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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Man of Steel</title>
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		<title>Hollywood’s Islam-Free Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/hollywoods-islam-free-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hollywoods-islam-free-terrorism</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/hollywoods-islam-free-terrorism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Jul 2013 04:13:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enemy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Man of Steel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=195055</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The entertainment industry still can’t face the real enemy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/iron.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195095" alt="iron" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/iron-450x281.jpg" width="315" height="197" /></a><i>The Los Angeles Times</i> <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-terror-plot-movies-20130628,0,7521511,full.story">reported</a> Friday that terrorism is making a comeback in Hollywood films after a dozen post-9/11 years in which they shied away from dealing with a topic that studios deemed too sensitive. The report credits this new trend to filmmakers attempting to bring to their fictional films some “real-world relevance.” There’s just one problem: Hollywood’s terrorism is still devoid of real-world terrorists.</p>
<p>The <i>Times</i> article points out that the filmmakers of several of the summer’s blockbusters feel safe again to depict acts of terrorism: “collapsing skyscrapers, spaceships flying into densely populated cities and bombers run amok… With the terror attacks more than a decade in the past, they say they no longer have to worry about alienating audiences.”</p>
<p>First of all, terror attacks are not “more than a decade in the past.” Sure, they aren’t on the scale of 9/11, but America has <i>continued</i> to endure attempted and successful terror attacks since then, all the way up to the recent Boston bombing. As for alienating audiences, did it ever occur to those filmmakers that movies in which America proudly and unapologetically kicked Islamic terrorist butt might provide audiences with that tremendous collective catharsis that Aristotle noted was the aim of good drama? That movies which affirmed our freedoms and our superior cultural values – that’s right, I said <i>superior</i> –might have united, inspired and empowered those audiences? That such movies might have sent a message to the world that we are unbowed by barbarism?</p>
<p>Instead, when Hollywood did address the clash of civilizations in those post-9/11 years, it pumped out movies disapproving of the CIA and/or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every one of them reeked with the message of moral equivalence that we’re no better than the terrorists. Every one depicted our soldiers as PTSD-ravaged. Every one condemned our presence in Iraq as a Bush lie. And every one of those films about our clash of civilizations bombed, if you’ll pardon the pun, including <i>Syriana</i>, <i>The Green Zone</i>, <i>Stop-Loss</i>, <i>In the Valley of Elah</i>, <i>Redacted</i>, <i>Brothers</i>, <i>Lions for Lambs</i>, <i>Rendition</i>, <i>The Kingdom</i>, <i>Body of Lies</i>, and more. Why did they bomb? Because Americans don’t want to see movies loaded with those defeatist, self-flagellating messages. So Hollywood ended up alienating those audiences anyway.</p>
<p>“[Y]ou write about the times you live in,” said James Vanderbilt, screenwriter of <i>White House Down</i>, about an aspiring Secret Service agent protecting the president when the White House is taken over by – wait for it – <i>domestic terrorists</i>. “I was always fascinated with the idea of how you could take over the country — who would be able to do that,” said Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>I have a suggestion: if he wants to write about the times we live in, why not address credible, real-world enemies like Iran, Hezbollah, or al Qaeda and “its affiliates” (as President Obama calls them)? If he wants to imagine who could take over the White House, how about the Muslim Brotherhood, who traffic in and out of the White House now like it’s Grand Central Station? But he won’t because the truth is, too many in Hollywood are multiculturalist cowards who have already chosen to submit to Islam.</p>
<p>The latest <i>Star Trek</i> sequel is “about terrorism,” says the actor who plays Capt. Kirk, “about issues we as human beings in 2013 deal with every day, about the exploitation of fear to take advantage of a population, about physical violence and destruction but also psychological manipulation.” And yet the actor doesn’t explicitly make the obvious connection to those threats from Islamic fundamentalists. (In fact, nowhere in the <i>Times</i> article do the words “Islam” and “Muslim” appear in any form.)</p>
<p>Nor does Shane Black, director and co-writer of <i>Iron Man 3</i>, whose “ultimate terrorist” called “The Mandarin” “has this driving hatred for America which fuels his rhetoric with which he recruits these legions of followers.” Sounds like a clear stand-in for bin Laden or any number of Islamic terrorist leaders. And yet Black takes the safe route and makes his ultimate villain a vague fantasy figure.</p>
<p>In the new Superman reboot <i>Man of Steel</i>, director Zack Snyder said he was trying to evoke the 9/11 attacks “in a mythological rather than literal sense, using Superman as something like a therapist,” as the <i>Times</i> reporter puts it. “[Superheroes are] helping us understand the weird psychological and big horrible events that happen all the time,” Snyder said. “These guys deal with them in a dream-like way that makes it OK. A modern problem — a city getting destroyed — a superhero can help you understand that.”</p>
<p>Are we children who need to be coddled, who need help “understanding” “big horrible events”? During World War II Americans didn’t have to wrestle with the concept of Nazism or of Japanese imperialism in metaphorical terms. We didn’t have to undergo therapy to overcome our murky inner fears to confront those ideologies. We simply recognized them as evil and set out to eradicate them by laying waste to our enemies and their war-making capabilities.</p>
<p>As quoted in the <i>Times</i> article, Michael Taylor, chair of film and television production at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, wishes filmmakers would use their platforms to explore “the root causes of terrorism” and its consequences. “Maybe there is a missed opportunity — where they can include an issue of positive social change in the narrative,” said Taylor, who also founded USC’s Media Institute for Social Change. “What can we be doing about terrorism, and how do we feel about it?”</p>
