I just googled the words 'The Conjuring is a Christian movie', just out of curiosity (I think it is), and found out that there are film critics who saw The Conjuring as woman-hating and right-winged. I found that ...amusing. Even though I try to look for some sort of under the surface misogyny in this movie, I can't find it.
Is there such a thing as liberal paranoia?
I don't know that it's misogynistic, but it does take a real-life atrocity (the Salem witch trials) and basically says that the victims had it coming. The villain of the movie is a Salem "witch" and is said to be a relative of Mary Eastey, who was killed in the witch trials.
So the movie basically is saying that the Salem "witches" were evil and deserved to die. It might not be openly misogynistic, but it is hateful.
No, it's saying this one particular Salem witch was evil. You know this is fiction, right? That there is no such thing as witches and curses?
This post is powered by 100% recycled liberal tears
The movie is about real-life paranormal wonks who really seem to believe in real-life witches and ghosts, and it's based on a supposedly-real case and uses the names of the real family. So yes it's fiction (and rather unconvincing fiction at that) but it presents itself as real and uses real names or real people.
The movie presents one single Salem "witch" and makes her an evil child-murderer. It doesn't mention the simple fact that the Salem "witches" were innocent victims murdered by bigots. It doesn't make this witch an exception. It just creates a fictional character who is supposed to be related to a real-life victim of a real-life atrocity, and makes her as evil as all-get-out. So by association, it implies that the persecution and murder of the Salem "witches" was justified.
You've chosen one of my favourite songs as your profile name, by the way. Good choice.
Anything in the movie only pertains to the movie. In plain English, nobody who made the film actually thought that the witch trials were deserved/the witches were evil/baby sacrificers/etc. It's a movie, not a video log of opinions.
"You shoot me in the face and I'll kick your ass"
Actually that's not true. The film was based on the Warrens' stories and they've spread those exact untruths. Lorraine even served as a technical advisor for the film.
shareThe film was based on the Warrens stories in an "if it were real" context, because movies like those tend to be enjoyable and bring in a good profit. It doesn't mean the movie creators actually believed them any more than they would if they looked at some crazy lady saying that she defeated a zombie uprising before anyone knew it was happening and said "Hey, that would make a cool movie, let's make one where it turns out she's right, because effing zombies, man!". Having someone from the claimed experience as a technical adviser in such movies is usually to maintain accuracy (or as much as possible, anyway) to what those who claimed to experience that think happened.
"You shoot me in the face and I'll kick your ass"
No. James Wan is a kook and believes most of this stuff. (In regards to the Warrens')
Most films you would be correct, but you're not here.
Really? Huh. That's unfortunate for my first point then, but (and I hate to be the "but" person... Actually no I love doing that) considering it just seemed like any other "based on 'true' events" movie, it would be far fetched to say most people walk away from the movie and feel influenced to think "Mein gott, the witches in the Salem Witch Trials were actually evil! They were right! Oh well, time to go get a tinfoil hat".
Point being, even though James Wan believed it, the movie isn't evil for existing just because of that. It's not preachy and doesn't really seem like anything other than another "true events" movie. As it is, it's pretty harmless. That's the thing with movies like this, they're harmless so long as the audience doesn't start actually believing it, and, well, they aren't.
"You shoot me in the face and I'll kick your ass"
Oh, I agree. I was just playing devil's advocate and pointing out this is one of the few films were at least some of it's makers legitimately claim it's real. Or at least maintain a good charade if they don't.
shareNo. Just wishful thinking on your part. Unfortunately, people generally don't research or fact check, and most of their 'history' and 'facts' are absorbed from the worst sources possible: Hollywood & TV shows.
Hence why people are plagued with historic (and scientific) misconceptions and still spout things like the "flat earth myth" as if it's fact, or falsely refer to the Early Middle Ages as the Dark Ages, invariably linking it to religious oppression. Just two examples, their sources and continuation themselves very interesting within this context.
This is also why advertisers are so successful in selling "lifestyles", i.e. Buy this product, be like me. How do you think propaganda films work? The really effective ones aren't "video log[s] of opinion", they're fiction! Hollywood and Commies or terrorists, need I say more?
So, it doesn't matter what the actual facts are; repeat it often enough in enough movies and people think it's a fact, that's how events really unfurled, etc. Even if the truth has been known for decades or centuries, most misconceptions make for good fiction, and so get reinforced.
