Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Liberals have whales and women to save, but conservatives aren’t known for our effective emotional arguments. This trailer, however, for an education reform drama set to open nearly everywhere Friday almost makes me cry:
Now it’s well known that the entertainment industry is deeply liberal. And, if Tim Groseclose’s research on the news media applies to entertainment, as seems entirely likely, that has helped pull America left over the years.
Is there now a cross-current?
Won’t Back Down (WBD) is the newest from Walden Media, which is backed by the well-known but elusive Philip Anschutz, who also backs the Washington Examiner and Weekly Standard. Walden also produced the 2010 education reform documentary Waiting for Superman, 2006’s Amazing Grace about William Wilberforce, and the Chronicles of Narnia films.
But Superman was a documentary, and few people typically see those. Narnia and related films have positive messages, but none political. WBD is the first political story out from Walden, and that makes it more interesting to me (beyond my day job in ed policy).
Today, Walden producer Chip Flaherty noted the movie’s singularity among Walden’s lineup, placing WBD in a long tradition of movies about normal folks accidentally becoming heroes, like Erin Brockovich, Rocky, and It’s a Wonderful Life.
“For once it’s not William Wilberforce, who is a hero to the movement, but it’s the common person,” he said. “That’s the best story because it’s a celebration of free will and the importance of each individual, not only to their family, but in the community.”
WBD has been viciously protested and attacked, largely by unions representing the education establishment even before its release (though, ironically, its stars are unionized and call themselves “progressive left”), for portraying schools as desperately broken. The single mom who just wants her third grader to read is stymied at every turn by bureaucracy that clogs nearly every real-life school district. It's impossible to fire poor teachers and school board meetings are both inaccessible and impotent.
The movie is striking, energizing, and a pitch-perfect rage against the bureaucrat machine. But I wonder two things. First, because it portrays a failing school, will large numbers of parents and community members, who persistently and in large majorities rate local schools much higher than public schools in general (though that’s logically impossible), feel little impetus despite the movie-makers’ hopes of providing an inflection point? Second, if people do finally understand the system is broken, how likely are they to demand more answers from government rather than themselves?
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Apr '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
You didn't mention Blind Side, a movie that elevated most all of Hollywood's favorite whipping boys when it showed wealthy, white, Southern, Christians as modern ennobled souls. Regular folk in a way, but wealthy to be sure, and not taking on establishment, just one man.
If teacher's unions are protesting it, it'll get free media as well as additional interest from the bipartisan masses who are frustrated with the mess and the idiotic solutions that come one after another.
30, 40 years ago the system was rife with progressive experiments with a high failure rate, now they're just going straight for indoctrination leaving the basics behind.
The adoption of Affirmative Action was the death knell in that schools now had a mandate more important than education.
Edited on September 25, 2012 at 11:45pmAug '10
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Judging only by the trailer, it bugs me a bit for the same reason The Impossible (again, only judging by the trailer) bugs me. Why does Hollywood think people will only be interested in these issues and these stories if the protagonists are white?
Accuse me of political correctness if you want, but I think I'm more annoyed by the sense of white guilt this sort of thing implies.
Jun '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Without having seen the film- here's an educated suspicion: Like the football team of 3rd stringers that takes on Big School Prep with an good coach, this movie will compress the struggle into a few months, and then they win (hopefully). It will ignore the brutal reality that even winning can take years, and the daughter will be likely be in 8th grade by the time everything is sorted out. Sad.
May '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Erin Brockovich! She became part of the very structures and corruptions she "fought" against. Just a cheap hustler. Please don't use her as an example of 'good' people.
Jul '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
May I just interject that Maggie Gyllenhall is borderline unwatchable and almost ruined The Dark Knight for me. Who carved those laugh lines into that mug of hers. I couldn't stand her in Donnie Darko either.
Aug '10
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
I think she's kinda cute. Awful, but cute.
Apr '11
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
When you mentioned "It's a Wonderful Life" as a movie depicting an accidental hero, I wonder if you were actually thinking of "Mr Smith Goes to Washington"?
