“Come on, Mick, it’s network propaganda. We wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t helped us.” – The Running Man
Come to mention it, I ordered a book called “How to Scam People Online” a month ago and it still hasn’t shown up.
The monthly movie retrospective that I do the last week of the month has been a fairly popular part of the blog and has really given me some time to think about the content of the movies that we’ve seen in the past, and what it really means.
Before the 1970s, sequels weren’t the norm. Gradually sequels became popular. A large part of that is failure – the sequels usually made money, though in almost every case less money than the original. But they would make money, even if they were crappy.
Making sequels lowered the perceived risk a studio was taking.
The other factor in play is that the revenue streams changed. How many Chinese people in Mao’s China lined up to see Jaws? None. Zero. I’d imagine the same was true of Star Wars. Revenues from China in the 1970s. From what mud hut theater? Paid in what? Chickens?
Now, the goal is to create a product for the world stage. and to go through the Marvel Cinematic Universe™ you could spend sixty or more hours on the thirty-five MCU® movies alone, even skipping their television spinoffs. But the audience was different. Avengers: Infinity Wars made $680 million in the United States and the 51st state, Canada, but made nearly $1.4 billion overseas. Contrast that with Star Wars, where about 70% of the revenue came from the 51 United States.
I guess that was a wookie mistake.
Some movies are utter failures in the United States but achieve profitability only when international revenues are included. The very odd Matt Damon movie The Great Wall (2017) made only $45 million of its $289 million total in the United States, but made $171 million in China, who now had movie theaters and no longer paid in chickens.
Movies have changed, dramatically, because they’re no longer made just for American audiences. Sequels help here, because they allow foreign people to see the same characters again and again. So, movies have changed because the audience has changed. And, if you’ll note, the international audience is almost always much more leftist (though not necessarily GloboLeft) than Americans.
Making movies for foreign audiences automatically moves them into a more socialist frame since foreigners are more socialist.
The one time they selected me for jury duty they gave us snacks. Trial mix.
But subversion in the American cinema goes way back, because the GloboLeftElite have had their fingers in propaganda forever. One example is 1957’s 12 Angry Men, starring GloboLeftist subversive Henry Fonda.
I had never seen 12 Angry Men, so when it showed up on my “Up Next For You” list on the television while writing. By the time I was done, I was amazingly angry. 12 Angry Men was subversive, highlighting how awful Americans were casting us as stereotypes filled with bias, prejudice, or disinterest. Keep in mind this was made at the time that McCarthy (who was right, by the way) was being lampooned for being biased and prejudiced against communists. The disinterested were an indictment of capitalism.
This was a movie where the circumstances were so contrived in order to play on emotion, not facts. How bad is this movie? During the movie, Henry Fonda’s character absolutely breaks the law by introducing new evidence into the jury room. This is illegal, precisely because it now takes the process of introducing evidence into open court for all to see and puts it behind closed doors. Sounds like everything that GloboLeftElites love.
When I watched it, I got pretty angry, and wanted to see if anyone else had the same reaction. Here’s Proper Horrorshow with a discussion about just what I saw:
To be clear, if I watched 12 Angry Men 20 years ago, I probably would have missed the anti-Americanism that the movie is drenched in. But after years of having woke slammed into my face? My antenna were up, and I couldn’t have missed it.
The bad part of German navigation systems is that whenever you want to go to France, you have to go through Belgium.
Blazing Saddles was similarly subversive. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a hoot the half-dozen times I’ve watched it, but it is at its core a GloboLeftist exercise. One of my friends recently said, “They couldn’t make this movie today.”
My response was rather pointed, “Why not? Exactly what part of the movie would reflect a value that the people who run Hollywood wouldn’t love? Is it the normalization of gays? Is it the race-swapping of the sheriff? Is it the interracial romance? Is it the “make fun of white guys as much as you want, but don’t mock a single minority”? Was it shooting a hole in a Bible? ”
No. It’s racial slurs. But those racial slurs were used to make . . . a white guy look racist, so even those might make the cut.
Please, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have such a stick up my backside as to be unable to laugh at jokes aimed at me, especially funny jokes. But I recognize it. Turn the sheriff white and everyone else be black. Would the jokes about all the black townsfolk being stupid still be funny?
