Thursday, June 30, 2005

Summer Scares

Shark Scares

The media appears to be salivating at the prospect that this could be another "Summer of the Shark." Two severe shark attacks, one fatal, in three days off the west coast of Florida have articles being printed with headline warnings that this may be "Just The Beginning."

Spielberg Scares



Since the summer of 1975 when a certain now-successful Hollywood director's Jaws terrified the teens off the beaches, shark attack scares have existed in the human psyche, thanks to Steven Spielberg.

Now Spielberg visits upon us his latest chronicle of cinema terror in his continuing series of screaming children flicks. I went to War of the Worlds with my older sons last night. It is a movie, both frightening and engaging. As a science-fiction motion picture, it will be critiqued as significant and important. But there's a twilight language text to this film. Spielberg has added a new chapter to his allegedly covert pedophile tendencies, in which his motion pictures (e.g. Jurassic Park, Hook, Artificial Intelligence: AI, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Twilight Zone: The Movie) appear to delight in scaring and emotionally abusing children.

This is not a novel idea. Adam Parfrey wrote a 1996 essay on Spielberg's seemingly sinister trend in his movie themes, which was reprinted in the Steamshovel Press entitled "Pederastic Park?." If you get a chance, read Parfrey's essay.

If you have young children, you might wish to think twice about them going to see the new Spielberg version of War of the Worlds. I frankly don't understand why some subplots are in there, such as the one involving the Tim Robbins character, who is one behavior away from overtly being a child molester.

4 comments:

Loren Coleman said...

Please note the use of the phrase "allegedly covert pedophile tendencies," and read this blog as a warning to young children to not watch this film. This is not a smear, although I understand some will decide to read it that way and ignore what is covertly in these films.

Loren Coleman said...

Clarifications of comments not heard merely demonstrates some people wish to read hate and anger into everything.

Peter Bernard said...

The comments which were not heard were the comments which would explain why you are asserting that there are pedophile rumors about Speilberg. You make a vague comment about something that's a very serious subject, fail to back up your outlandish claim, then tell people they should keep their children from seeing ONLY THIS ONE out of all of Speilberg's movies, then you say you're not smearing Speilberg or his film.

Now you can get a job as a human pretzel in a sideshow, you've tied yourself in knots.

I still wonder what would possess you to write something like this? What exactly is the agenda here? Why this movie? Did you just make up the pedophile accusations? How many sources does that "rumor" come from? What is it based on? And how is Tim Robbins' character in any way like a child molestor?

You have been around long enough to know exactly what you were doing.

Supreme_Martian_Overlord said...

War of the Worlds is one of the most important books ever written, as such many of the changes from the original book must be viewed very critically including the choice to add the child character. Whereas the Jurassic Park books already had child characters in them. The section of the book that Tim Robbins character is involved in is in the book originally a critisism by Wells of his mothers Calvinist Religious Beliefs, an anology of the struggle between reason and faith in a cabin-fever environment and an investigation into the ethics of murder in self defence. In Speilbergs version he has joined the character of the Curate with the Artilleryman (written by Wells to espouse some of his socialist ideals whilst also critisising the flaws of dreams without action). Adding the child into this scene and some of the disturbing additions to the dialogue brings up some very nasty issues. Whether Speilbergs trend of small screaming children has something to do with the broken home issues he continually brings up in his films or is a sign of something more sinister I do not know. I do know however that he has removed almost all of the vitally important subtext of the original work, from Wells social commentary to his themes of imperialism and complacency, and replaced them with his own.