The Pursuit of Happyness is really bad. Will Smith's inspirational moment is going to the New York Stock Exchange and seeing all the happy rich guys in suits walking around, and wanting to be like them. Having to do stuff like brown-nose executives, sleep in train station bathrooms and pull his son out of daycare due to lack of money are presented not as flaws of the system but evidence of Smith's smart bootstraps-oriented thinking. This movie is the Mein Kampf of liberalism.

  • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Great thread idea.

    I will admit this is not "pure liberalism" since it has some ostensible critiques of liberalism. It's also a great film, unlike "The Pursuit of Happiness". But I present, for your entertainment, the :LIB: brain of "You've Got Mail"

    1. Meg Ryan starts off with the ostensibly "liberal" David Brooks (it's always David Brooks in my mind). The big reason that she breaks up with him is he's pissed that she's not sufficiently mad that her aunt fucked Franco. (for those who haven't seen, yes, THAT Franco. Fucking fascists was a pretty great laugh in the late 90's i guess!) Also, she didn't :vote:. Note how confused these politics are. On the one hand, it's performatively anti-fascist. On the other hand, it's basically :LIB: vote shaming.
    2. Tom Hanks's corporate overlord Borders destroys Meg Ryan's petit bourgeois bookstore. This is all played entirely inconsequentially. Meg Ryan's actual finances are never really in danger - instead, it's just the history of her family store being destroyed. There's never material stakes - indeed, Franco's mistress just works there for shits and giggles, since she bought Intel stock super cheap.
    3. Back to David Brooks - his big act of resistance to the corporate bookstore is to write an op-ed praising his girlfriend's bookstore. This is like, maximum New York Media :sicko-spin: - literally imagining that writing some Atlantic article can change things. Of course (and here, this is why it's good, since it clearly recognizes the limits of liberalism) the op-ed also does jack shit - Meg Ryan still goes out of business.
    4. The nostalgia for the petit bourgeois "small shops" is a red herring, since the closure of the business allows for Meg Ryan to become a children's book author. From one form of "small business" to another.

    I think that the advantage of this film over others (and why it's not the purest uncut liberalism) is that Nora Ephron is smart enough to leave space where one can, if they squinted, see a critique of capital in this movie. However, the late 90's vibes (and just the genre of romcom) does a great job hiding it. Starship Troopers, this is not.