Photo-illustration, obvs.
Conservative watchdog Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center, (enjoy one of his Hi-larious tweets, here) surveyed the media landscape and concluded that public enemy number one is Seth MacFarlane's new talking teddy bear comedy, "Ted."
To wit (with our annotations)
"Seth MacFarlane, whose $100 million contract with Fox makes him the highest paid TV writer in history,1 is now trying to take over the cineplex, with the same old shtick.2 You could pluck his oeuvre3 out of the summer movie-preview articles without any difficulty. His was the one where the teddy bear comes to life and becomes a profane slacker who practically lives inside a bong and hires hookers in groups.4
The movie's title is "Ted." It won its opening weekend with a $54 million gross at the box office. Clearly, MacFarlane's fans cannot consume enough of his pop-culture sewage.5
"Ted" is a fitting metaphor for MacFarlane himself. He is the magical creation everyone in Hollywood seems to find as cute as a furry stuffed animal. He's made his fortune by putting the crudest, most offensive utterances in the mouths of babies, dogs and completely idiotic man-children. Hollywood is never having to grow up.6
So the idea that this movie would center on a real man-boy named John Bennett who must grow up seems odd. Why grow up?7 Perpetual adolescence clearly has worked for some people.8 Here again, MacFarlane is Ted, holding back the real slackers by keeping them in a state of mental pimple-popping for his own personal gain.9
This is the plot: As a boy, Bennett has no friends, so on Christmas night he wishes on a shooting star that his teddy bear could really talk to him and be his best friend -- and then it happens. But it's supposedly much funnier when the movie fast forwards 27 years, and Bennett and his teddy bear are pot-smoking losers who watch too much television.10
Now as one of Hollywood's most vicious atheists, it would seem like quite a sellout for MacFarlane to make a movie with a "magic wishes" plot centering on Christmas night, no less.11 This movie pounds away with the usual and very tired Whack-a-Mole jokes about sex, drugs and bodily functions, presumably because it can't really plot its way out of a paper bag.12 Even the wish-upon-a-star thing is as old as "Pinocchio."13
Ask the film critics. A.O. Scott of The New York Times believes some overgrown spoiled brat in Tinseltown is phoning it in. "The sin of 'Ted' is not that it is offensive but that it is boring, lazy and wildly unoriginal. If Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ever got a hold of Ted, there would be nothing left but a pile of fluff and a few scraps of fur."14
That's our cultural elite for you.15 There's nothing wrong with being offensive, but there's something dreadfully wrong with being boring and unoriginal."16
1. Easy, cowboy, you're dangerously close to saying something negative about Fox.
2. Trying? Succeed, he has, hmm?
3. That's fancy French movie critic talk i.e. his opinions on movies are as chichi as anyone's.. Please, say "auteur" next, please, please!
4. See also, every movie comedy of the past 10 years.
5. Including, one assumes, you, Brent Bozell? You did see this, right? You wouldn't write a movie review without seeing it first, would you? Would you?
6. How dare people in the entertainment industry, entertain us, entertainingly! Your youthful exuberance is…intolerable!
7. Why grow up? Obviously, to gain the maturity necessary to attack an R rated comedy about a talking teddy bear. That's what adulthood MEANS.
8. In MacFarlane's case, the liberal fascists in Washington force every American to watch his entire "oeuvre". Perhaps you've noticed, the off switch on your remote will not work when Family Guy is on.
9. Because no one would even THINK of smoking weed and blobbing out in front of the tube if it weren't for Seth MacFarlane. Such are his superhuman powers.
10. Years of testing at the Comedy Propulsion Labs concluded that in purely technical terms, yes, it actually IS much funnier. And again with the TV bashing? See note #1
11. Sellout (noun): What one calls others who succeed in a realm far beyond one's own capacities
12. He's got a point. For instance, Brent Bozell is being pretty damn funny here without even trying.
13. Borrow a dictionary. Turn to the word, "parody." You're welcome.
14. Watch what happens here: Brent Bozell pilfers a quote from a real movie critic to bolster his own prejudices…
15. …and then insults him with the moldiest right wing meme of them all. Degree of difficulty—9.5. Annnnd, he sticks it!
16. Projection (noun): The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others. See also, Wrong, Dreadfully.
Leave a Comment:
I had no intentions of seeing "Ted". After reading Bozell's comments, I think I will!
Movies with talking animals and talking stuffed toys are for kids...
Remember, humans are talking animals too.
I always feel bad for people lacking a sense of humor. I know, they were born this way and should not be aborted JUST for that, but still, your heart is full of blood...
A sentiment after my own heart? I would have an abortion every day if only I could!
Ted is a really funny movie. Bozell is a very funny clown.
I must disagree...Bozell is about as funny as Pennywise.
