One upside to the relentless, Draconian reduction of reporters in mainstream newsrooms and their vigilant focus on crime and he said/she said political coverage is that that daily papers and TV stations have neither the resources or interest to get involved with the truly ludicrous fringes of the Culture Wars. That’s too bad in a way, because there is a laugh in some of this stuff, and little more widely-publicized ridicule of the worst excesses could have a tonic-like effect on our hyper-partisan culture.
    But, hell, I’m happy to handle the crumbs the corporate folks won’t stoop to sweep, (unless the Strib’s Tim O’Brien drops this into his on-line round-up).
    The hyperventilating over Gen. Wesley Clark’s “attack” on John McCain’s “service record”/”patriotism” had barely died down this past week when some of the same suspects – coagulating around the National Review On-Line’s Jonah Goldberg, (an occasional contributor to the Strib’s editorial pages) – started going off on “Wall-E”, the new Pixar movie about love between a couple cute 29th century ‘bots.
   Here, via Talking Points Memo, is a hilarious, “Daily Show”-worthy compendium of FoxNews’ morning ninnies and others blowing gaskets over Clark’s comment. (Do these people ever go home at night and say, “God, I hope my kids didn’t see that show”?)
    I caught “Wall-E” out at Southdale this past Wednesday night. By the “Tomato-Meter” over at RottenTomatoes.com it is the best-reviewed movie of the year. Accordingly, the theater was 90% full. Adults laughed and kids seemed to eat it up. And that’s good sign, because it really is a terrific movie. (I won’t say “terrific little movie”, because the thing cost close to $200 million, and comes via the Disney juggernaut.) The visuals are frequently stunning – without quite the luscious, over-saturated gleam of “Cars” or “Ratatouille”, (different director, different story), and yes, there is a bit of a message. Wall-E, you see, is a garbage compactor dutifully cleaning up the planet after human life has literally trashed the place and cut bait for the stars … and a new market for the omnipotent Buy ‘n Large corporation, (Wal-Mart), through whose ultra-mega big box emporiums all human wants are created and then over-met.
    The lover ‘bots, Wall-E and Eva (a sleek, gleamy-white Mac kind of girl) operate in service to humans, all of whom have been fattened like Slurpee-sucking ticks by Buy ‘n Large and are now floating in a permanent Carnival Cruise-like torpor billions of miles from home. Too obese to even walk they float around on levitating Barca-Loungers with a TV screen hovering inches from their porky faces delivering all the information they need to mintain their lethal levels of consumption.
    (As someone with a dangerous obsession for Costco, I laughed … nervously.)
    So, yeah. A satiric, cautionary message amid the glorious pictures, romance, comedy and sci-fi homages. (A la “2001’s” HAL 9000, Otto the giant cruiser’s on-board computer shouldn’t be trusted, and the soundtrack exults with “Also Sprach Zarathustra” when the porcine cruiser captain finally stands up right and walks.)

    So what happens over in The Chronically Irritable Echo Chamber? With Goldberg as the tent pole, accusations of "fascism" began flowing in.

    Says NRO blogger Shannen Coffin:  "From the first moment of the film, my kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind. It's a shame, too, because the robot had promise. The story was just awful, however. Nice to see that Disney and Pixar can make mega-millions off of telling us just how greedy, lazy, and destructive we all are. There's no hope for mankind. Hand over your wallet."

    A fawning reader of both Goldberg's latest book, "Liberal fascism" and his blog: "I am about two thirds of the way through Liberal Fascism (brilliant, by the way, and utterly absorbing), and so I find myself in “spot the Fascist” mode in just about everything I do – especially in regards to popular culture and movies. Your dissection of the fascistic elements in “Dead Poet’s Society”, for example, really raised my eyebrows, as I have always really enjoyed the movie and know it quite well, but was not previously equipped to notice those sort of elements. 

    "I took my kids to see “Wall-E” over the weekend, and although I really did enjoy the movie, I was at various points struck by what I perceived as strongly fascists elements in the story and the aesthetics. Possibly I am REALLY over-reaching, thanks to the fact that I am still tripping out over your book’s eye-opening thesis, but some elements seemed to fall right into the aesthetic and political traits you cite so often in LF:

     "1) The entire issue of environmental concern and crises mongering, which pervades the movie, although admittedly in a fairly good-natured form that tends to avoid being preachy

    "2) The portrayal of the corporate consumer world as bad, with its attendant “system” that lulls the populace into a stupor, and which is then countered by the back-to-the-soil, making-it-real rebellion lead by the Captain after his spiritual awakening learning about the tribal roots of human society.

    "3) The use of the color red to mark those who have experienced liberation from the “system” 

    "4) The mass rally on the Lido deck near the end of the movie, with its ordered ranks of humans staring up in awe at the Captain as he fights the system, and the green banners flying all around them as they do.   

    "5) Eve shaking off her programmed directives and getting in touch with her emotional, passionate inner self when she sets out to save Wall-E.

    "There were other things that tingled my “fascist sense”, or whatever, although I can’t immediately recall what they were."

    And Goldberg responding, "I agree with the charges of hypocrisy. I agree that the Malthusian fear mongering was annoying."

    I don't want to make more of this than it is worth -- which isn't much, other than a sad statement on some folks'  tortured sense of victimhood --  but  it  git me going on a  favorite  hot button for discussion, namely, if something like "Wall-E", with what  (to me) seems  a pretty  non-inflammatory tale of robot love amid an, as I say, cautionary message about the effects of gross consumption is both "liberal" and "fascist", where, or what is "conservative art"? Obviously Goldberg's ginned up "liberal fascism" is oxymoronic, a bit like "racist integrationist", or "secular religious fanatic". So by his standard, "conservative art" may be oxymoronic as well.

(And yes, Goldberg's deluded fan is actually so confused he's got Eva the robot's individualistic rebellion confused with fascism.)

    If true art is defined as the combination of skill and imagination that produces an aesthetic advancing, enhancing or illuminating the human condition, where are examples of conservatives of Goldberg's ilk producing anything like that?  You know, like maybe a full-length animated feature snickering at global climate change, mocking equality of the sexes, championing conceal-and-carry laws, or, a la Edina resident Katherine Kersten, turning up their noses at (Edina) EcoMoms doing something to raise environmental consciousness?

     Besides the cheap joke that "conservative art" doesn't go much further than ribbon magnets on SUVs and Lee Greenwood anthems, the fairer answer is that most everything other than what is generally regarded as "art" is anchored (mired) in a fundamentally conservative ethos of revenue before unique expression. The average, formulaic Hollywood movie -- "Get Smart", "Hancock" -- with nothing at all to say, about anything, and up on a screen for no other reason than to provide enough escapism to make a buck, is status quo "art", (which is also probably oxymoromic).

    Goldberg and his crowd take their shots at giant Disney, as though the Disney corporation, (as Buy 'n Large as you get), is getting fascist and subversive with "Wall-E's" dystopian setting and bloated humans. (A cameo by Fred Willard as the President/CEO of Buy 'n Large urging the fatsos on the space cruiser to "Stay the course" really gets 'em going.)

    I think it was Independence Day that set me off on this one.