talking dogs

[MantaRay at aol.com]

Sojourner, who has sojourned far from his senses, equivocates:

>A movie, especially one which proclaims itself as fiction
>and as entertainment, is not the vehicle on which cultural values are
>expressed, but its reflection.  See below.

>If you go to see a movie that clearly and understandingly
>is popular, then it expresses popular values. 

But does it reflect them? I get Toofless's point (plug: I wrote a slam of
Independence Day for Bad Subjects out here in Berkeley) but I think the
criticism of MIB misses the mark. It's quite a subversive flick. Will Smith's
slang was mostly ad-lib, by the by, esp. that crack about NYC raining black
people. The screenwriter let him have a field day with the dialogue and I
think it worked. If anything, MIB is expressing the "popular value" (whatever
that is) of the "old guys" handing the reins over reality to, literally,
people of color and women. The old white guys have run their race. Now it's
time for new blood. Which is...O-K. 

But back to the "expressing vs reflecting" non-issue: there is no difference.
ID4 does express hegemony just as well as most right-wing propaganda, just as
well as it may reflect it. To say that these texts only reflect their
environs is to pretend their pedagogical power doesn't exist. In my paper, I
show that Republicans seized upon ID4 for their re-elections, policies etc,
just as Reagan seized upon "Make my day" to browbeat foreign aggressors.
Until someone can seize upon a universal difference between expression and
reflection, they can be said to be up to the viewer. 

Freeman, get your act together and quitcha bitching.  I would suggest a run
for the Governor's seat, buddy. 

MantaRay