Political symbology and general criticism

I should have known better. Any man with good tastes in movies has to take a hit when he joins into an exclusive monogamous relationship with the average American woman these days. Most nights degrade into some discussion about what movie we should rent On Demand. There might be something good available On Demand right now, but I’ll never see it. Anything that looks like it might have any kind of Oscar buzz is derided for being too serious, too artistic, or “too thinky”, and is passed up for something more like Safe – a mindless shoot-‘em-up – or this claptrap. I’ll start with the most basic objections I have to this movie before I move on to what I believe to be political symbology. ****Spoiler alert!!****

On first glance, you might think this is supposed to be a family comedy. Like Bad Santa, the plot revolves around an orphan child who comes into contact with lots of corrupted individuals. And perhaps not unlike Bad Santa, this movie will be a colossal flop because the film’s makers couldn’t decide what kind of movie they were making, and ended up with something that appealed to nobody. It has an R rating. After I watched it, I understood why; though I could not understand why the movie centered on a child, if it wasn’t intended to be watched by children. At least in Safe, the Chinese girl is really just a plot device, and you never feel like children would be watching Jason Statham kill dozens of guys just to experience the friendship arc between him and the girl.

My girlfriend is adopted, and her background ends up being very similar to the girl in the movie, because she was bounced around between foster homes a lot at that age. My girlfriend is very sensitive about her background, so I thought this would be a tough movie for her to watch. Fortunately, the movie completely misses the mark on that. The politically correct revelation about Destiny's birth mother comes when the adoption agency arrives to tell her adopted parents that her biological mother is dead: “that she was a good person who just fell on hard times”. Well, you know how it goes, once your rent is late, and your car gets repossessed, you give up your kid so you can start getting your finances back on track. Its unclear if she ever had interacted with her biological mother since her birth, but the picture she is given shows the mother with Destiny as a baby. It seems unlikely that she gave her up at birth and was able to take a picture with the baby some months later. Usually, when a mother gives her child up for adoption, the birth day is the last time they get to see the child. Now, to contrast their summation that a mother that gives up their child at some point after birth “just fell on hard times”, I’ll speak to my girlfriend’s experience. Her mother left her and her brother at home at ages 4 and 7 respectively, and went somewhere – possibly to get a pack of smokes. The neighbor heard a little 4 year-old girl crying, called child protective services, who came and found an unattended 4 and 7-year old, and took them into custody. Pretty irresponsible of a mother to do, but give her the benefit of the doubt; maybe it was an emergency. Once the kids were taken into custody, the mother, and any father that may or may not have been in the picture never attempted to get the kids back. No members of the extended family came forth to take care of the kids until the parents could work out their issues. No one ever came back for them, and that fact alone has caused more emotional issues for her and people like her than anything. And no one ever came back for Destiny, though it is suggested she was given up some time before her ability to form memories (age 4), and the girl hears of her mother’s death when she is about ten years old. It’s not said that the mother died recently, but you get the idea: the mother had some number of years to reclaim her daughter but didn’t. Do you think that’s really because she couldn’t pay her cell-phone bill, or maybe because she’s shooting heroine or smoking crack? I guess if she found out her mother was some crack-whore, which was more likely to be true, she wouldn’t have been so inspired to sculpt her at the end.

Next, you’d think that art was easy after watching this movie. Destiny has a natural artistic talent that is not explained at all. When talking about her childhood, she never suggests that her artistic endeavors helped her to cope with being bounced from foster home to foster home. I believe there are child prodigies who have natural ability, but unlike August Rush, it’s never delved into. In August Rush, its suggested that because of being surrounded by musician-types, having musicians as birth parents, combined with some “god-given” ability, that the music just flows out of him like a conduit of energy. In this movie, she just kinda shows up, and its assumed that what she’s doing – what all these butter sculptors are doing – isn’t that hard. She doesn’t do well because she’s talented, she does well because sculpting isn’t that hard. I’ve dated artists who would take great offense at this. Also, she draws a detailed picture of tree limbs in her Progressive private school art class, though I’ve had many visual artists tell me that just because you’re good at drawing doesn’t mean you can sculpt, and vice versa. It’s like saying I can play the oboe just because I can play guitar. She sculpts, and no indication is ever given that she is familiar with the tools necessary to make the sculptures, or that she has the experience necessary to know what specialized tools are required to make complex sculptures. Later, she is given a set of expensive kitchen knives by the stripper, though it’s hard for me to believe that kitchen knives – however expensive – are the right tools for sculpting. This notion that art is easy doesn’t end with Destiny. The reigning butter sculpting champion, Bob Pickler is asked to step down, so his wife decides that she is going to enter and win to keep their family’s legacy alive. When she first says this, I assumed that she meant that he was going to continue sculpting, and that she would turn in his sculptures as her own. I mean, how can a woman with no indication of artistic talent or experience expect to win a sculpting contest? I feel like the film’s makers lampoon this idea of sculpting butter so much that they must think that because its butter, anyone can do it, even if they couldn’t sculpt in any other medium. Sculpting clay? That takes talent and an art school education. But butter? A four year old could make Michelangelo’s David in 15 minutes with butter! Sure enough, without the slightest help from her husband, the reigning champ of butter sculpting, the wife goes to work and actually produces some apparently technically-difficult sculptures: a family sitting at the dinner table, and the Kennedy assassination. The view also seems to be that art is so subjective that after Destiny’s sculpture is tampered with by Boyd Bolton, his defacing (literally) didn’t ruin the sculpture, rather it made it even more profound! Sensing the film-maker’s attitudes towards art as the movie progressed, I called this as soon as it happened.

