Nazis in the Strangest Places
Last night, on the recommendation of friends, my wife and I went to see Secretariat. We both thoroughly enjoyed this wholesome, well-made movie, that manages to be suspenseful even though most moviegoers already know that Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973.
I should have realized that any movie I enjoyed would make someone else angry. In this case, the angry person is movie critic Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com, who found Secretariat a work of creepy, half-hilarious master race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl." In his review, O'Hehir accused the film of "presenting a honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past as the Tea Party would like to imagine it, loaded with uplift and glory and scrubbed clean of multiculturalism and social discord." O'Hehir was bothered by the movie's quoting from the Book of Job and featuring Gospel music, and was especially upset by the portrayal of Secretariat's groom, Eddie Sweat, described by O'Hehir as belonging to "a far more insidious tradition of movie stereotypes. Eddie dances and sings. He loves Jesus and that big ol' horse. He is loyal and deferential to Miz Penny, and injects soul and spirit into her troubled life."
I saw nothing sinister in the movie. But I did sense that those who made the movie do not hate America's past, which increasingly is all it takes for those like O'Hehir to detect whiffs of the Third Reich. Most of the film takes place on a farm in Virginia's horse country, in a Denver suburb, and at various race tracks. Hollywood has long depicted the South as creepy and fascistic. Hollywood isn't fond of suburbia either, and the wretched American Beauty, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1999, even depicted Nazism as commonplace in suburbia. I am not aware of any movie highlighting the incipient fascism of Churchill Downs, Pimlico, and Belmont, but I am sure that any aspiring film maker up to that task would win plaudits from such as Andrew O'Hehir.
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I doubt I'll see the film, but is the depiction of Eddie Sweat that so incensed O'Hehir accurate?
Eddie Sweat is indeed depicted as a happy and loyal employee who loves Jesus and Secretariat, but he is also depicted as being a competent employee, knowledgeable about horses and relied upon by his employer, the owner of Secretariat, who trusts his judgment and is influenced by him. Presumably, O'Hehir would have preferred to have Sweat shown as a downtrodden victim of white racism. (Sweat, in case it wasn't clear from my description of the movie, is black).
Mr. O'Hehir was barely out of his diapers when Secretariat reigned What does he know of America during that time. Probably what he gleaned from the movies.
Mr. O'Hehir speaks one truth in his review but I don't think he would ever notice it. He states,"You could hardly pick a period in post-Civil War American history more plagued by chaos and division and general insanity (well, OK -- you could pick right now)." This is a good observation for a movie critic, or literary critic, or historian,or theologian, or any other reflective soul to notice --- that the world is many things at any given moment in time. The good critics,however, know this and move on to explore the higher and lower realms of human existence, as Mr. Piatak generally does in his observations. Dante for instance noticed that most of the world is full of trimmers just waiting outside the vestibule of hell. He notices this in only one canto out of a hundred and moves on for "the rest of the story."
Mr. O'Hehir and his ilk can never move on, they are fixated with what e.e. cummings called "mostpeople" and politics; and can therefore, never understand the extraordinary soul of a horse like Secretariat, a rider like Ron Turcotte or a women like Miz Penny.
In the race horse world for instance, a horse that runs fast in the morning workouts but not during the real races of the afternoon or evening is called a morning glory. A horse that takes the lead and then backs off when other horses approach "when the real racing begins" as they say, is often called a pea-hearted horse. A champion is great hearted and Secretariat was a great hearted horse. In fact he almost always improved his position as other horses approached. And even when they performed the autopsy after his death, his actual physical heart was almost twice the size of the normal race horse. Mr. O"Herir would not know, and would not notice if he did know, the mystery of such things.
Miz Penny was a real woman, Ron Turcotte a real jockey who reached both the highest pinnacle of the profession, as well as its inglorious punishment, when the day arrived for instance when Ron Turcotte became a parapalegic in a riding/racing accident. Again, Mr. O'Herir could not recognize the significance of this in such a life, because of his admration for words and ideology over reality.