Apr '11
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Erin Brockovich did not change. She is today part of the trial lawyer structure of corruption that she joined before she left law school and is still a simply terrible person.
Nonetheless, the semi-fictional film character Erin is widely understood to fit into the narrative format ThePullmans describes.
Feb '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
I will gladly go and see anything being protested by the teachers unions. Thanks for the review.
Mar '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
FYI, friends, I mentioned the movies WBD's producer did yesterday, not my own list of movies concerning the little guy versus a behemoth. So it's him putting their movie in this tradition of story.
Um, one of the protagonists is black.
Edited on September 26, 2012 at 4:29pmAug '10
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
ThePullmanns: FYI, friends, I mentioned the movies WBD's producer did yesterday, not my own list of movies concerning the little guy versus a behemoth. So it's him putting their movie in this tradition of story.
Um, one of the protagonists is black.
Yabbut, in a supporting role. Not the lead. That role goes to the Hollywood sweetheart.
Again, I'm only judging from the trailer. Given Walden's track-record, it's probably a terrific movie.
Jul '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Misthiocracy
I think she's kinda cute. Awful, but cute. · 18 hours ago
I can only picture her in "Secretary"... Oops... did I say that???
Dec '10
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Misthiocracy: Judging only by the trailer, it bugs me a bit for the same reason The Impossible (again, only judging by the trailer) bugs me. Why does Hollywood think people will only be interested in these issues and these stories if the protagonists are white?
Accuse me of political correctness if you want, but I think I'm more annoyed by the sense of white guilt this sort of thing implies. · 21 hours ago
I haven't seen the movie either, but I understand it's "loosely" based on a true story. Could it be that the real life protagonists were also White?
Sep '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
When a conservative film, novel, TV program (take your pick of medium) gets fisked by the establishment media, at least you know it's doing something right. The "critics" dislike this film about as much they did those Christian-themed dramas (Fireproof, Courageous, etc.) of a few years back. Here's NPR's trashing of Won't Back Down:
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/26/161546081/wont-back-down-takes-a-too-easy-way-out?ft=1&f=1045
This kind of hostility by the right kind of people usually signals that the object of such scorn is worth checking out.
Jul '11
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
I can’t help but thinking that somewhere along the way evil crooked Republican politicians will end up being part of the problem.
Jul '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
That seems likely in an impoverished inner city...
Nov '11
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
I always wanted Edward James Olmos to come back for a sequel to Stand and Deliver in which they show how the teacher's union drove him out of the school and destroyed his math program (true story!).
Thank you for this post, I'm looking forward to seeing this!
Dec '11
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
As for the polls that show people almost universally rate their schools better than "public schools" on the whole, there are two possible reasons.
First, they are blissfully unaware of what is really going on in their local schools.
Second, they are allowing media reports about education to color their perceptions of schools they don't know, but first hand experience tells them they like what is happening at their local school. In my experience, most (not all) parents tend to fault their child when they fail, not their teachers or schools.
Dec '11
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
And that's my problem with relying on films to promote "change" - they always make it too black and white, too fast, too easy, and they will always erase any unfortunate truths that may get in the way of their message. Pure and simple, I can't trust a film like this to tell a true story, whether or not I like the message.
Mar '12
Re: Can Movies Generate Conservative Social Change? 'Won’t Back Down' Will Try
Most of the "real-life protagonists" were minorities. Failing schools tend to be heavily poor and minority. As for the "based on a true story" part, you can learn more about the true story and the law that creates this movie's drama here.
And, Mister D, about the inability of films to tell "a true story": It's true that the movie version heavily edits and simplifies to heighten the drama. But fiction has always done this, and Western Civilization has always considered fiction to tell us truths about the human condition despite its made-up content. The idea is that fiction allows us to strip away and clarify reality to see the world and ourselves as we are.
You may disagree fiction can do this, or think the movie portrays a false truth. What I've seen indicates it may offer an important moment of clarity on U.S. education.
Edited on September 27, 2012 at 2:55pm