Left/Right Movies

Maybe It’s a Wonderful Life. (Friendly, self-sacrificing neighborhood bankers will save you from the Great Depression.)

Maybe Gung Ho. (Thanks to all your unionizing, you lazy American workers got laid off. Take a tip from the Japanese and sacrifice more of yourself for the team. Then your bosses will reward you!)

Actually it is the way Jerry *Michale Garibaldi * Doyle described the show at a con once.

1984 negatively portrays a right-wing (control of population, use of war to keep people in line, etc.) dystopia, while Brave New World shows a hedonistic, amoral and nonjudgmental society that, while nominally under a government, is mostly self-governing. It’s not perfectly Left vs. Right, both being extreme and not concocted with modern ideologies in mind, but the tendencies and opposition are clear.

Oceania was “right-wing” like Stalinism & Maoism are “right-wing”, in which case the term means nothing.

Re the Fordian World Community being non-judgemental & self-governing. Well, people are indeed pretty peacefully self-governing if they’ve been totally programmed since conception. And as far as non-judgemental, mention at a Community Sing that you want to get married snicker and have a baby gasp.

(With a nod to this thread)

Left wing: **ET ** and Close Encounters (Let’s all hold hands and welcome the friendly outsiders.)

Right wing: Alien and The Thing (No, no. The outsiders want to infiltrate and destroy us!)

Exactly! You think totalitarianism is a right-wing ideology? You never heard of a man named Joseph Stalin?

Red Scorpion is the ultimate right-wing fantasy. Which is hardly surprising when you consider who wrote it.

You mean like Mr. Potter? :stuck_out_tongue:

The Matrix feeds into both left and right-wing conspiracies about the “powers that be” creating a sedated, brainwashed populace. But it has more leftist elements in it. All the bad guys are corporate-looking white guys (or they’re scary dreadlocked white guys.) All the good guys are either young white people or they’re a person-of-hue. (Who does Neo get wisdom from? The Mystical Negroes–Morpheus and the Oracle. And the Key Maker is Asian.) Everyone’s dressed like an urban hipster when they step into the Matrix–no Tucker Carlson’s types allowed.

I think the Aliens epic is more leftist, with the military trying to save the aliens all the damn time. Oh yeah, and the strong female character.

Empire of the Sun: War is a horrific and dehumanizing event.

Hope and Glory: War can be an adventure!

Both are from 1987 and show WWII through the eyes of a young boy.

It’s actually a corporation (not the military) trying to save the aliens. So it does have that anti-corporate vibe going.

Would “Hoffa” qualify ? Not only the rise of the union (like “Matewan”), but how, once established, the union itself becomes corrupt and self-serving.

What about The Last Emperor? 1987, WWII (and a bit more) through the eyes of a young boy.

Right-wing: The Chronicles of Narnia
Left-wing: His Dark Materials

Well, its a good movie, sure. But do you consider it left, right or neither?

It really covers a LOT longer historical period than either of the other two though, from his birth through old age.

I haven’t a notion of what the contrasting movie would be but Forrest Gump struck me as quite rightwing.

I believe Roger Ebert proposed the Tom Cruise flick Born on the Fourth of July as a natural counterpoint to Forrest Gump. I haven’t seen that one myself though.