Didactic entertainment

In response to Jonah Goldberg: Conservatives Don’t Need a Movie Studio:

That’s a point well-made about the hopes of conservatives to influence culture, John.  You don’t do it by creating a conservative movie studio and putting out the right-wing equivalent of the Left’s mega-bombs from the Bush years.  I don’t know if the concept of a conservative-owned studio is inherently bad, provided it avoided that kind of ham-fisted misstep… but it would be a difficult mistake to avoid.

The problem is that the other approach, conservatives infiltrating the liberal studio system, has borne somewhat limited fruit.  It’s probably easier said than done, but perhaps the best solution is for conservatives to make really excellent, popular films animated by our themes, rather than boring, didactic politicized clunkers.  A great movie or TV show that makes people think is more useful than a contentious movie that annoys its audience.  We just need a few dozen more Christopher Nolans and we’re all set.  

And yet… I sometimes wonder how much mileage the Left gets out of those nasty little “sucker punches” it scatters through otherwise non-political entertainment.  That’s the sort of thing the older, better films you admire didn’t do, but it’s everywhere now.  And I wonder if that sort of mindless reinforcement of liberal themes, and relentless slander of their enemies, does more for their cultural grip over politics than openly political movie and TV dramas.