FILMS THAT WILL NEVER WIN ACADEMY AWARDS
By Bruce Walker
Canada Free Press
March 1 2009
The Academy Awards have come and gone. As with so much in life, it is
not the films which were nominated or the awards which were given that
mattered. Our lives today are filled with gold stars and certificates
of achievement. What strikes me each year when the American Film
Institute cranks out the "best" that Hollywood can produce is just how
little that is important ever winds up becoming cinema. What are the
films which should have been made and which never were? Here are my
"nominations."
Ghosts of Armenia
We are fast approaching the centennial of the first holocaust of
the Twentieth Century. The Great Hunger in Ukraine under Stalin,
the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese, the Shoah by the Nazis, the
Tibetan genocide by the Chinese – – all these had firm roots in the
systematic murder of millions of Armenians, and the murder of millions
of Christian Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire in the preceding
decades. What is more timely than this chilling subject? Ah, but what
would is more politically incorrect!
Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Mike Nifong
The trial of the Duke Lacrosse Team represents the quintessence of
political correctness descending into its natural malignancy.
Professors who determined guilt before evidence. Prosecutors who
used the law to lynch the innocent. Journalists who salivated at the
"right story," without worrying about the truth. In our day, Kafka’s
dreaded projection of justice as recorded in The Trial becomes our
real world. Yet no social conscience or independent mind in Hollywood
found a story there. How odd! Well, no, not odd at all.
Traitors and Liars
Since Allan Weinstein wrote his book Perjury three decades ago,
the evidence that Soviet spies had, indeed, infiltrated American
institutions and helped odious monsters like Stalin has grown year by
year into a vast corpus of independently corroborating facts. A few
months ago, Morton Sobell, relative of the Rosenbergs, after decades
of denial, casually confessed that, yes, he was a Soviet spy. Books
describing the obvious guilt of Judith Coplon have been published by
respectable publishers. Scholars still are rooting through archives
of old Soviet data and the result is consistently in inculpating more
suspected Americans rather than prove the innocent of those victims of
"Witch Hunts."
Hollywood has made many films demonizing the presumed excesses of
rabid anti-communists, but nothing at all about the very real guilt of
American traitors, who not only helped Stalin but also helped, for a
time, Hitler. The real story is not just the Soviet spies in America,
but the straight-faced denial of espionage and treason while their
liberal friends defended them. The people involved are dead, but the
image in the minds of Americans is still very much alive. If only some
courageous Hollywood…or, did I write "courageous"? Well, never mind.
Mein Kampus
The totalitarianism on modern college campuses has passed the absurd
into the hideous. Conservative speakers are routinely driven from
speaking engagements, often with the tacit complicity of college
administrators. Professors insist on college "studies" which are often
no more than demands that students write what academic Stalinists
want written. Is the imposition of thought control and speech codes
on our thousands of college campuses a socially significant topic? Is
the indoctrination of millions of Americans worth discussing? Is the
dumbing down and brainwashing of a generation of our young people
important? Awww…who cares? (No one in Hollywood.)
Misogyny, Thy Name is Islam
Wife beheading? Honor murders of daughters. Stoning of young
women. Imprisonment of rape victims…for the crime of being
raped. Female circumcision of young girls. If Jews or Christians did
this as a matter of religious belief, it would be fodder for a whole
television program, three or four films, a few celebrity concerts,
and certainly an academy award nomination or two. But – – alas! – –
the women are not being oppressed by the right sort of oppressors. In
fairness, there are few films about the suttee in India, foot-binding
in China, or the Siddhartha’s attitude toward women. Even those
cultures were small fry when it comes to real debasement of women,
which is why NOW pickets the embassies of the worst offending Islamic
nations every day – or they plan too very, very soon.
The American Film Institute, the Academy Awards, "Hollywood" (or the
nebulous film industry) sees itself as controversial, cutting edge,
and sophisticated. I do not mind the loony attacks on conservatives as
much as I am sickened by the utter cravenness, the juvenile conformity,
the sophomoric "seriousness," the eye candy in place of thought,
and blandness in place of brilliance.
Once an Academy Award meant something. Now what does it mean? It is the
badge of banality, the certificate of conventionality, the emblem of
ennui. If someone brave and clever made a great and important film,
perhaps there would be a reason to watch. But decades ago the film
industry banished significance and abandoned greatness. I never, ever,
expect it to make good films again, and I never, ever, expect to see
the Academy Awards to honor what should be honored again.