Good thing we have Brent Bozo to be the arbiter of what is and isn't in good taste. Now if only there were some sort of ratings system so people would know certain movies might not b appropriate for kids and teens.
Guess I will go see it now. Twice.
After re-reading it, I actually would bet every dollar in my wallet that Bozell hasn't seen the movie.
Personally, and I'm a liberal (but kind of "old" at 62), I think the movie's previews look revolting and I think I'd totally agree with Bozell's assessment but I would never plunk down the ticket price and sit through that flick to prove the point! There are some concepts too lame for even Hollywood. I cringe! (I also cringe that I might agree with Bozell, but there you are -- a stopped clock and all that...)
Remember that L. Brent Bozo IV is the son of L. Brent Bozo III, the only "conservative" that William F. Buckley ever found so offensive that he fired him from the staff of National Review and banned him from ever showing his face in those parts again. Bozo-3 was one of the leading conservative criticics of Pope John XXIII when he apologized to the Jews for 2,000 years of Catholic anti-Semitisim and specifically banned Irish-American high school boys from holding pogroms against their Jewish school mates during Easter Week (a traditional American event until 1963). Bozo-4 has always regretted never being able to experience that rite of passage to conservative Catholic adulthood.
I don't know how many have ever seen Bozo-4 in action on the tube, but the phrase "do you provide towels with your showers?" has undoubtedly come to mind to anyone who ever has.
That the otherwise-unemployable Bozo-4 has found a life's calling getting rich from the donations of parents concerned that the evil Hollywood liberal media is seducing their innocent offspring with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, not to mention treason and questioning of parental authority, demonstrates that in America any hardworking right wing @!$%# can learn to fleece the rubes, just like the unholy Irish threesome Limpdick, Hannity-the-hammerhead, and everybody's favorite Irish a$$hole Bill O'Lielly.
I won't go see it, I haven't been to the movies in years. This is the problem, a guy gets paid a hundred million dollars by Fox and he gets to make fun of the right-wing nut jobs who watch that network and we are supposed to find sustenance in his courage? It's a very low bar, now let's see him dance under it.
I'll stand by the vicious atheist, thank you very much.
Wow - he quoted NYT to make his point. I guess it's true that Satan can quote scripture to suit his purpose. Strange bedfellows, indeed!
As we were leaving the theater I heard some kid complaining that there were too many inside jokes and he didn't get the historical references (Made by Ted mostly.) What?! Accurate historical and cultural references are what make a movie more than just slapstick.. it was epic. Sorry Bozell.. but the consensus seems to be, even among my most educated peers, that this movie was great. Lighten up, laugh once in a while. It's okay. It feels good.
New idea for movie-Mr. Ed the talking horse meets Mr. Bozo, oops I mean Bozell - the horses ass?
Francis? Is that you?
Seth works for a major corporaion. They released a product. Products is doing well. Bozell is clearly against the free market!
And we must stay with it until
we complete our mission:
To find...
...Henry Limpet.
I don't know. Henry always lived
in a world of his own.
Brett's just miffed because he wished the same thing with his Teddy Ruxpin and it didn't come to life. He's just the loser, still without friends and his "shtick" is to be holier than thou.
I like Seth McFarlane and I think that the concept for Ted is interesting, but I tend to agree that many of the jokes are seem little too predictable, at least based on the trailers that I have seen. I am reminded of the movie "Howard the Duck," which I did have the misfortune of sitting through (on TV thankfully). I think I will wait till this comes to HBO before I see it. That said, those who decry the impact of movies like this on the culture have no sense of humor.
My son recommended it to me, I saw Ted last night. We apparently have similar senses of humor. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.
I find Brent Bozell's ridiculously paleolithic conservatism and Seth McFarland's brainless crudity more or less equally predictable. I ignore them both; I can't finish a Bozell column past the first sentence and I have never lasted through an entire "Family Guy." To me it's "The Simpsons" without jokes or characters. To see you taking sides in this battle of imbeciles strikes me as weird. Is this some the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend type of thing?
Wait - what? It's not okay for atheists to write fiction? To tell stories about imaginary characters and imaginary things like magic?
Oh, right, I'm forgetting, this guy is a Conservative douchebag, and telling stories about things like imaginary friends and magic are only acceptable if you actually believe they're true.
I don't take it as seriously as this guy does... But Seth McFarlane's shows and movies ARE painfully idiotic and unfunny. He's got the narrowest range of comedy I've ever seen, and the most pronounced formula.
Easy one. If you like Family Guy, you'll probably like Ted. If you don't, you probably won't.
Bozell's oeuvre is an example of the existential angoisse that permeates the milieu of the Droite Culturelle des Hommes Blancs Furieux. He probably doesn't even like croissants.
At least he didn't talk about the mise-en-scene of the film, or its use of non-diegetic elements!