Now that is a movie one couldn’t make today.
What font is on Wyatt Earp’s tombstone? Sans Sheriff.
The last one I’ll bring up for now is Pleasantville. This 1998 movie set the stage for the Woke revolution and is a ideal bookend to the vile 12 Angry Men.
I really hate this movie. It is the worst sort of subversion. The plot is that 1990s kids (Brother and Sister) get sucked into a Leave it to Beaver-type television show set in the 1950s. Their lives are in black and white. Literally. That’s not the only thing that gets sucked, since after Sister has sex with a guy, instead of being in black and white, he goes into color. When Sister tells a high school girl how to pleasure herself, she goes into color. A malt shop owner paints a nude on the window of his malt shop.
The result?
Color.
The message is clear. Living in a society like the 1950s where people practiced restraint is so boring. Live your life. Remember, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” is from Aleister Crowley’s, not the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
The Mrs. asked me if she had any bad habits, but then had the nerve to get offended by the PowerPoint® presentation.
Pleasantville is anything but. Obviously, critics loved it. Thankfully, audiences hated it, turning Pleasantville into a big failure.
Pleasantville failed because it was too big of an ask to audiences in 1998. It asked them to fully give in to whatever deviant thought they had in the moment and, in fact, to embrace that deviance. Be proud of that deviance.
Hmm. Proud. Pride month. Got it.
In 2025? It’s not a challenge at all to find subversion in almost any movie. The rot has come more to the top, and it has killed the industry, since no one wants the crap anymore and people are done with watching the 37th Marvel™ Cinematic Universe© movie.
Some might say that entertainment is downstream from culture, but how much, really, of our culture is driven by propaganda as entertainment?
A current version of 12 Angry Men that came and went from the theatres with little fanfare is Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2. The “little fanfare” part is significant. Warner Brothers put zero effort into publicizing or marketing this film and didn’t even do a wide release on it. I had to pay $5 or so to watch it via streaming TV and thought it was pretty good. Why was I unable to see it in my local theatre? Maybe the headline of a review I just now saw on line explains it: “Juror #2: A Right-Leaning Conservative Message in a Plain, Stark Narrative”. The “right leaning conservative message” of the movie is basically the importance of personal integrity and responsibility – pretty much the basic theme of every single movie involving Clint Eastwood as an actor or director. And not the theme of pretty much every left-wing movie ever released. I would post a link to this review, but it is not very insightful and pretty much spoils the suspense of the movie in the first couple of sentences. Probably deliberately.
So yeah, movies are propaganda and the ones that are not pushed are as significant as the ones that are.
Of course, for a film like Juror #2 to make money, there’s gotta be enough (right-wing) ticket payers out there to cough up the film’s $32 million cost in exchange for seeing a straightforward adult morality play. Apparently there’s not. The film was released in only 32 theatres nationwide and pulled after 2 weeks. So it’s a chicken-and-egg kind of dynamic at play, too.
Anyway, I recommend Juror #2. I would post the Youtube copy of its preview, but after viewing it I think it spoils the suspense of the movie, too. If you watch it, go in with as little prior input as you can.
Gotcha, I’ll give it a look!
I’m glad to see someone else taking swings at Blazing Saddles. I’ve grown really tired of hearing people on the right talk about how great it is and based. A brilliant black guy and a courageous Jew selflessly save a town of stupid bigoted white people who hate for no reason. Yes, so based.
Now, I agree it couldn’t be made today because at the time, they still had a little more art and subtlety. But not because the message is no longer acceptable.
Silence of the Lambs? That couldn’t be made today. A tranny is a dangerous lunatic. Way too close to reality.
Yeah, I never could finish Blazing Saddles as it just wasn’t that funny. Mel Brooks was a one trick pony in that his humor was entirely based on racial stereotypes. Take that away and he was just that annoying uncle that no one wanted to sit next to at Thanksgiving.
Sadly, that style of humor became the norm starting in the 90’s as we got inundated with talentless hacks like Amy Schumer and Chelsea Handler who only knew extreme/perverse sexual humor, or others like Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah who can only get laughs by telling extremely cringeworthy and biased political jokes. Sadly these people would never go away, as even if their show was cancelled, they’d get a new one a year later (just shows how bad the nepotism issue had gotten).