Ditto for this film, which reinforces the, today, slightly less prevalent but still widely held beliefs concerning the Salem Trials.
Solution: Not "better" films, but better education.
NOW: Do not take this as my saying this is a bad film, it shouldn't be made, etc. But it doesn't change the way films operate on our consciousness, collective and individual. I, myself, don't see the misogyny except through that shaky link, in which case many, many films would equally be guilty of the same, yet weren't targeted as such.
Personally, I would like to see the sources as I find the way that the OP introduces this subject as dubious.
Ignorance is bliss... 'til it posts on the Internet, then, it's annoying.
Something tells me though that the whole "I believe the Warrens, it was real" is just to entice audiences.
The same reason the Amityville Horror is portrayed as real life events.
Something tells me though that the whole "I believe the Warrens, it was real" is just to entice audiences.
The same reason the Amityville Horror is portrayed as real life events.
I dont believe a word they say.
Its like Amityville, where (this is what I firmly believe after doing some research) The Lutz's looked at the house's history, bought it because of the murders, and then spun ghost tales based off of what they knew. Like hordes of flies in the room where the bodies were for days (since there obviously would be flies) and actually screwing up their kids by leaving them out of the conspiracy (theres a documentary about one of them, who is clearly traumatized, talks all this ghost talk but then chickens out on the polygraph).
Im pretty sure these Warren people are the ones who really tried propagating that whole "amityville true story thing" and they have a picture which has been widely believed to be proof of the haunting (and its a creepy looking picture) but apparently its of one of the cameramen and he admitted to it.
And with the conjuring, theyre trying to do the same thing. "True story".
Fargo is more of a true story, because at least it could happen. Not to say i dont believe in ghosts or the supernatural, i definitely do.
I don't really care what the filmmakers "actually" thought. The movie presents the idea that Salem witches were evil child-murderers. It's completely unnecessary and a garbage thing to present in a movie or elsewhere. Putting it in a movie which uses real character names and supposedly-real events makes it particularly bad. In a lot of ways, if the filmmakers know it's not true and then put it in the movie anyway, that's even worse.
If the movie had portrayed a Jewish person as using the blood of Christian babies to make matzos, I doubt that people would say "Calm down, the people who make the movie don't really believe that happens, it's a movie, not a video log of opinions." People really claimed that this happened in order to justify persecution of Jews, and putting it in a movie as a spooky happening would be offensive. This is the same sort of thing.
The other thing is, a lot of people don't really know what went on in the Salem witch trials and a lot of people believe in witchcraft. It's not at all far fetched to imagine people watching The Conjuring and thinking, "Wow it's a good thing all them evil baby-killing witches in Salem got killed." After all, a quick search on the Internet will turn up idiots who still believe Jewish people make matzos from baby blood.
*sigh*
Fine. So every movie with an idea that if suggested in reality would be a horrific thing to say (and it would be) is automatically garbage, regardless of the movie's quality, story and other elements or the fact that most people realize and accept that it is not real, and resides firmly in the realm of fiction.
"If the movie had portrayed a Jewish person as using the blood of Christian babies to make matzos, I doubt that people would say "Calm down, the people who make the movie don't really believe that happens, it's a movie, not a video log of opinions." People really claimed that this happened in order to justify persecution of Jews, and putting it in a movie as a spooky happening would be offensive. This is the same sort of thing."
Except that's relevant to currently existing people that don't deserve such depictions, and there are still people who actually think that and persecute/hurt/discriminate against them. Nobody really bats an eyelid if all ancient roman soldiers are depicted as sparta-type bloodthirsty super-warriors, despite the reality being more sane than that. People take ideas from history, or crazies that think a certain way of history, and sometimes make movies out of them. Time depersonalizes depictions of those who aren't around any more, with people knowing things weren't as bad/good as movie depictions despite enjoying the movie for what it is. I personally take the movie for what it is, an enjoyable, scary and entertaining yet false depiction of a very sad and unfortunate part of history, for the sake of making another "true events" horror movie that entertains and brings in money.
"The other thing is, a lot of people don't really know what went on in the Salem witch trials and a lot of people believe in witchcraft. It's not at all far fetched to imagine people watching The Conjuring and thinking, "Wow it's a good thing all them evil baby-killing witches in Salem got killed." After all, a quick search on the Internet will turn up idiots who still believe Jewish people make matzos from baby blood."
