Leftists are very angry that the hit horror film, “A Quiet Place,” which depicts a family living in silence, evading an alien force that has consumed most of humanity, allows its characters to carry — and even use — guns.
The New Yorker called “A Quiet Place’s” politics, “regressive,” calling the picture a right-wing “fantasy of survivalism” where both the father and mother wield firearms in order to protect their growing family. The family, the magazine moans, lacks an “authentic inner expression” but manage to “bring to the fore” the “idealistic elements of gun culture.”
It’s also white supremacist, The New Yorker’s critic argues, if you consider the family, who lives in silence so as not to alert angry, shelled aliens to their presence, is representative of a “silent white” majority that “doesn’t dare to speak freely for fear of being heard by the super-sensitive ears of the dark others.”
Those “dark others” are not minorities — they’re voracious aliens. And the aliens aren’t, as far as the filmmakers are concerned, a metaphor for progressive America.
But — and hopefully this doesn’t spoil the movie — the movies true awfulness shines through in scenes where the family must defend themselves in one-on-one combat with the mysterious extra-terrestrials. Far from being a “progressive” force out to illuminate the human race, the aliens are mostly there to devour anyone who makes the slightest noise (while blind, the aliens have extra-sensitive hearing, which allows them to track their human prey).
Ultimately, the family must confront the aliens, and they do so armed with long-barrel rifles. And those rifles prove incredibly useful.
Unfortunately, Hollywood’s leftist critics would have preferred the family either died at the hands of alien forces, or defended themselves with whatever kitchen implements haven’t been banned by our alien encounter in 2020.
The Economist’s 1843 Magazine bemoaned, this week, Hollywood’s destructive reliance on gun culture, and particularly “A Quiet Place’s” glorification of shooting aliens in the face. “The couple’s other self-preservation tactics are all well and good, but in the end, it’s the ability to squeeze a trigger that makes the difference between being a responsible parent and an alien’s breakfast,” the writer sobs.
The Economist packs its review, though, with insulting narratives about gun culture — “un-toting farmers fare better against the aliens than the entire American war machine” — and middle America: “Defenders of the right to bear arms will also see flattering reflections of themselves in the film’s heroes, a photogenic white family that lives on a backwoods farm.”
The movie “celebrates” gun ownership, The Economist says, and Hollywood needs to do better.
Fortunately, Hollywood — not Economist columnists — make movies. “A Quiet Place” is a surprise blockbuster hit, even among crowds who don’t normally see horror flicks.