<p>How do we <i>feel</i> about it? This is typical touchy-feely nonsense from the left, whose first response to a terrorist threat is to blame America for it, then to organize a white privilege workshop or a gender-neutral drum circle to work out their deep-seated cultural guilt. Meanwhile <i>Islamic</i> terrorists – not Tea Partiers, not “anti-government types,” not angry vets, not anyone that Homeland Security considers a primary terrorist threat – continue blowing up children on our own soil.</p>
<p>Hollywood movies during WWII reflected an unconflicted confidence in our values and in the rightness of our purpose. Today, thanks in no small part to Hollywood’s deeply subversive cultural influence, it is our Islamic enemies who have that confidence, while America is paralyzed by navel-gazing, hand-wringing, moral confusion – and filmmakers who see their work as collective therapy rather than an inspirational call to arms.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>An All-American &#8216;Man of Steel&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/an-all-american-man-of-steel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-all-american-man-of-steel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/an-all-american-man-of-steel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:36:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christopher Nolan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dark knight]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Man of Steel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Superman]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=193438</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Producer Chris Nolan gets Americanism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Man-of-Steel-Henry-Cavill.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193460" alt="Man-of-Steel-Henry-Cavill" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Man-of-Steel-Henry-Cavill-450x341.jpg" width="270" height="205" /></a>Warning: Spoilers ahead.</em></strong></p>
<p>It’s been a while since Americans have seen Superman on screen representing America. When <i>Superman Returns</i> came out in 2006, it eschewed the Man of Steel’s all-American background, instead choosing to cast him as an international good guy. The creators of the film even changed his iconic line, “Truth, justice, and the American way,” to the far more cynical line snorted by newsman Perry White: “Truth, justice, and all that stuff.” Superman went 1960s in his morality, fathering a child out of wedlock, then ditching the kid with mom Lois Lane.</p>
<p>Not this time.</p>
<p><i>Man of Steel</i> is an all-American reboot, featuring a true philosophical understanding of what it means to be a patriot. Superman is, of course, an alien from another planet. But through his experiences on doomed Krypton and his upbringing in rural Kansas, he understands what it means to represent the flag.</p>
<p>The movie begins on Krypton, where a battle ensues as the planet dies. The people of Krypton, it turns out, began on another planet, and explored the universe. They settled on Krypton and lived there for tens of thousands of years. But then their exploratory energy failed. Fearful of overpopulating their planet, they instituted population control measures. That, in turn, necessitated the outright banning of natural birth – all children on Krypton were created in artificial settings, and genetically pre-programmed to occupy certain stations. Eventually, even these measures could not save the planet from exploitation, and the collapse of Krypton began.</p>
<p>Enter General Zod. Zod has all the right intentions – he wants to save his people. But the council, which has become tired and old, refuses to recognize the danger of the planetary collapse. So Zod launches a military coup, with the intent of laying his hands on a fossil – the codex &#8212; which somehow encodes the possible genetics of all possible living future people of Krypton. He will then flee the planet and set up shop elsewhere.</p>
<p>But, being a creature of the strictly-regimented, fascistic Krypton society, Zod wants to imitate their ways. He wants to preserve the population and control those who live and those who die. He wants to better the race. He is a sort of science fiction Hitler.</p>
<p>He is opposed in this quest by Jor-El. Jor-El was a onetime ally, a man who wanted to save the people of Krypton by convincing the council to flee the planet. But he broke with Zod over Zod’s insistence on the preservation of only the “pure” bloodlines. Instead, he stakes the future of the people of Krypton on his son – natural born, infused with free will, and handed the codex. His son, Kal-El, will create a new world – but he will do so by working with the people of Earth, who Jor-El later assures Kal-El, have the capacity for great good.</p>
<p>Jor-El is the real hero of <i>Man of Steel</i>. He believes in the people of Earth, not blindly, but realistically. He is not a fan of regimentation, but freedom. And he knows that energetic pursuit of exploration and constant self-betterment is the recipe for a successful individual, as well as a successful civilization.</p>
<p>That’s all before Kal-El heads to Earth. Once he gets there, he spends time acclimating to American values by growing up with Jonathan and Martha Kent. Jonathan wants to protect Clark (Kal-El) from the world, but explains to him that he has been put on Earth for a reason – to do good. And Martha has faith that Clark will find his way.</p>
<p>Eventually, Clark has to choose between his people – Zod, who reinvades Earth – and the Americanism of his father. He makes that choice unabashedly. Late in the film, he explains that he can’t get much more American – after all, he grew up in Kansas. And that’s right. He can’t. Despite his unique abilities, Superman is an all-American immigrant, prepared to strengthen himself and the world around him, fighting on behalf of freedom.</p>
<p>It is odd to say that America’s finest filmmaker spent much of his time growing up in Britain, but it’s the truth: Christopher Nolan, the story creator for <i>Man of Steel</i>, gets Americanism in his bones. That’s why he could make the ode to freedom that is <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>. And it’s why he could create the narrative behind <i>Man of Steel</i>.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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