Maddow and Moore

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Comments

[Brandon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Is43K6lrg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/mar/24/awardsandprizes.oscars20035

[Hattie]

Brandon: Great links, which make the point that it really did not take a lot of courage to oppose the Iraq War. It was just not possible to stop it.
And who would ever watch Chicago now, acclaimed in 2003? I thought it was loud, garish and stupid. You mentioned Dances with Wolves. I never saw it, but it was about how a white person saves those of a less fortunate race after learning from them many lessons of life.
Wow. This weather is certainly making me snarkier even than usual! It looks as if the sun is trying to come out, so I'm going to leave my office and see what's happening in the big world.

[Brandon]

Thank you. As Michael Moore said, most of the booing came from the balconies, where the corporate types were sitting.

I think Dances With Wolves, which I've seen only in parts, never in its entirety, was a handsome but bland film. During the first Bush era, there was a cultural mood, described in this article
http://www.oocities.org/davidletterman82/Esquire1991Article.html

(originally from Esquire) as "the New Sincerity" (as opposed to the Old Sincerity of irony and distance). Kevin Costner was the archetypal New Sincerity actor, having broken through with Field of Dreams the year before.

[Rain Trueax]

I like Dances with Wolves but don't recall the white guy saving the Lakota. It was the other way around. What he contributed to them was his belief that the whites were here to stay and they would not be able to share the land. His view was more of an affirmation of what their holy man had already seen. Since Costner's character had been arrested by the military for aiding the 'enemy', his was the life saved. but they all went on the run-- hopefully heading for Canada as the Sioux up there fared better-- for awhile. It did present a bit of an idyllic view of the Lakota life and yet they were shown to have enemy raids and food shortages. I saw it twice in the theater-- rare for me. And I own the DVD but haven't watched it again in years as it is kind of a tough look at life and currently I get all I want of that by reading the papers.

[Hattie]

Rain: We do seem to be besieged by gloom in popular culture these days. I wonder what that means.