Amy Schumer even got a short lived cooking show with her new husband because everyone wants to see a disgusting sexual pervert show us how to cook a pot roast.
Schumer? Schumer? Now who could she be related to?
Word. Actually, it started on TV in the 1970’s with the leftist (((Norman Lear))). When ALL IN THE FAMILY was introduced, the small doses of “white men bad” kept hammering away at the clueless psyches of the American Sheeple, Normies, Cucks, and Mall Zombies. Hollywood has been full of Parlor Pinks, Fellow Travelers, and Useful Idiots for the cause of International Communism since the early 1930’s. Cecil B. DeMille saw it and spoke out against it, when the German Jew Marxist filmmakers started infiltrating their ranks. That clueless drunk John Ford and other flag-wavers forced him to shut up.
When Joe McCarthy took them on, he was vilified and slandered, along with Ronald Reagan who was SAG president at the time. But the Venona Papers proved them both right. Like him or not, Richard Nixon was the victim of an unrelenting smear campaign after he exposed Helen G. Douglas (leftist actor Melvyn Douglas’s wife), Alger Hiss, and other Communist infiltrators in the State Department. The founder of Communism, Karl Marx, was a satanist. And we all know Satan never sleeps. Thomas Jefferson was right. We must remain eternally vigilant if we are to protect our liberties. Bleib ubrig. – DTW.
Skillfully made, but Woke.
The Mrs and I cut the cable about time ICarly started manifesting increased poor behavior in our two youngest daughters. Not completely, but we skinned it way, way back.
Come forward a few years and we go all reminiscent and start to watch some shows we enjoyed as kids in the 70s and 80s, and we couldn’t do it. Your comment about having the antenna up is definitely true, but I found I was getting irritated at the laugh tracks. It was like someone constantly nudging me. There were laugh tracks in shows that I didn’t even remember having them, too.
Rambling path to conclusion: they’ve been leading us by the nose for decades. Break free my friends.
LFM-
Agreed on TV, really, from 1970 onward. As Pat Buttram (Mr Haney) noted, “In 1970(71?) CBS cancelled every show with a tree in it.” Even James West, the #3 Nielsen at that time. What’d we get?
Archie Bunker, George Jefferson, et al. Whitey dumb racist, Blackie smart urbanite. That homely, lower middle class chick raising her daughters in Indy with sage advice from an 80 IQ janitor. Rinse & repeat, ad nauseum.
Jim Rockford, the Duke Boys & Frank Cannon (and Bob Newhart) were the only saving graces from the 70s. And let’s not get started on mandatory “Dallas” viewing parties (ex-wife’s insistence) back then.
Cut the cable years ago as well. I find that most of the old shows we watched and couldn’t wait to see way back when are completely intolerable now. Can’t make it past the first few minutes and I have to shut it down. Laugh tracks just pile on to the ignorance of these shows, drives me completely insane now to hear it when back in the day it was barely noticed. It is nothing more than dumbing down the masses. I refuse to take part in it anymore…
The cartoons today feature transgender characters. Vast wasteland.
Don’t forget that Pleasantville ends with the wife of the main character in the show (a thoroughly pleasant man, loving father, and doting husband) leaving him and their children because she’s bored. And they portray that as the only sensible thing for her to do.
You can’t hate that movie enough. Although, you could use it as a documentary of the evils of the boomer generation – take something wonderful and ruin it for everyone, while loudly proclaiming moral superiority.
To be fair to the boomers, they weren’t the ones on the (anti-American, anti-Constitution) Warren Court, or the Congress that voted for the (un)civil (anti)rights act or the (mass 3rd world) immigration act.
Yup, Congress in 1965 were horrible, and they weren’t boomers.
It was awful. And it was done on purpose.
Once you become an adult, all Mel Brooks films become unfunny. And it isn’t just because of the wokery, but that the humor is junior high school level humor.
Fully agree on the Mel Brooks comment but also still enjoy a lot of juvenile humor (although I never liked the Three Stooges). For example, me and my grandsons sit and watch old Looney Toon cartoons for hours and I still love the shows even in my old age. Then again, that may just be my obsession with seeing the coyote finally catch and devour the roadrunner.
