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Monday, December 02, 2013 

Oliver Stone attacks superhero movies

The least qualified scribe in Hollywood (okay, I'm sure he's not the only one, but he just made himself a notable name in this case) has taken a Fredric Wertham-ish path:
Whilst criticising modern representations of violence in popular culture, veteran filmmaker Oliver Stone has singled out superheroes, including DC's Batman and Superman, for promoting "fantasy violence."

Clearly not out to win a popularity contest with the bulk of modern audiences, Stone made the remarks side by side with an attack on the recent final episode of widely acclaimed TV show 'Breaking Bad.'

Stone was quoted by Forbes, speaking at a press conference in promotion of his documentary series 'The Untold History of the United States.' While I'll avoid the specifics of what he said about 'Breaking Bad' so as not to print spoilers, Stone complained, "There's too much violence in our movies - and it's all unreal to me."

"It's only in the movies that you find this kind of fantasy violence. And that's infected the American culture; you young people believe all of this s**t! Batman and Superman, you've lost your minds, and you don't even know it! At least respect violence. I'm not saying don't show violence, but show it with authenticity."
Oh sure, like we should buy into the ditherings of a man with a record of horrid leftism, much like Wertham himself was when it came to focusing on comics, if not movies. I became a lot less sympathetic to Wertham after I'd discovered he faked some material, or took other people's work in the psychology field out of context, though as far as I know, Wertham changed in 1973, quite amazingly. If he was as leftist as his naming a clinic after one of Karl Marx's relatives suggests, it's peculiar that some of his harshest critics today happen to come from the left as well, since you'd think they might actually be fine with that. Why can't they come to terms with how their own philosophies influenced Wertham very poorly?

And back to Stone, where does he get off complaining Tinseltown promotes fantasy violence when he wrote/produced/directed at least a few of the same in his past career? I checked on his IMDB record, and he wrote a horror story called The Hand in 1981, and adapted Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian tales in 1982. I'm sure there's at least a few other fantasy movies Stone produced. Does Natural Born Killers count?

There are a lot of legitimate arguments that can be made against violence in pop culture, but Stone is not somebody who's qualified to make them. I'm guessing he's jealous of all the money the movies are making, while his influence must be fading on the silver screen. In that case, it's not sincerity driving Stone, but resentment of moneymaking vehicles that take all the cash away from his movies, some of which didn't deserve to make any money to begin with. A real shame moviedom is saddled with lowly screwballs like him.

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Stone is a left-wing hack and considering the level of violence in his movies, such as Natural Born Killers, he is not qualified to make that argument. I think Tarantino (whose movies are even more violent than Stone's) also whined about the level of violence in superhero movies.

Stone hasn't had a successful movie in years (I think his last movie was a box office disaster), so you're probably correct in saying that he's jealous of the money superhero movies are making.

Plus there's the fact that he's another Hollywood moonbat who sucks up to left-wing Third World Dictators (Castro, Chavez) while denigrating the country that made him famous. He's an idiot.

It may be significant that the elitist, Pecksniffian "progressives" only worry about violence in media that are commonly enjoyed by ordinary, middle class people (movies, TV, comics). You never hear anyone express worry about the violence in grand opera or Shakespeare's plays. The primary audience for those is limousine liberals, who see themselves as intellectual and incorruptible.

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