The Irrepressible Rothbard

August 1992

Heralded and beloved by the left as Robert Altman’s “comeback” movie, this “satire” on Hollywood is both unfunny and meretricious. Supposedly a critique of Hollywood’s commercialism from the standpoint of pure art, it actually panders shamelessly to the mob’s love of celebrity by one of the oldest tricks in the book: quick, little cameo shots at Hollywood “in” locations, leading people in the audience to nudge their escorts and whisper: “Ooohh, isn’t that_______?” throughout the movie. Also, the “good guys” keep making references to pure, avant-garde films of the past, which are allegedly being betrayed in today’s Hollywood. But when you get right down to it, this “betrayal” of purity comes down to happy endings, which are still stubbornly and apparently inexplicably favored by the dumb bourgeoisie.

This movie led me to ruminate about the tremendous cultural decline from the quasi-Commie Old Left of the good old days of cinema to the nihilistic New Left of today. Such great Old Left movies, for example, as Casablanca may have pushed a Commie message (Humphrey Bogart as stand-in for America, tough-talking but with a heart of gold, originally isolationist but slowly but surely drawn into World War II as he/it became aware of the horrors of “fascism”), but they did so totally within the trappings of the bourgeois Old Culture. Neither were Old Left movies afraid of pleasing the audience by way of happy endings. (And what’s wrong with happy endings, anyway, except that they make the audience feel happy and they don’t push the message that life is evil and meaningless?) But now the grand Old Culture is not only cast aside but scorned and ridiculed, and this nihilist message seems to have the highest priority on the current left agenda.

As the protagonist and major “player,” Tim Robbins sleepwalks through a zombie performance, which has naturally been extravagantly praised by the critics as one of the great acting jobs of the year.

Would that Robert Altman stay away permanently.

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

The Old Culture returns in a warm, affectionate story about the American Girls’ Professional Baseball League that was established by some baseball owners during World War II and lasted until the early 1950s. The movie catches the spirit of the 1940s, and its feminist points are therefore never abrasive. Fortunately, the 1990s sensibility is kept out of the film. Geena Davis is excellent as the star baseball player, and director Penny Marshall forges good team performances out of all the players, including even the notorious Madonna, who is kept subdued and amiable in a minor role as “All the Way, Mae,” the strumpet of the team.

The movie falters in the last scenes, when the girl ballplayers of the 1940s go to a reunion in the mid-1980s at Cooperstown, New York, and reminisce over old times. The problem is not only the older actresses who impersonate Davis, Madonna, etc. forty years later, but even more the mixing-in of the real reunion of the professional girls’ league at the same time, ending the movie during the final credits with a pathetic and quietly grim scene of these elderly ladies desperately trying to play baseball. The film should have stayed within the forties’ context.

Any worries that A League of Their Own is too feminist could be eased by reading Georgia Brown’s ranting attack in the Village Voice, denouncing the movie for depicting women as emotional (how unrealistic!) and as not being sufficiently anti-male.

And what a pleasure to hear the word “girl” spoken again, and with no stern schoolmaster-type rushing up to explain why that term is politically incorrect! Perhaps someday Old Culture films will be made in the context of current life, and not just as historical set-pieces.