Well, I do have the sense of humor of a 12 year old.
Pleasantville. Written and directed by Gary Ross (who also worked for the Ted Kennedy, Dukakis and Clinton (penis Clinton that is) campaigns. Good to see that a Scotsman can make it in Hollywood. 😍
I know that I wouldn’t let him watch my kids.
That is one of the most startling things once you wake up, you look back and start to see how far back the rot began. Sure it was more subtle back then but that made it even more dangerous and set the subliminal messaging that White men who didn’t have sex with other men were bad.
Exactly. Then realize that it’s not just entertainment/pop culture. They’ve done (and are doing) the same thing in academics. For just one example, Franz Boas and Anthropology. Why would any Folk allow their history to be kept and taught by people who purely hate them?
The most subtle propaganda is the most effective.
South Pacific (1949) – Beautiful music, ugly message. You won’t have to look up the creators’ “Early Life” entries.
“Hotel Transylvania” (2012) – Funny, aimed at kids. Message is completely and utterly vile. You won’t have to look up the creators’ “Early Life” entries.
I had to present a race relations class one time when I was in the Army. I started it by showing part of Blazing Saddles, then saying that if there is anybody that we haven’t insulted yet, see me after class and I’ll insult you personally.
Hahahahaha!
“After all, he wasn’t even armed.” So a one-armed bandit, or a seven-armed octopus – those would be OK?
Hmmm, what do you call an octopus with no arms? A nullopus?
I’ve been watching Gunsmoke reruns. The old episodes were full of sound, insightful plots. The later years are filled with the efforts to promote the narrative created at the end of the Vietnam war. Whether that was the reason the show was cancelled in unclear, but sure keeps me turning the channels when the newer episodes are on.
Yeah, when a show jumps the shark, it never comes back.
John, I cannot remember the last television series I watched at all having cut the cord years ago. Honestly, some of the Disney items my kids watched still entertain me in a way that modern shows do not (circa 2008-2012 or so, before they became unwatchable).
Modern movies? I watch a handful at best. Looking at the selection during flights (I have had a few recently) is 90% a reflection of “The Unwatchable”. I go out of my way now to look for foreign films or older movies.
Agreed – most of my time is on older films. Many newer films with a premise that looks interesting? “Nah, I’ll pass.”
Read How Should We Then Live by Francis Schaeffer
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8783099M/How_Should_We_Then_Live
They don’t make ’em like they used to.
Nominees For Academy Award Best Picture – 2025
Anora – Prostitute dates Russian scion
The Brutalist – Holocaust immigrant drug and rape drama
A Complete Unknown – Bob Dylan as a teen
Conclave – Hermaphrodite becomes Pope
Dune: Part Two – Paul Atreides rides a worm
Emilia Pérez – Cartel boss becomes transgender
I’m Still Here – Brazilian politician’s wife pesters right-wing government over his disappearance
Nickel Boys – Black friends endure a reformatory in 1960s South
The Substance – Horror story involving a drug that promises a better you
Wicked – It’s not easy being black, er, green in Oz
I’ve seen one of them.
“Before the 1970s, sequels weren’t the norm.”
Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall would like a word with you.
So would Buck Rodgers. Plus all six of the Three Stooges, and the entire Marx Brothers clan.
Humphrey Bogart and the First National Pictures stock company.
Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce may have further input.
John Ford and his Cavalry trilogy.
John Wayne making Rio Bravo at least three times.
Every movie Charlie Chaplin every made. And Buster Keaton. And Harold Lloyd. And Shirley Temple. And Mickey Rooney. Also Donald O’Connor and his mule Francis. Oh, and Ma and Pa Kettle, and the Little Rascals.
I seem to remember some films with Sean Connery driving an Aston Martin in there too.
Those are just the tip of a 50,000 film catalog iceberg with a cinematic f**kton of outright sequels.
The reality is, sequelization and sequel mania has been the bread and butter of Hollywood since silent movies.
Because every year, whether they make 200 or 300 or even 500 pictures, only 10 will be hits.
(Some years, only 1 or 2.)
No points for guessing what the next 10 films made after that will look like, and who they’ll star.
And then there are the re-makes, sometimes with tweak or two, which amounts to a sequel by any other name.
