THE SOUND OF FREEDOM
The movie The Sound of Freedom was controversial for a minute. Remember that? The plot of the film, based on a true story, is about a Special Agent who gets tired of To Catch a Predator type sting operations and strikes out on his own to rescue young girls who are the victims of sex trafficking in South American countries. The six corporations that control all American media (not kidding, there’s only six) pushed the story that this a right-wing movie based on QAnon conspiracies -- about how the world’s liberal elites are running “pedo” (child) sex trafficking rings a la Jeffrey Epstein. And they were freaking out about how the movie was doing good box office.
I noticed my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle was not covering the most newsworthy movie of the moment. I sent an email to one of their writers asking why (I won’t name the writer because the email wasn’t originally for an article). They wrote, “I haven't even heard of it. But if it's not getting reviewed, chances are it didn't screen. A lot of these movies don't screen for critics, and then the filmmakers turn around and say that they weren't reviewed as part of a conspiracy. Every Dinesh D’Souza movie has been like that. They don't WANT to get reviewed.” And so The New York Times must have bought a ticket for their negative review of the film.
There was a story about how one of the men who led the crowdfunding for Sound of Freedom was arrested for child kidnapping. Clearly this was a story pushed to discredit the film: the people so obsessed with child trafficking are doing it themselves – HYPOCRITES! Many articles did not bother to go into details about the arrest, because they know liberals who want to hate on the movie will comment and meme the headline without reading the story. But if you looked there were articles that honestly gave the details: the guy was offering living space to a woman who became accused of kidnapping during a custody dispute. And because the child was being housed on his property he was arrested as an accessory -- but the charges were later dropped. He was hardly even a major investor; he was one of 6,600 crowd-funders. There were many major news outlets and subreddit posts spreading this smear job on the guy just to score points against the movie. When I provided context about the details to redditor movie enthusiasts, I was down-voted and called a right winger. People hate the truth when it’s bad for their team in the culture war.
But culturally, it really did become a right-wing movie. For people on the right who have macho fantasies about killing bad guys, child molesters, real or imagined, are a great outlet for this impulse. Many even think that if you don’t like this film, you must be some kind of sympathizer to human trafficking. On the other hand liberals have instant contempt for this movie because they have been told it smells of QAnon. They have never visited a QAnon website but they have heard from reputable sources that’s it’s a very bad place where the worst people in the world, Donald Trump supporters, conspire to do evil to liberals.
But when you watch the movie, it’s an understated and well-made film. There’s nothing in it about the trafficing rings being caused by a liberal conspiracy. The villains are South American gangsters, not Washington elites who eat babies.
The idea behind the meme at the top of this article is that the main plot of the movie, man of action goes on dangerous journey to rescue young girl, has long been a trope of action films. This is not new stuff, it’s the plot to every Liam Neeson movie. It’s even the plot to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando. So what if major action movie stars track a guy to Hillary Clinton’s Pizza parlor? (as a reference to the conspiracy theory of how Hillary Clinton was running a trafficking ring out of a pizza parlor). Then they all make character specific jokes, like Charles Bronson’s dialogue balloon is literally the plot to Death Wish; and Steven Seagal is getting so fat it’s obvious when he uses slimmer stuntmen to do his butt-kicking. And the punchline is the girl is not actually kidnapped, she just wants to be left alone.
And I’m not taking a left or a right position with this meme, I’m making fun of action movies in general and linking them to QAnon and The Sound of Freedom.
’Nuff said.