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Originally posted by Twitch
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I'm not sure how this problem was born though. Film critics and cinephiles have always tried to find hidden messages in films and there has always been pretty absurd theories and agendas, one of the most influential film critics in US Pauline Kael often made pretty absurd statements. But these days an absurd statement makes for an headline. It's not the fault of critics, and not all critics are in the business to criticize because they lack talent themselves, in fact some of the most important directors in the history have been film critics.
But the public somehow clings to critics' ideas, like the critic is some sort of an educating parent, the public gave up about forming an opinion on their own, their opinion of a film is born out of the agendas of film critics. And because of that there's certain critics who are just in the business to manipulate with the public... like Armond White who disagrees with every other critic just for the sake of it or Michael Medved, a dumb motherfucker who has no clue about cinema at all but sees an opportunity to ejaculate his ideology through film criticism.
For example, when the most successful nature documentary film "March of the Penguins" came out Medved praised it because according to him it promoted traditional family values which caused quite an uproar. The maker of this film, a French biologist Luc Jacquet was quite surprised how dumb someone can be by applying the life of penguins in Antarctica to the people in US, and him being an biologist and all, failed to see how polygamous penguins have anything to do with American family values.
When "Avatar" came out there was a lot of talk about its political agenda. One side praised how it was against imperialism, the other side damned it because it was anti human/white/technology/west etc. Both sides were too dumb to realize that the natives were helpless without the help of a white man from the earth and it was spitting in the face to real indigenous people who has suffered from imperialism by showing how easy it is to get rid of colonialists. But the ideologues didn't seem to care about this little detail at all which would turn it against their ideologies 180 degrees.
And now there's a whole lot of "hobby critics" who see some agenda everywhere. Professional ideologues, shitty critics, that's the thing these days. One has to only look at the reviews and topics at IMDB.com.
For example this is my favourite segment:
"In an industry which abandoned all positive American values such as patriotism, family, religion, morality, hard work, et cetera; and prefers endless evenings (or days) snorting lines of coke, one wonders how they can sink any lower."
About a German film taking place in 18th century France.
It's not about the film at all anymore, it's about where you can fit your agendas and ideology.
And such an dishonest director like Spielberg certainly cares about public agendas. His films have been re-evaluated, of course some might have been pointing out about cops waving guns in "E.T." and how it wasn't cute and family friendly. Of course he "fixed it". He has also been criticizing his own film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" because it isn't so family friendly today... basically it's about Richard Dreyfuss character becoming obsessed with the UFO stuff, doesn't care about work anymore, leaves family behind to seek out UFOs, kisses another woman blah blah blah.
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