Hollywood Finds Room for Outrage Over Burma. Is it a bit too easy? And thoughts on Juno.

If anyone still thinks that Hollywood is basically 'liberal' should pay attention here.

Besides the conservative pro-war and torture themes they often use, the low probability that just any Hollywood professional (except for a select few) will come out and oppose unpopular causes shows it's an opportunistic town, not a liberal one.

I'd call Hollywood more libertarian than liberal, and many big names and hidden money people are basically conservative except in the realms that conservatism threatens their ability to make a lot of money. 

Excerpt Dennis Perrin's Huffington Post report (linked here at it's copy on AlterNet) "Hollywood's Selective Outrage".

"'Hitler is alive in Burma' read the words scrawled on a cardboard sign, held aloft by a sweet-faced Ellen Page, the Juno star, in a 90-second human-rights public awareness message that began showing on video-sharing Web sites last week."

So began a recent New York Times piece about yet another Hollywood celeb concern, this time, human rights in Burma. The Burmese Hitler is played by Gen. Than Shwe, the latest but not last Hitler that we'll see, depending on geopolitical or pressure group need. That Juno's lovable homeskillet Page probably had no idea who Than Shwe was before the PSA was shot is not important. She's a hot item, and as Jack Healy of the Human Rights Action Center put it, "you have to 'brand' it up. It's the nature of the business now."

Human rights as Cocoa Puffs, Burger King, and Sunny D., to keep it on the same Page. What better emblem for a dying, erratic empire. Even its humanitarians are scrambling for market share and prominent product placement.

Read rest at source.  I don't know if I'd describe Hollywood as dying myself.

 And I don't see many of the rest of us letting our careers go up in smoke to either help Palestine or stop the war in Iraq (where we are playing the role of Israel to their Palestine with oil).  So why do we expect any Hollywood people to throw themselves on the barby?

But, I thought the article was clever since I just watched Juno last week and from the first, when the Sunny D was pushed into my face, to the last, I saw mostly product placement and pandering.  I don't see why it was nominated for best picture, though.

One product placement in the film I've never heard mentioned, was the message from the right to life groups.  The abortion clinic was a creepy, weird, and an almost abusive place full of scuzzy people, unlike the professional offices most young women visit.  Meanwhile the one pro-life demonstrator was a sweet high school student, not a group of loud chanting control freaks that many have encountered in real life.  I'm so glad they cleared that up for us.  

There's a reason that the Supreme Court lets states demand that the demonstrators stand back from the patients outside clinics.

Another message of the movie was that if you carry a fetus to term, everything is going to work out alright.  You will be able to toss  a child off to someone else living the middle class lifestyle with an easy conscience.

Unfortunately, if a young woman isn't cute, white, middle class, and seemingly normal, or if she doesn't have a perfect pregnancy outcome, the likelihood that the baby can be passed off to a family that wants and can afford to give it a good life diminishes rapidly.

But hey, kids raised under poverty, poor parental supervision, and other stresses make good fodder for the war machine.  Especially now that military recruiters are harvesting the prisons . 

And, as long as they have new soldiers the war hawks can continue with their invasions, which, after Afghanistan, turned a corner from necessary to apparently more about getting our hands on oil for Exxon and Chevron.

So if you think a bunch of poorly raised young people should end up paying the price for us to have cheap resources, I suppose you wonder  "What's the down side?".  Well, for one, if you're selfish, you might want to look at the price of oil these days.

And, in the future, the debt may destroy the hope of a good life in the US faster than we can imagine.  In fact, even with just the one unnecessary war, they might be at an end because of the trillions of dollars we'll spend on the disaster.

If it's not all about you, then you'll already be thinking of the people being killed.

And yes, the ruling junta Myanmar are bad folks (See LA Times "Myanmar exports rice as cyclone victims struggle " though you have to ask yourselves whether any American company wouldn't do basically the same thing, honor previous contracts before feeding hungry people in their immediate locality, and basically much the same thing was done in New Orleans). Also we and our allies have done some pretty terrible things just in the last few years.  Things that rival the actions of our last "Hitler",  Saddam Hussein. 

What is scary is that Myanmar does have oil, too.  One can only hope that they don't have enough to make an invasion too tempting.  If we're lucky the posturing from the Bush administration is just that.  Last year in office..."Throw money at my 'Freedom Foundation'!" from our boy, Bushie.  After all, an ex president's got to live in style somehow.   

By all means,lets send food. Pressure the government to treat their people better.  But Americans are wiser these days, I hope, and when the hype mounts we see the danger that lies behind it, and we keep our eyes on the damage we do when we think our government can charge into a country, effect regime change and slip out that back quickly carrying promises of cheap natural resources for major campaign contributors. 

After WW2 some Axis leaders were hanged for thinking they could get away with war for natural resources (dressed up as preemptive invasions to control dangerous elements in other's nations that were actually neighbors to the offending countries (Germany and Japan).   What is new with our actions in Iraq is the distance. Our leaders tried to claim we could be attacked by terrorists from a nation 5000 miles away, controlled by leader that didn't like our terrorist enemies and who ruled what air strikes from us allowed of his nation with an iron grip.

tags: myanmar  burma  cyclone nargis  pro life  juno  

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