They seemed to be treating the butter sculpting contest as a pageant, because they couldn’t just let the sculptures speak for themselves. Kristen Schaal (who I love, but was really just reprising her character from FotC) gave the only honest speech about her kittens in a basket sculpture. Then, the stripper made some big plea about her scarlet letter “sculpture”, and how women who take money for sex are looked down on by society. Destiny follows her with an even more heart-wrenching speech about Harriet Tubman, freedom, growing up black in America and chasing the American dream. By the time Laura Pickler gets to speak, I felt exactly as she did, that more emphasis was given to the speeches than to the sculptures themselves. And, since when are kids that eloquent? The way the dialogue was written for Destiny throughout the movie rang of a writer who doesn’t know how children communicate.

When Laura Pickler and Kristen Schaal’s character see Destiny’s first sculpture, and Laura suggests that Destiny was playing the race card, I thought for sure they were mistaken about what she had sculpted. It was a figure sitting on a train, it could have been anyone. Anyone associated with trains, at least. Sure enough, it was Harriet Tubman, and though you’re supposed to be offended by Pickler’s suggestion that Destiny had played the race card, that is exactly what she did. And this was a theme throughout the movie. A little black girl bounced from foster home to foster home (many - if not all - with white parents), adopted by white parents, competing against white people in a competition that had been dominated by a white man (Bob Pickler) whose legacy is trying to be kept alive by his white wife. Destiny is the only black person in the whole movie, and – you’re led to believe – in the entire state of Iowa. The writer, Jason A. Milcallef is not black, so it’s not as if he’s writing from his experience of growing up the only black boy in a town of racist white people in middle America. But every person that Destiny describes with her inner narration mentions that they are white, and white people are crazy here, and white people are really crazy later, and they’re whatever still later. And she’s worried about that the contest sign-up will really be a GOP convention who will string her up, or full of racist ninja’s. It’s all about race to this character, and everyone’s reaction to her is about her race. The boy in her class who may or may not be her adopted brother (since he’s later seen in her house standing with her adoptive parents) makes a point of telling her that he thinks black people are cool. I would have preferred to see a movie with the exact same cast and plot, but not feel the need to draw attention to the fact that the main character is black, or suggest that her race is of importance to other characters. Can’t she just be black without the entire movie being about the fact that she’s black, and having that be the dominant part of her identity, to the exclusion of the much more significant identity of being an orphan?

Going back to the defacing of Destiny’s sculpture by Boyd Bolton, does anyone ever stop to question it? The rematch was only granted because of the ridiculously orchestrated claims of cheating by Laura Pickler and Bolton. Shouldn’t integrity have been a higher priority for the judging committee, and put locks on the structures that house the sculptures to prevent tampering? Why was it necessary to judge the sculptures the next day instead of immediately after they finished? And, since that was the rematch to decide the winner of their county’s competition to decide who would compete at the fair on the state level, what happened with that? I’ll put that in the lost loose ends along with the Butter committee offering Bob Pickler a role judging the competition that his own wife might ultimately have taken place in. Another loose end says Alicia Silverstone was in this movie. Was she really? You see her and even hear a couple of lines, but no she’s not really IN this movie.

I don’t believe in God but I feel like Christians got a bad rap in this movie. It wasn’t any of the significant characters who prayed to God or even mentioned it, but rather the corruptible, illiterate jock, Boyd Bolton. He prays to God, thanking him for sending Laura Pickler – who he had dated in high school – to *beep* him”. This is also hypocritical, since he was committing adultery on his wife, while engaging Laura Pickler in adultery on her husband. Clearly, a Christian should know better than to violate commandments, and certainly not to thank God as if he made it happen. That he doesn’t understand suggests that Christians are stupid, and – like him – are probably illiterate. Also, the stripper/prostitute uses fraudulent references to being born again in her speech about her scarlet letter sculpture in order to sway the supposedly gullible, moronic audience and judges to vote for her despite her clear lack of sculpting ability.