FFS, Ben Hur, A Christmas Carol and The Three Musketeers have been done, and done again, and then done again, all before 1970. And then done again.
How many times, by your count, have the Earps and Clantons shot it out on film at the OK Corral?
How many Robin Hoods can you name?
Because a good story is timeless.
They were just more clever and less ham-fistedly blatant about it before 1970.
You also didn’t really look very closely.
Or just plain forgot all those films weren’t made for TV syndication, originally.
And you’re going to take a swipe at 12 Angry Men? As anti-American?? Srsly???
Based on Sumdood’s YouTube analysis (which is more anal, than lysis, to about the same 1:1 ratio as horse-and-chicken soup.)
Pack. A. Lunch.
I haven’t done a three page essay post in some time, but if you meant to pull-start my rhetorical lawnmower, you may have found the lever.
Let’s just point out “a movie where the circumstances were [so] contrived” is quite possibly the laziest and most facilely wrong line ever used in reviewing a movie I’ve heard outside of a junior college film class.
Word to your mother, sir:
The circumstances in EVERY STORY EVER MADE are contrived to play on emotion, not facts.
You might want to have another chat with Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Anton Chekov, Victor Hugo, and a thousand others.
It’s an unbroken lineage that extends to C.B. DeMille, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, John Sturges, Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.
In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the first maxim in both the Screenwriter’s and Director’s Handbooks.
1. Contrive circumstances to play on emotions.
Irony Alert: one of the most famous writers and directors who used contrived circumstances to play on emotion, rather than facts was “just the facts, ma’am” himself, Jack Webb.
You could look it up.
You usually put a lot more work into your posts than what I’m seeing here.
Suffice it to say, in this case, you might want to take a crack at revising and amending your remarks here.
No, really.
We’ll save the dishing on communism in film (real, and lazily imagined, which is why the Hollywood Blacklist was asinine), and Mel Brooks supposed lack of comedy chops or playing to the mainstream for another time.
Because like Bill Bixby, you won’t like me when I’m angry.
And you’re better than this.
And you’re Shocked! Shocked I say! to discover propaganda has leaked into the culture??
Bear with me as I suggest a mildly deeper foray before you clutch too hard at those pearls.
Forget Triumph Of The Will.
I’ll even let you skip Birth Of A Nation.
Maybe you’d like to look up the propaganda content in some cultural masterpieces like Lord Of the Rings.
Les Miserables.
A Christmas Carol.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Tom Sawyer.
Henry V.
Lysistrata.
[Hint: this has been going on for a wee 3000 years, out of maybe 6000 years of recorded human history. It’s thus a bit late to lock the barn door, as that horse not only escaped, but died a mere 30 centuries ago.]
Telling people there’s propaganda in the culture is roughly akin to telling them that fire burns, and water is wet.
And the fellow who used those same lines in The Gods Of The Copybook Headings was an absolute master of the art exactly such propagandizing, throughout his entire life.
But I’ll throw you a bone:
Pleasantville was in fact a ginormous steaming pile of animal feces, and correctly identified as such by audiences in about 0.2 seconds. (It’s tough to fool the audience.)
And I say that as someone who made rent with paychecks from that total p.o.s.
I’ll close with some of the wisest words ever issued in Hollywood, from three Ph.Ds in The Biz (and not a Gentile in the bunch, either. Hmmm.):
“Tragedy is me stubbing my toe. Comedy is you falling off a cliff.” – Mel Brooks
“You want to send a message? Try Western Union.” – Samuel Goldwyn (The G in MGM)
“Nobody in this town knows anything.” – William Goldman (The Princess Bride and roughly a thousand other scripts)
I hate to do it, but I rate this post, sadly, a D-. It’s far below usual standards.
Take another much better whack at it, I beg you.
“Before the 1970s, sequels weren’t the norm.”
Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall would like a word with you.
I picked the 1970s for precisely that set of movies . . . the Planet of the Apes was out in 1968, but the real sequel monkey business started in 1970.
Please note that I said that sequels weren’t the norm, not that they didn’t exist. And Groucho had a different name, at least in every movie he was in so that he could play Groucho in that movie. Besides, Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe sued Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard.
