There is a scene in the Tom Cruise film All the Right Moves where a young football player (Cruise) explodes at his coach. The team had a victory locked up when the coach called a bad play that resulted in a fumble and a loss. In the locker room, the coach tells Cruise that he gave up. Cruise speaks up: “You called a bad play, Coach”, he says. “We didn’t give up, you gave up”.
I thought of that scene recently when I was thinking about how tired I’m getting of conservatives complaining about the liberalism of popular culture. In fact, I don’t think the popular culture is all that liberal. I think conservatives have so given up on popular culture, and become so addicted to what I call outrage orgasms, that they may not even care anymore what’s playing at the theaters, on TV, and on iPods. Every time I see Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity ranting about our degenerate popular culture, I’m willing to bet good money that none of them have read a novel, seen a movie, or listened to a new album in years. Why should they? It’s much easier to monitor the news for the latest liberal folly and then work yourself into an outrage orgasm. It’s much more fun than actually engaging in and celebrating contemporary art, which may contradict your rage and therefore cut into your audience.
In the past twenty-four hours, I have had three pop culture experiences that provided joy, intellectual engagement, and food for the soul. I saw the horror movie The Conjuring, finished an astonishing novel called The Interestings, and bought a record by Sara Bareilles on iTunes. Each experience involved immersion into works produced in Hollywood, the elite world of New York publishing, and by an American pop music artist who was once a judge on the show The Sing-Off. And each experience reinforced rather than subverted conservative themes.
The Conjuring is a terrifying new film about a house haunted by demons. The theme is that evil is quite real, and that the best way to confront it is with faith, organized religion, old school courage and spousal love.
The Interestings is the best novel I’ve read in ten years. Written by Meg Wolitzer, it tells the story of six friends who meet at a summer camp in the Berkshires in the 1970s. The novel follows them throughout life, and as I was completely engaged by this work of genius, I realized that Meg Wolitzer had captured nothing less than the very magic of being alive itself. (Chesterton once said that the greatest adventure is being born.) The Interestings deals with themes of talent, envy, illness, wealth, poverty, moral courage, cowardice, and friendship, and finds grace in the transitions we go through in life, as well as exhilaration in the momentum of our journey in this world. It is an absolutely stunning work of fiction, and has several moments that conservatives would like. Without giving anything away, let me just say that the 1960s hippies don’t come off very well. The Interestings argues, like the film The Incredibles (which is popular amongst conservatives), that some people have more talent than others, and that we should celebrate that instead of trying to level the playing field.
Finally, I just uploaded some music from iTunes. One of my purchases is one of top selling albums on iTunes: The Blessed Unrest by Sara Bareilles. Bareilles is a gifted singer/songwriter who uses traditional jazz and pop structures to build intelligent and spiritual songs about life. In fact, with its beautiful engagement with the amazing journey that is life itself, and the magic of the things we find here – songs include “Little Black Dress”, “Eden”, and “Manhattan”. Full of beauty at what we find in front of our faces, The Blessed Unrest would make for a good soundtrack to The Interestings.
The Conjuring. The Interestings. The Blessed Unrest. This, my friends, is a small bounty. You won’t see any of those things discussed in the conservative media. It hurts me to say it, but it seems that they prefer the self-love of political apoplexy to the surrender that comes with engaging great art. Tom Cruise had it right in All the Right Moves. The culture didn’t quit. The conservatives did.
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