Here are today’s Top 10 dispatches from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n
1. 40 years since the debut of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange<\/em><\/a>.<\/strong> Here’s star Malcolm McDowell talking about the milestone to The Wrap<\/a>: “When it first came out, the audience sat there in stunned silence. And I\u2019m thinking, \u2018They hate it! Oh my God! We made a comedy, there\u2019s not one laugh! These people!\u2019 And I\u2019m going, \u2018What is wrong with the Americans?\u2019 I was blaming the Americans, but it was the same in England. They just sat there stunned. And it was only when time caught up, now with an audience of young people who see this movie, they laugh at every nuance, everything. So now I\u2019m happy because I see the movie that I made, that I thought I made, and they love it for the black comedy.”<\/em> 2. Shocker! Primetime TV promotes secular liberal values. <\/strong>From Hollywood Reporter<\/a>: Ben Shapiro writes in “Prime Time Propaganda” that the industry’s elite use broadcast<\/em> (television) to “shape America in their own leftist image.”<\/em> “I was shocked by the openness of the Hollywood crowd when it came to admitting anti-conservative discrimination inside the industry,” Shapiro told The U.K. Independent <\/a>on Sunday. “They weren’t ashamed of it. In fact, some were actually proud of it.”<\/em> Not convinced? Here’s audio of Fred Pierce, former ABC President (1974-1979) Fred Pierce admitting television’s liberal bias. If anything, the bias has only become more extreme since then.
\nIMHO: <\/strong>The supposed “comedy” of this over-praised film involved a rape scene in which a group\u00a0 of young British thugs burst into an apartment and gidily go about beating an older man while taunting a younger woman as they violated her.\u00a0 The video is available online but I opted not to link to it as it’s not appropriate for this site.
\nUnfortunately, I think McDowell is correct. The kind of scenes that once shocked and repulsed audiences is now considered by some to be “nuanced” <\/em>comedy (because, we’re told, there’s brilliant social commentary going on amidst the really fun and quirky violence). The actual impact of such films is a desensitizing of audiences to acts of human cruelty — even making them seem kind of cool and hip.\u00a0 And as films like A Clockword Orange<\/em> broke cinematic taboos against such graphic violence and gleeful depictions of rape, the road was paved for other, even crasser films, to follow in its wake. I’m not a fan of the trend. Movies should promote kindness not cruelty.<\/p>\n
\nAuthor and lawyer Ben Shapiro<\/strong> accuses Hollywood of rampant liberal bias in his new book Primetime Propaganda.<\/em>
\nHe says the industry’s elite uses broadcast to “shape America in their own leftist image.”<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOne of the 70 people he interviewed was Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman, who told Shapiro she hired a “bunch of liberals” to “put out there what we believe.”<\/em>
\nThat included casting Newt Gingrich’s lesbian sister to play a preacher at a lesbian wedding on the show.<\/em>
\n“When we did the lesbian wedding, we knew there was going to be some flack,” says Kauffman in the book. “I have to say, when we cast Candice Gingrich as the minister of that wedding, there was a bit of a ‘f–k you’ in it to the right-wing, directly.”<\/em><\/p>\n
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