The stripper/hooker, Brooke, is a baffling character in this movie. If you removed her entirely you could have had the exact same movie and then have time to fill in the plotholes that were leftover. Bob Pickler, the reigning butter champ is asked to resign so new artists can have a chance, and after a fight with his wife, he goes to a local strip club. Its not explicit as to whether he goes there a lot, or has a pre-existing arrangement with Brooke, but on this occasion he offers her money to have sex with him, which they do in the car. Bob’s wife Laura witnesses the transaction, and after deliberating, decides to T-bone the car while they are inside. Miraculously no one dies, and when Laura and Bob return home, she offers him an Advil for “his penis”. However, in the confusion, Bob doesn’t pay Brooke for the sex. So her next appearance is when she tracks him down to his house and asks for the money he owes her. Let’s be liberal about this and say that two people should be allowed to consent to a transaction where one trades sex with the other for money. Fine. Let’s also suggest that Laura is more or less okay with her husband paying another woman for sex because she’s just in the marriage for the glory of his butter fame and the money he’s made along the way. Fine. He’s painted throughout this movie as a kind, nice guy who just likes to sculpt butter, and his life is made hell by his social-climbing media-whore wife. But don’t you think he should pay the prostitute? Nice guys pay their prostitutes!

I’m not sure why Brooke hates Laura so much. Bob is a married man who seems to have told Brooke that he loves her the same night that he paid her for sex, or rather tried to. When she confronts him afterwards, what she presses him on is the money, not the relationship she thought they’d have. He tries to act like they never met, not giving her the slightest hint that they would be together in the absence of his wife. So why does Brooke enter the contest just to spite Laura, and why does she give Destiny a $1200 set of knives to help her in her rematch against Laura? Because its a plot device. It doesn’t make an iota of sense. And to the degree you believe she has a right to be upset, following the plot device, you’re engaging in the delusion that a real person would suffer from if they felt that way. But instead of being seen as the crazy stalker, Brooke’s character is glorified. And the woman who is trying to keep her family together is seen as the one who’s crazy. So Brooke is on a vendetta against a man’s wife, when all she really wants is the money she was owed for the sex they had. And she ultimately gets it from Bob’s daughter, Kaitlen, who inexplicably becomes sexually attracted to Brooke. Where a daughter that lives at home gets $1,200 and is willing to spend that on lesbian sex with a prostitute, I’ll never know. This was another unnecessary part of the movie, that really served as a feeble attempt to close the plothole of the money Bob owed Brooke.

Destiny is extraordinary as a child for consistently taking the high road. She offers to shake Laura’s hand a few times throughout the movie as a sign of good sportsmanship, and is not unnerved by Laura’s refusal. When Laura and Boyd make the claim that Destiny cheated the original contest, without ever asserting herself about the legitimacy of her victory, she agrees to a rematch. And at the end when she finally wins, she tells Laura, “this isn’t all you have,” referring to the butter contest, and then gives her a hug. First of all, is the hug supposed to be the thing she has besides the butter contest? Because it certainly isn’t obvious what that other thing is supposed to be. Second, I don’t know about you, but if I tried to shake someone’s hand and they refused, I wouldn’t try to hug them. Besides the fact that they clearly don’t want to be touched by you, they might be the kind of people who don’t like to be touched at all by people they don’t know, and why would you want to violate someone’s comfort zones that way? The most interesting thing to me is that this moment happens when they hug, and you think maybe Laura turns a corner, and that Destiny hugging her suggests that she accepts Laura, and forgives the desperation that drove her to act the way she did. But in the very next seen, Destiny is narrating where everyone is after the event, and she’s right back to calling Laura a crazy white lady. So, the hug meant nothing to Destiny. Maybe Laura wouldn’t change, but she wasn’t the one who initiated the hug.

So, this movie bugged me for a few days, and it finally dawned on my why. Why most people would completely overlook the plotholes, the poorly developed characters, the unrealistic actions and words of a child character. It’s because Destiny is supposed to be President Barrack Obama. And while this movie was made last year, and it was impossible to know who would be running against Obama for his second term, it was likely that it would be a white person with conservative values, at least mildly religious and would be seen by the media community as inherently evil and coming from privilege. So whoever that person would be, could be represented by Laura Pickler. To Hollywood, Obama is their little black orphan who speaks with incredible eloquence, has enormous potential and talent, and can do no wrong. And the Republican ticket to Hollywood is just somebody who didn’t earn what they have in life, but uses every bit of privilege to cheat other people out of what they deserve. If you doubt for a second that the symbolism was intentional, ask me why this movie was completed last year and submitted to film festivals 12 months ago, but they are releasing it to theaters ONE MONTH before the election? Being produced by The Weinstein Company and having an all-star cast, it certainly wasn’t due to financial reasons. By the way, I’ve read that this movie has been suggested to be a satire of the 2008 primaries, and I feel like that fed into some parts (Bob Pickler, the reigning champ would be Bill Clinton). But, I don’t think any democrats disliked Hillary Clinton the way you’re supposed to dislike Laura Pickler. They just liked Obama more. I suppose my instinct about Destiny being Obama is incontrovertible then, and whether or not Laura Pickler represents Hillary Clinton more than she represents the film-makers view of Republicans is up for discussion. The screenplay was written in 2008, so the primaries may have been the premise for the screenplay, but by the time it got into production, it became about something else.
The timing just seems a little too convenient, don’t you think?