You certainly cite some movies that are sequels, but what I noticed in going through the film on a year-by-year basis is that the sequelization of Hollywood really took off in the 1970s. Yes, Bond exists. And so does a talking mule who was quite popular, but that wasn’t the bulk of the film output. (And, yeah, it goes way back, even The Jazz Singer had a sequel.) I’m noting that one cause of this current “cinematic universe” frenzy is based on chasing foreign dollars, which now eclipse American dollars in box office. Sequel characters, especially SF or superhero characters are perhaps more marketable overseas than making movies that reflect actual American culture.
And you’re going to take a swipe at 12 Angry Men? As anti-American?? Srsly???
Based on Sumdood’s YouTube analysis (which is more anal, than lysis, to about the same 1:1 ratio as horse-and-chicken soup.)
No, my swipe is based on my watching of the movie. I brought up the YouTuber because there is actually a dearth of people who criticize this particular film (except someone used it to highlight logical fallacies). Hell, it might just be me and Sumdood as the only people who don’t like it.
Juror 8 is the everyman, sure, but the flip side? The other 11 are a cross-section of America—working stiffs, ad men, immigrants—and they’re mostly assholes or sheep. If this is “the people,” it’s not a love letter. Feels like a critique of the average Joe’s moral fiber and thus America’s culture at large.
I do understand that, by definition, all plots are contrived, but I felt this one was particularly ham-handed and I felt it was anti-American as well. As I noted above (and as I saw some typos) I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about the movie if I had first watched it in 2005, but in 2025, that’s what I see. YMMV.
Irony Alert: one of the most famous writers and directors who used contrived circumstances to play on emotion, rather than facts was “just the facts, ma’am” himself, Jack Webb.
Yup. The best entertainment does make us feel strong emotions, and isn’t a documentary. As stated above, I just thought it was heavy-handed and an attempt to manipulate for political purposes.
and Mel Brooks supposed lack of comedy chops
What part of “and I thought [Blazing Saddles] was a hoot the half-dozen times I’ve watched it” was unclear? I didn’t say it wasn’t a funny movie, I did say that it was a political movie that served a political purpose and was a movie that could easily be made today. I think that his best movie is still Young Frankenstein and think that High Anxiety is underrated.
And you’re Shocked! Shocked I say! to discover propaganda has leaked into the culture??
No, not at all. Persuasion has been with us as long as we’ve been humans. But in the last century, especially starting with Eduard Bernays, it has been weaponized and during the last decade has saturated our media. Trans characters in cartoons for kids? Gay moms in Buzz Lightyear®? We’re soaking in it in comparison to Rio Bravo.
I hate to do it, but I rate this post, sadly, a D-. It’s far below usual standards.
Take another much better whack at it, I beg you.
A fair assessment. I’ll eventually get back to it with a bit more precision.
Well, listening to Dragnet on SiriusXM 148 right now. Harry Nile in 30.
Yes, both are contrived. It’s the system. But good radio.
My fav on 148 is Joel McCrae as Ranger Jace Pearson on “Tales of the Texas Rangers”. Bad ass. Hard core right winger in real life.
Love it when the culprits get fried.
Love Harry Nile and also the Sherlock Holmes from same producer.
Sequelization was definitely less blatantly lazy before 1970.
But it’s been the norm simply forever.
Indian Jones started out as a paen to Saturday serials that had their start in radio and continued seamlessly into the earliest cinema.
It’s a fairer critique to note that they used to do sequels with a lot more artistry in each subsequent foray, instead of just plopping down a template and waiting for the franchise to rake in giga-bucks.
That “cross-section of America” in 12 Angry Men isn’t a coincidence. And the point is, at the end, every one of them, even bitter chip-on-his-shoulder-the-size-of Mt.-Rushmore Lee J. Cobb, eventually swings to the side of “reasonable doubt”, and away from “I’m late for the ball game – let’s get a rope”. And they get there from rational analysis, not laziness or groupthink. You can’t get more American than that concept.
The whole flick, by express design, also underlines a seldom-considered fact of trial by jury: inevitably, every single juror brings their own unique individual experiences and prejudices into the jury room. Not even Pollyanna could pretend it is ever otherwise, or that cases aren’t argued and won or lost in that sanctum, based on things having not one whit to do with points made or lost in the trial. That’s considered a feature, not a bug, or else we’d switch to trial by AI-powered computer, or Colosseum gladiatorial mob democracy.