A quick internet search makes humanity look like a *beep* stain on the universe. Fortunately the internet isn't a great representation of how most people are, and most people don't believe in poltergeist-scale ghost stories that contradict a basic fact in common knowledge of history. There are idiots out there, and humans aren't always as smart as what would be a nice level of smartness, but there isn't that high of a percentage of absolute mush brained derps in the human population, especially in well educated locations.
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"You shoot me in the face and I'll kick your ass"
Fine. So every movie with an idea that if suggested in reality would be a horrific thing to say (and it would be) is automatically garbage, regardless of the movie's quality, story and other elements or the fact that most people realize and accept that it is not real, and resides firmly in the realm of fiction.
Except that's relevant to currently existing people that don't deserve such depictions, and there are still people who actually think that and persecute/hurt/discriminate against them.
Nobody really bats an eyelid if all ancient roman soldiers are depicted as sparta-type bloodthirsty super-warriors, despite the reality being more sane than that.
Fortunately the internet isn't a great representation of how most people are, and most people don't believe in poltergeist-scale ghost stories that contradict a basic fact in common knowledge of history.
Exactly, that would be a huge stretch for someone to think like that.
It is like saying that a fiction movie about a real life event (where the fiction isn't an interpretation of the real events, but a imaginative fantasy), is trying to rewrite history.
If the story of a movie was based on this premise
Hitler is portrayed as a benevolent human being that is abducted and replaced by an alien that wants to conquer the world in 1930s. The alien has brainwashing/hypnotizing powers and turns people in Germany into Nazis, but the Jewish population is immune to these alien powers. So it is in the alien invasion's interest to eradicate the Jewish people in order to succeed taking over the world.
If this was the premise... would people say
"See, it is trying to make Hitler and the Nazis seem like good guys that were innocent, and shouldn't be blamed"
... would be such a stretch.
Then stop reading what idiots think OP.
shareAlternatives to the word liberal are `enlightened' `tolerant' and `rational'. Are such people prone to paranoia? These qualities make that unlikely. Why do you think film critics are particularly liberal, when hardly any of them display those admirable liberal qualities when reviewing movies?
Just a side-note: No matter how hard I tried, it was impossible for me to read your post and hear any other voice than the Comic Book Guy's :p
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Liberals find racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, etc… in everything that any person ever writes, sings, films, etc… liberals live to complain… that's just what they are.
shareWhich they in their warped minds consider to be "enlightened," "tolerant" and "rational."
+++by His wounds we are healed. - Isaiah 53:5+++
dont you know, its the popular thing to call everything misogynist as a get out of jail free card to insult things without looking like a bad guy.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
They never said all Salem witches were evil. They said this specific witch was evil. That doesn't make every other Salem witch evil, or that they deserved it.
Honestly, when will people grasp the meaning of context and comprehension?
Honestly, when will people grasp the meaning of context and comprehension?
I have watched the movie and have enough sense to know when Hollywood says "based on true events" (or some such claim) you have to take it with a grain of salt- or make that big grain. Frankly I'm amused at the wailing and teeth-nashing over the portrayal of "witches". God people, get real! It's just a movie!!! Hollywood has portrayed actual living people (war heros, Presidents, gangsters, cowboys, etc) in roles forever. How many times have you watched a movie with some well- known figure in history and writers\directors taking liberties with events? It's just the way it goes. Portraying a witch as evil might be a routine cliche but that's all it is. It isn't meant to lump all witches as ugly, old haggard-looking women with frizzed hair anymore than all people from the South are rednecks or blacks as thugs. Quit taking offense so easily. It isn't a history class- it's entertainment.
Google 'liberal' next, because the majority of people who like to throw that word around usually have it wrong.
Ya Kirk-loving Spocksucker!
Probably because the liberals have invented this whole 'war on women' campaign. I dont get it - how is there a war on women??
shareI once read an article talking about how possession movies in general were sexist because the females who were possessed usually started out as "sweet and innocent" and ended up acting overly sexual once the possession began. This apparently "slut shames" and "demonizes female sexuality." Forget that they turn into cold blooded killers, too; they become sexual and that's the problem.
I mostly try to ignore people like this. No matter what you say or do, somebody is no doubt going to be offended by it somewhere. The only way to be seen as not offensive is never to say or do anything. I figure it's better just to say and do whatever you think is right and if others have a problem with it, tough luck for them.