My poetry teacher once put it this way, the confusion between words, or the tools of literature,(or in this case film) and the thing which is represented by those tools. First of all, the notions and words which Mr. O'Herir uses as a movie critic are conducive to a bourgeois intellectualism,... Such habits lead only to timid and endless talkative comparison of opinions in which every point of view is regarded as being equally important, or the same thing equally trivial.
The truth, or at least that portion of it that movies are capable of revealing, is completely beyond such a critic as Mr. O'Herir. Why, because again as my old, now deceased poetry teacher once instructed, "every critic who has concerned himself with the purpose of poetry (or movies or any other art) has concluded that the sense “delights in things duly proportioned, as in things similar to itself.” And to the extent that poetry (or art) represents, or pictures, or imitates nature, it deals with reality and in so doing instructs. Mr. O'Herir refuses to acknowledge the reality in art, even in the most natural of arts like movie making, because he doesn't believe in it. He should spend a week or two on the backside of some distinguished race-tracks like Saratoga in August, Hot Springs in January or even Belmont in the summer. The reality he might experience there would make him a better critic of horses, men and movies. As he is, and as he will probably remain, Salon.com is a good place for him and all those other trimmers in that vestibule of hell, who he is proud,I am sure, to call colleagues.
O'Hehir wrote: "Religion and politics are barely mentioned in the story of Chenery and her amazing horse"
Then why is this stupid idiot so offended by the political message of a movie that never existed?
Here is the executive summary of this review:
"Hello, I am an American moviegoer. I wear my political views as a belt, and they must be carried and whipped onto everything I do, even when I am entertaining myself while watching me. I am sorry my one-dimensional thinking means that politics is the only thing I ever understand about everything I see, but hey, how can I help it when the Democrats/Republicans are in power?"
What I sometimes want to do, out of pure mercy, is to burn out every television set in the First World and put every newspaper they read out of print, so that these people will have one chance - ONE CHANCE - to figure out the purpose of their lives on their brief time on this ancient planet. Which happens to be something more than complaining about political views.
Mr. Sanjay,
I am with you all the way on dumping news and television. If Mr. O"Herir ever stepped outside his flourescent lighted office to the back side of a race track he would discover religious services and preachers, drug addicts, gentleman, good grooms, mean grooms, reliable jockeys and unreliable jockeys, blood thirsty con-men -- in short, he would discover a slice of humanity much larger than his little ideology would allow for. I have not seen Secretariat and doubt that I will, but Seabiscuit was enjoyable and the best movie about a race horse is probably Phar Lap about the Australian champion.
I do think that movies are too sensational to have much influence as an art. The traditional philosophy has always condemned naturalism as a poor immitation of reality, or of the fullness of time. Some of my scrupulous Catholic friends were scared of watching the Gibson movie about the Passion of Christ because ..... it might stay in their memory, they may never overcome the vivid depictions etc.. With naturalism,however,it has just the opposite artistic effect --it hardly lasts for any time whatsoever and thus ne needs more and more to satiate the senses. Attend a stage play and most human beings will retain some of the lines and the songs for several days. Watch a movie and try to remember ten lines the next morning? Hardly at all.
Naturalism has to become more and more sensational until there is really nothing left to produce but those filthy,dirty, erotic, pornographic sidewalk shows that the yankees in New York watch and their cousins in Los Angeles produce, or else the 24 hour sports channel like southerners and midwesternes have been reduced to. But if Tom Piatak says it is worth watching and O'herir says no, then who do you believe --- the testimony of an honest man or O'Herir and his lying eyes?
The answer is obvious, take your wife out for a popcorn and coke, remember tempus fugit and why it is important sometimes to simply admire the horse, his connections and their story.
For O'Hehir, there is no nuance in different/opposing perspectives or world views. A film maker who shows a minor black character as subservient is basically the same as a Nazi propagandist.
Of course, in 300 years of American slavery, no black person was ever subservient to whites or had a happy-go-lucky attitude. And it was black Union troops who won the Civil War...and Buffalo Soldiers who won the West...and it was the Tuskegee Airmen who defeated Hitler.
Truly, no disrespect intended to those groups of people(I met a surviving Airmen a few months ago, and was thrilled and grateful for the experience), but decades of revisionist thinking about America's past has helped create hordes of delusionists, a worst case example being Andrew O'Hehir. Thankfully, he's not even close to being representative of his generation (at least in magnitude.)
