Liberty On Film

Via MeFi, the Liberty Film Festival, billed as the world's first conservative film fest. Of note are the five films they've picked as the best conservative (narrative) films of 2004: The Passion of the Christ, The Incredibles, Team America: World Police, I am David, and Hero.

Since I've only seen three of them, Team America, Incredibles, and Hero, I'm only going to comment on those three. It's dubious to call Team America a conservative film, when it was mocking the conservative gusto for war, the decision to invade Iraq, and conservative hate for Hollywood. Sure, it mocked liberal institutions as well, but just because Michael Moore's puppet died in the movie doesn't make it a conservative film.

You can probably make the strongest case for The Incredibles as a conservative film, but only just. Its message of family, teamwork, and using your talents to be your best certainly isn't an exclusively conservative one, but it's one that conservative talking heads have managed to boggart in the last ten years (see my previous post on conservative commentators boggarting race relations).

But it stuns me that Hero is on this list. Hero is two things: a Confucian movie, and a Maoist movie. Period. SPOILER WARNING. When the main character sacrifices himself at the end of the film - which he does, as he could have easily deflected those arrows and escaped - he does so out of a sense of duty to the Emperor and the unity of the country. That's pure Confucius, and even though the Maoists would never publically acknowledge the Confucian connection, it's pure Maoism too.

Perhaps its somewhat telling that a film about sacrificing yourself for the good of your country - and more specifically, the good of your leader, whose life and continued leadership are more important than yours because of the instability that would occur should he die - should be named by modern conservative commentators as one of the top five conservative films. This follows the meme that "if you're not with us, you're against us," "if you question George Bush's plans, you're not a patriot," "if you disagree with the war in Iraq, you're supporting the terrorists," and so on.

The only question is, will they realize how Maoist they've become?