Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Leave Bigelow Alone

She responds again to allegations of endorsing torture.

We should be worried with the haste in which our community jumps in to censor any bit of controversial film.  There are precedents for this - the lack of support for Theo Van Gogh from the film community, the jailing of the Innocence of Muslims filmmaker, but those were small time (nonetheless worrisome) and flew under everyone's radar.

The Senate calling hearings on Zero Dark Thirty set a thuggish, dangerous precedent, a shot across the bow from Washington to Hollywood:  don't rock the boat, don't do anything controversial.  Hollywood already censors itself - too frightened to hurt the feelings of the Communist Party - they won't portray China as bad guys in films anymore.

What is just as frightening is the Hollywood response.  Far too many people jump on moralizing bandwagon - forgetting the higher principle at stake - freedom of expression - and applaud the efforts to take the filmmakers to the woodshed, drag them through the muck, and intimidate others from taking any other perspective than the status quo liberal fallback.

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