"Hollywood isn’t fond of suburbia either, and the wretched American Beauty, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1999, even depicted Nazism as commonplace in suburbia."
Worse than that, since American Beauty no middle-age man can start working out without his wife getting suspicious.
It's worth noting that famed movie critic (and self-described liberal) Roger Ebert took such offense to O'Hehir's crazy review that he wrote a rare public rebuttal. (Even the left doesn't like the looney left.)
I saw the movie last night, and there's nothing remotely conservative, let alone offensive, about it. In fact, it has definite feminist undertones (the lead character is a strong willed woman who's often at odds with men.) And the lead's daughter is an aspiring middle class radical who likes to protest and go to rallies, her mother's reaction usually being, "Hmmm...well, what ever you think, dear."
Even Roger Ebert is old enough to not think there was anything particularly terrible about the world in which he was raised.
But alas, Andrew O'Hehir also got upset at Ebert and wrote a COUNTER-REBUTTAL.
And what does O'Hehir say? It was all hyperbole, thus running with his tail between his legs.
"Well, gee. Thanks, Roger. (I think.)
I'm not eager to get into a public dispute with you over a Disney movie that you found "straightforward" and "lovingly crafted" and I found weird, fake and inexplicably disturbing, which may be all this boils down to. The world isn't likely to care much, and will render its verdict without our help.
I appreciate that you opened and closed this piece with some kind words, and I have great respect for you as a man and a critic. That said, I think the only place where we agree here is when you say, "O'Hehir's reading [of 'Secretariat'] is wildly eccentric." I'll cop to that happily -- my review of the film was willfully hyperbolic, even outrageous, in hopes of getting people to look at a formulaic Disney sports movie through fresh eyes. I know I don't have to explain the function or uses of hyperbole to you, since it's a technique you often employ (here and elsewhere). My hyperbole in the "Secretariat" review was supposed to be funny, and also to provoke a response. I appear to have succeeded brilliantly with the second part! The results on "funny" are more mixed.
Now, clearly I could have written a more "normal" review, in which I said something like: "Secretariat" was kind of fun to watch, but it bugged me. It presents a prettied-up, phony-baloney vision of America in the early '70s, in a transparent effort to appeal to the "family-values" crowd who ate up "The Blind Side" -- people who want a comforting and unchallenging movie without any sex or swearing. There's nothing wrong with that as a way to make a buck, but this example is ultra-tame, scrubbed clean of any genuine conflict or drama, and I pretty much think it's crap.
Now, I gather you would have disagreed with that, and pretty sharply, but I very much doubt you'd have bothered writing several thousand words ripping me apart. Now perhaps you see the genius of my plan!
Seriously, that is what I think -- and pretty much what I said, albeit in somewhat stronger language. In your haste to take me down, I think you frequently read my gag lines as being deadly serious, mix or conflate different aspects of my argument (e.g., I don't say or think anything about the horse being evil, or representing evil), and confuse events in real life with what we see in the film.
Now then: I do indeed compare "Secretariat" to "master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl," a deliberately outrageous claim that, I suspect, pissed you off right at the outset. Let me elaborate a little. In my view, the most effective propaganda movies are not the ones about dudes with guns that espouse militarism, or the Soviet boy-meets-tractor films, or the Nazi cartoons about Jews. Those are too obvious. The most effective kind of propaganda depicts normal life, or rather an idealized vision of normal life, one that (as one of my readers put it) "makes a particular worldview seem natural, right and appealing." Viewed that way, of course, a very large proportion of Hollywood movies could be considered propaganda, which is a subject for another time. (The shoe may fit.)
Of course it's offensive to compare a contemporary filmmaker to Riefenstahl -- although she was unquestionably a great director -- but I never said or suggested that Randall Wallace had consciously or deliberately created a film whose primary purpose was ideological. It's more like the ideology of reassurance and comfort and gorgeous images -- what I refer to as the "fantasia of American whiteness and power," which is, yes, going kind of far -- is so built into this kind of movie you can't get it out. I do, however, see Wallace's desire to appeal to Christian audiences and a never-enumerated set of "middle-American values" as politically coded, at least to some degree. (It's like they're coded if you want them to be; of course he's happy with secular left-wing types watching the movie too.)
