WASHINGTON,
March 7, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The divide between
conservative and liberal America was on full display at this year's
Oscars awards, with conservatives seething that their point of view was
not represented.
"The
crazy thing is that a lot of the movies that won were movies that
villainize conservatives or are generally
anti-conservative/Republican," one aggrieved conservative wrote on
the Oscars' Web site, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Tuesday,
March 7.
"If
you want to be truly courageous and take actual risks then make a movie
that gives conservatives a fair shake or, God forbid, make a movie where
a Liberal is the bad guy."
The
Family Research Council (FRC) said the Oscar-winning movies "are
far less concerned about entertaining people than they are with trying
to shape the culture and advance a political agenda."
"Brokeback
Mountain," which won three Academy Awards including Best Director,
addressed a secret homosexual affair between two cowboys.
Its
nomination for the Oscar had drown criticism.
"I
really don't think America is ready for a homosexual love story like
this," Peter Sprigg, FRC's vice president, told the Los Angeles
Times recently.
"I'm
sure it has a great deal of appeal within the Hollywood community
itself, which is already committed to a pro-homosexual ideology."
Cold
Shoulder
American
conservatives are accustomed to frowning at liberal Hollywood, but they
were more disaffected than ever by the left-of-center themes of this
year's Oscar nominees.
The
Concerned Women for America (CWA) group complained that the few
Hollywood films it approved of had loads of popular appeal and
impressive box office, but "got the cold shoulder from Hollywood
elitists."
"The
Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a
blockbuster with Christian overtones, has failed to appeal to Academy
Awards.
Released
in December, the film has raked in more than 637 million dollars in
ticket receipts around the world.
The
same happened with the blockbuster "Passion of the Christ,"
which was snubbed at the 2004 Oscars.
Movies
with political and racial overtones barely merited any interest from the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which makes the Oscar
nominations.
Only
"Crash," the race relations drama, won the best film honor.
Steven
Spelberg's "Munich", on the 1972 killing of Israeli athletes
by Palestinians, came up empty-handed at this year’s Academy Awards.
"Paradise
Now", a film on Palestinian self-bombing driven by the travails of
life under the Israeli occupation which won a Golden Globe prize in
January, did not win the Academy Award for best foreign-language film.
