The JS' Patrick McIlheran grunts, throws rocks at Madison film festival
He not like nature pictures! Nature bad!
The Grapes Of Wrath will screen at the Tales From Planet Earth festival this weekend.
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This weekend an environmental film festival called Tales From Planet Earth will take place in Madison. The free event, which runs Friday through Sunday, will include 50 films—including a 35mm print of John Ford’s 1940 classic The Grapes Of Wrath and the acclaimed new documentary The Cove—that “explore how stories told through film shape our understanding of nature and inspire action on behalf of environmental justice and the diversity of life.” Even if an environmental film festival isn’t your sort of thing, at least they’re showing some great movies. At the very least, Tales From Planet Earth seems pretty benign, right?
Well, not if you’re The Journal-Sentinel’s conservative columnist Patrick McIlheran, who jokingly (and somewhat puzzlingly) compared the film festival’s prospective audience to the c-r-r-razy Kool-Aid drinkers at Jonestown. McIlheran’s mock incredulousness is based on a “glance” at the festival program—which reads more like a cherry-picked list of three “kooky” tree-hugger films designed to make his angsty white-suburban-dude readership chortle.
“What, do the festivities conclude with a mass suicide?” McIlheran asks. “I know the word has drifted from its origins, but insofar as modern environmentalism has become the morbid embrace of the notion (contra the evidence) that in every possible way things are going to hell, 'festival' seems hardly to apply.”
Hmm. Interesting point. Too bad McIlheran doesn’t offer any supporting evidence for the “contra the evidence” claim—or show any real understanding of the film festival he’s mocking. Oh well, it’s not like he has the means to actually research these things. What does he work for, a daily newspaper or something?
Local bloggers have had fun with McIlerhan’s attempt at making a cheap, reactionary (and unfunny) political point at the expense of a harmless film festival. Writes Illusionary Tenant: ”Did you know the Republicans are a serious party, with serious ideas? And that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is a real newspaper?”