You believe, or suggest, that I damn the film for not noticing Vietnam or Watergate, but that isn't quite right. As I think I make clear, I was struck by the oddness of the film's idealized, "Ozzie and Harriet" portrait of American life, which feels more like the '50s, being set in one of the most tumultuous periods of American history. That's a suggestive fact, an element of the overall picture, not an indictment. You indulge in some hyperbole of your own in suggesting that I accuse Penny Chenery (the movie character? The real person? I am not sure) of being an evil right-winger, when I never say, and do not know, anything about her politics. Watch out for the "O'Hehirian Riefenstahlian TeaPartyite" clique, though --we're on the rise!
I could go on, and I guess I will just a little: I never say or suggest that anyone considered the Triple Crown victories "as a demonstration of white superiority." (I honestly don't believe you don't get the "Überhorse" joke. Secretariat was a product of eugenics if any living creature ever was.) You suggest that I attack Randall Wallace for his religious faith, but I do not, and you cite nothing to support this. You say that I see "a repository of Christianity (of the wrong sort, presumably)" in the film, when I say clearly that religion plays almost no role in the story. On the other hand, it's simply a fact that Disney is marketing the film to Christian conservatives, and neither of us is required to have an opinion about it. And I'm not sure what you mean when you say you refuse to allow me to define the film as "Tea Party-friendly." Is Sarah Palin not allowed to like it?
On the film's racial issues: You suggest that I am demeaning the real-life Eddie Sweat, Secretariat's groom. I say nothing about Eddie Sweat. I am discussing a fictional character, the only black person ever seen in the film, who is presented as subordinate, unreflective, constantly cheerful and uniquely well equipped to communicate with an animal. Could there be such a person? Of course. But in the context of my perception of the film's total universe, this feels like an unwholesome and old-fashioned stereotype (for which there is a borderline-offensive name I will not use).
Similarly, I have a tough time believing you don't get what I'm trying to say about the Pancho Martin character. Those who reported on the Triple Crown at the time have said that the real Pancho Martin was neither talkative nor boastful, and had no particular adversarial relationship with Penny Chenery. That stuff we saw in the movie did not happen. But the filmmakers have taken the one faintly "ethnic" or non-American character in the movie, and made him thoroughly despicable. What was that? An accident? An aesthetic choice? Or a lazy and coded shortcut?
For me, all in all, "Secretariat" adds up to something that looks pretty but tastes pretty bad, and apparently I expressed that view with a degree of force you found "insane." Frankly, I wish you had avoided those kinds of epithets, and focused more on areas where we may have real differences of philosophical or political or aesthetic opinion and interpretation to discuss. I'm inclined to believe that you understood my argument well enough -- better than you claim to, at least -- but that it pissed you off so much you just didn't want to deal with it. But that's only a theory, and I assure you that my faith in Roger Ebert remains. Generally speaking.
"
O'Hehir said:
"I think the only place where we agree here is when you [Ebert]say, 'O’Hehir’s reading [of 'Secretariat'] is wildly eccentric.' I’ll cop to that happily — my review of the film was willfully hyperbolic, even outrageous, in hopes of getting people to look at a formulaic Disney sports movie through fresh eyes."
Yeah, right. Well, it looks like your willful hyperbole was lost on your public, AO.
The great critic's response, however, communicates very clearly that the movie industry (which includes critics) thinks it's mission is to educate,inform and enlighten us, the public, on matters of grave social concern. And I'm really glad that O'Hehir took it upon himself to do so, for had he not written his brilliant review, I never would've heard about the evils of racial inequality. I don't think anyone's ever written about that before. Then again, it was something only his "fresh eyes" could see.
What astonishes me is his disbelief that a movie could be made for middle class Christians.