And it holds up, and keeps getting remade again and again, because it’s based on American fundamental cultural precepts that predate communism, and are rooted in English common law and Magna Carta, from 6 centuries before Karl Marx was as little as a gleam in his father’s eye. This is why any attempt to paint a fictional jury deliberation as communistic falls face-first onto a sea of rakes, one with all the tines facing upwards.
The original movie, like the play, runs to a tight 96 minutes. That’s not ham-fisted, it’s spare. There isn’t a single wasted minute.
You don’t have to like it, obviously; it’s a free country.
But it wasn’t declared one of the greatest movies ever made, or the second-best courtroom drama ever filmed, because of communist sympathies or sympathizers. It’s quite simply a national treasure, highlighting thoughtful deliberate analysis over mob mentality. And I could change your mind about it (and make millions) tomorrow, simply be re-shooting it, and making the defendant one of the J6 political prisoners, making Lee J. Cobb an amalgamation of George Stephanosnuffleupagus and Barack The Magic Kneegro, and raking the entire Democrat party’s collective insanity and TDS over the coals in that final holdout juror meltdown scene.
It would be EPIC, and comedy gold, at the same time.
My remarks about Blazing Saddles and Mel Brooks’ supposed lack of comedy chops weren’t directed at your remarks primarily, but at the commentariat who can’t see past the bean-farting scene, nor recall that the film came out at a time when the smoke was still in the air from ghetto riots, the earth on Martin Luther King’s grave was still fresh, and Black Panthers were an everyday thing. When it was shot, we’d only just gotten the POWs out of Hanoi, and the bleeding sore of Vietnam still wasn’t over yet. And Mel Brooks has the huge brass balls to make lampooning racial prejudice the centerpiece of an anachronistic comedy Western, while John Wayne was still alive??
Farking genius.
Wayne turned down a role in it, but assured Brooks he’d be “first in line to go see it”.
And you’re right about how underrated High Anxiety was and is. But next to Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, it’s hard to stand out.
Propaganda is propaganda. You could find it in only about the last 50,000 or so movies ever made. And the plays. And the books. And the paintings and sculpture. The memes and content on your blog or mine.
Everybody is a propagandist. Some are more or less subtle, and better or worse. But literally everybody does it, everywhere, sometimes deliberately, and frequently even subconsciously.
So, looking at things through a 2025 lens, how has playing it more heavy-handed than the Gestapo pacifying the Warsaw Ghetto paid off for Greater Leftardia lately? Are they the A-10s right now, or are they Saddam’s minions retreating up the Highway To Hell in 1991, and dodging 30mm incoming?
Personally, I’m still not tired of winning.
Ditto.
PSA JW I suggest all of your readership watch the Holter Interview at USA Watchdog…it’s reality
If only my computer had sound! I do have the video up.
Watched CAF & his tonight. Both spot on.
Great food for thought.
12 Angry Men has been parodied as often on TV as A Christmas Carol, and remade about as often too. The version made for cable with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott and the early TV version with Bob Cummings (he won an Emmy) are IMO better than the 1957 film.
For a very good tweaking of the whole “nobility” of it I suggest the classic MAVERICK episode “Rope of Cards”. Matter of fact, Rope of Cards is actually a lot better than Men all the way around. I don’t want to put any spoilers (watch it when you get a chance) but suffice to say that the serious point is made without any heavy-handedness in half the running time, with lots of subversive humor AND you get to see the trial and meet the accused beforehand too.
As for Blazing Saddles, it does get overrated some but is undeniably funny. Jessamine Milner’s apology to the Sheriff is priceless, as is the scene she’s apologizing for.
Pleasantville is just 124 minutes of pure horse shit. I don’t know anyone who remembers it at all, much less fondly. Sadly, the on-screen swan song for the great Don Knotts.
Well, I’ll see if I can’t find that episode. Thanks, Hal!
I saw that, back in the 70’s, I was being fed leftist propaganda, by leftists trying tell me how my morals should be arranged. So, it is a simple act to leave them behind.
It is.