in the beginning and his nephew was a spendthrift lost cause. They read Dickens (CC included), not as cautionary tale, but as instruction manual.

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