An American movie...made for an audience in America? God forbid. It can be only equally shocking that movies like It's a Wonderful Life, Superman, Lord of the Rings, Gone With The Wind, Cinderella, Toy Story, and other such American middle class Christian propaganda could make their way to theaters, worthy of Leni Reifenstahl herself, as O'Hehir insists.
Of course, I am only going by his definition of middle class Christian propaganda - which only means the usage of common formulas and cliches. So there.
What is also amusing is how he laments the lack of commentary on Vietnam War and Watergate in a movie about racehorses. I remember when I was once reading Isaac Asimov's stories as a 14 year old that in the introduction, he tells the reader that he had to include sex in the story, because his critics complained about the lack of sex in his stories. It's a brand new world, where we hate entertainment not for what it is, but for what it isn't.
The comments at Salon are overwhelmingly negative as well, so apparently this guy isn't representative.
It's nice to see the nutty leftist Ebert respond, but in a recent review he did let loose with the howler "Apart from skin color, the difference between Mike Campbell [a white farmer whose land was seized] and Robert Mugabe is that Campbell wants to run a farm." There aren't too many friends in the movie critic world, apparently
That statement is out of context, because the general tone of the review was the opposite.
In fact, I thought that review was a surprising reversal of opinion by a standard card-carrying leftist, who sided against a black dictator like Mugabe in favour of the dispossessed white farmers of Zimbabwe, who by proportion never did anything nearly as wrong to their new masters.
But yes, Ebert's movie reviews are very political, and he seems long past the days when he could have picked up a new job as a political commentator. The younger Ebert was not political. But he once was also rather cynical and you get hints that his life in the 1960s was a lot of wild parties in France or Italy during film festivals. Now, he is more easygoing and optimistic, but alas, more political.
Of interest, last evening's "60 Minutes" had a segment on a phenominal racehorse, Zenyatta, presently running at Hollywood Park. During the segment the horse was showed being tended to by male and female stable workers who are clearly of Mestizo stock. Of course the fortunate owners of this magnificent animal are very wealthy music producers.I hope Mr. O'Hehir was not watching, otherise his head would explode at the injustice of it all.
Djordje,
I did not see the report about Zenyata but I love your reaction:
"During the segment the horse was showed being tended to by male and female stable workers who are clearly of Mestizo stock. Of course the fortunate owners of this magnificent animal are very wealthy music producers.I hope Mr. O’Hehir was not watching, otherise his head would explode at the injustice of it all."
The other good horse story this year or perhaps last was the old trainer from New Mexicio who finally had horse enough to compete in the Kentucky Derby but not enough money to transport the horse in the styles of our racing times. He hooked an old horse trailer up in New Mexico to his pick-up truck and trailered the three year old all the way to Kentucky's Churchhill Downs by himself I believe. The connections between these horses, grooms, hot walkers, trainers and jockeys is really quite extraordinary. Once we moved from horses to trains, our whole civilization took a step backwards. But once we moved from trains to automobiles and left the horse completly out of our lives, the age of chivalry died forever. I think Faulkner may have written a short story about the old horse traders and proud men who were suckered by them, but I can't remember it at this time.
-Fool About a Horse- is found in Faulkner's "Uncollected Stories".
Thank you, Greg. I will take a look at it and see if it is the one I rememeber from 25 years ago. Southerners are better story tellers than they are writers, or at least they were before they quit being Southerners. They have a beautiful drawl that is consistent with a more human pace of speaking than those fast talking yankees. Just as riding a horse or sailing a boat is a more human pace of traveling. I think it was Navrozov, who commented recently in one of his pieces for Chronicles that listening to an intelligent man speak is one of the more delightful of human experiences. I would agree and add, especially if he can ride and shoot, and speaks with his authentic accent and/or dialect.
"...you get hints that his [Ebert's] life in the 1960s was a lot of wild parties in France or Italy during film festivals."
When he was on TV with Siskel, I remember him mentioning - with great pride, in fact - that he was the director or producer (or something) of "Return of the Valley of the Dolls" or some nonsense. (It'd take me 30 seconds to look it up on wiki but why bother.)
Needless to say, Siskel wasn't impressed.
"...especially if he can ride and shoot..."
Dr. Fleming?
#20 Certainly he can,(and does) figuratively speaking.