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Monday, February 23, 2009

Zombie: crazy or just stupid?

Or maybe both?

In last night's Academy Awards thread, the undead one, Charles' faithful doppelänger, pontificated thusly:



(Note the +13 rating.)

A cursory browse through the past 30 Best Picture winners reveals that only 5 of them fall into any of these categories -- or 6, if one accepts Zombie's bizarre insinuation that Slumdog Millionaire is somehow a Muslim story, as opposed to a story about a protagonist who happens to be a Muslim.

I haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, so I can't comment on this claim, except to say that if there really are coded jihadi messages embedded in it, they seem to have escaped the attention of pretty much the entire right-wing commentariat up to now.

As for Best Picture winners with gay themes, one has to go all the way back to 1969's Midnight Cowboy. And as far as I can tell, no "prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold" picture has ever won an Oscar, at least not during this Modern Era of Political Correctness that Zombie so snarkily bemoans.

Has the strain of living in America's most liberal city, and the resulting conflict between his or her innate live-and-let-live-ism and the need to pander to an über-Republican audience, finally made Zombie snap? That's the only logical explanation.

Posted by V at 21:46

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7 comments:

The Sphinx said...

And later on:

#113 zombie

This year, I managed to not see a SINGLE film that was nominated in any category. So I have absolutely no opinion about any of them.

Methinks Zombie is several bats short of a belfry, to put it lightly..

2/23/2009 10:17:00 PM
Red Tulips said...

I saw Slumdog Millionaire. While it is true that the movie is not a "Muslim movie" per se, there was a scene of anti-Hindu propoganda. This was a scene where Hindus are on a killing rampage and killed the protagonist's mom. These Hindus killed in the name of the God Rama.

In reality, Indian Hindus generally act in retaliation for Indian Muslim violence. The 1947 Partition Genocide, as an example, occurred due to the Direct Action Day massacre. The 2002 Gujarat attacks occurred after the Godhra train bombing. None of that context was given in Slumdog Millionaire.

And I am not the only one who noticed this - plenty of Indian commentators also noticed the anti-Hindu scene in Slumdog Millionaire.

source

If the protagonist in Slumdog Millionaire was a Hindu, and there was a scene of Muhammad holding a knife while Muslims killed the protagonist's mom, you can bet there would be worldwide protests against the movie.

So to conclude, while I would not call Slumdog Millionaire a "Muslim film," it was arguably a film that defamed Hindus and Hinduism. (the movie overall had little to do with the protagonist being a Muslim so much as simply being impoverished)

Most people in the blogosphere know little to nothing about India and Hinduism, and so of course the anti-Hindu message in Slumdog escaped the American and European attention.

2/24/2009 03:59:00 PM
V said...

RT: fair enough, and thanks for the info.

Still, there doesn't seem to be a discernible trend toward giving Oscars to Muslim-friendly movies. At least not since "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962).

2/24/2009 08:53:00 PM
Red Tulips said...

V,

As a general matter, I do not care about the Academy Awards and view them as an exercise in Hollywood self congratulatory masturbation. In general, Zombie is wrong and the Oscars have not given awards to films where the central point of the film is to glorify jihad. That is not to say that leftist antiwar films have not been repeatedly honored in the past, but for the most part, Zombie is wrong about the types of films which have won Oscars.

With all that said, there have been films which either glamorized jihad or proposed terrible moral equivalences that have been nominated in recent years past.

Paradise Now was propoganda in defense of suicide bombers in Israel. It was nominated for an Academy Award (best foreign film) two years ago.

This year, Waltz With Bashir was nominated for an Academy Award, and it gives a one-sided and incorrect view of what happened during the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. It was not said that Arafat initiated Israel's actions in Lebanon, via his shelling Israeli cities through his state-within-a-state in Lebanon. It was not said that jihadists hid out in Sabra and Shatilla, that they were breeding grounds for terrorists. It was barely a point that this occurred after the PM of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated. It was also intimated that the IDF was responsible for what happened during Sabra and Shatilla - when in fact it was Christian Phalangists.

And a few years ago...

Munich was nominated, wherein there was a moral equivalence between going after the Black September Munich Olympic terrorists, and the attack itself. Furthermore, it was a fictionalized and untrue account of what Mossad did in the wake of the 1972 attack in Munich. However, the worst aspect of this film was the heinous moral equivalence between the Black September terrorists and the Mossad.

Those are some recent films honored by the Academy which promoted either jihad or a moral equivalence.

I saw Slumdog Millionaire and do not believe it either promotes jihad or moral equivalence. The central message of the film was about love and against hate. However, there is a Hindu defaming scene that I mentioned.

2/24/2009 09:42:00 PM
Anonymous said...

RT,

and what was the sins of Christians in India for the Hindu attacks on them? They killed the Jesus of Hindus?

How about the "lower class" of hindus? because they did bad things in their past lives?

Are you justifying retaliations if it was directed at civilians who belong to same ethnic or religion that certain violent people come from? If so you are so anti-semite, and justify the terror on Israel.

opposite to you, I'm Arab and I condemn both Hindu and Muslim violence, and I don't support Palestinian attacks on Israel. I'm not pro-Islamists either. I'm secular Arab

2/25/2009 01:31:00 PM
Anonymous said...

Christian missionaries have been known to go around bribing people and even in some cases doing forced conversions. Their aim is to uproot people from their indigenous culture by teaching them that salvation can only be found through Jesus. they also killed a swami who tried to reconvert several tribespeople. not to condone the violence but this gives some of the background behind it.

2/26/2009 06:57:00 AM
Anonymous said...

To anonymous,
Christian and non-Christian have the right for free speech and to invite people to their religion, I don't care if they give money or not. Muslims, hindu or Christian attacks are not justified by that excuse/background you mentioned.

I wonder if you justify then Islamic countries' restrictions on missionaries. they are all wrong and they all do violence under the name of their gods and imaginations

3/23/2009 10:11:00 AM

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