We must disclose that because of our religious past, we might not be able to be as objective in this matter as we'd like, since in Mormonism movies are often denounced as immoral because of swearing, violence or sex. So, movies that might actually have some very profound religious undertones are dismissed if these superficial elements appear in movies. Moralist critique of movies reminds us of this kind of religious narrow-mindedness - that there is only one acceptable way to interpret something. First thing that should be remembered when looking at movies is that art is subjective - people look for what they believe. Moralist critique that we have seen instead often argues that a film should always make a moral judgement and that their way of interpreting film is the correct one. Moralism also treats viewers quite condescendincly by assuming that viewers aren't able to draw their own conclusions and instead the movie must be explained to them. In moralist critique the film's larger narrative doesn't necessarily matter but rather the details that are deemed toxic or problematic, and events in the film are often taken at face value and almost as frequently out of context. This can lead to the entire film being discredited as morally dubious. This type of moralist criticism ignores the fact that film is a collaborative effort and thus often contradictory by nature. Neither does moralist critique leave any room for ambiguity and metaphorical or symbolic storytelling. Context of both the film and film history or details that might challenge one's interpretation are conveniently overlooked and film language that often gives movies more complexity (e.g. unreliable narrator, multiple viewpoints, camera angles, music, non-verbal communication, etc.) is ignored. Our biggest beef with moralist critique though is the elevation of women into paragons of virtue in movies (often with no personality and no substantial character arcs) and dismissing characters with human failures. This leads to expectation of perfection and leaves no room for mistakes, failures, redemption or forgiveness (aka humanity) and make both male and female characters more restrictive and regressive.
Some examples: So, we decided to look at few films that are often in the crosshairs of moral criticism and then some that are lauded from the same camp.
Blade Runner - Now this is a film that has gotten a ton of pushback in recent years. And it is not all unwarranted. However, many of the moral criticisms directed at this film focus solely on one particular scene and often completely ignore not just the rest of the film but also film history. Blade Runner is a neo-noir, hence it is part of a tradition in film noir that is based on fear of women or sometimes even outright misogyny. Film noir was created during the time when women were working outside the home (The Second World War) and film noir gave form to this kind of terrible fear of women becoming more powerful and independent of men. So really, it is no surprise to see this kind of fear of women materialize in this film since it is a spiritual descendant of original film noirs like Double Indemnity. Many film noirs also had an unreliable narrator who turned out to be the bad guy (or at the very least a somewhat ambiguous "good guy") in the end, even if they were the main character. Blade Runner follows this same pattern - everything that happens in the film is purely from the main character's point of view, we never get to know anything about Rachel, her feelings, her opinions, nothing. Hence, what the male character thinks is romantic (like forcing himself on Rachel) is also mirrored in the music - because the main character thinks it's a romantic situation, the music reflects that. That does not mean the viewer has to. Blade Runner also has some really great criticisms of capitalism and we do not believe that one has to ignore those aspects to see the misogyny in the film.
Beauty and the Beast (the animation) - We have written about this film pretty exhaustively so we'll just go over quickly some of the moral critique against this movie. Again, this film has also gotten a fair amount of criticism recently. However, unlike with Blade Runner where the criticism of misogyny isn't completely unfounded, in here we find the moral critique, for lack of a better word, lazy. The "abduction" and toxic behaviour (and, *gasp* the Stockholm syndrome) criticism often glosses over the redeeming character arc of the Beast or the parallel character arc of Gaston turning into a murderer. This criticism also turns Belle into a victim (instead of a character with agency), of which there isn't really evidence in the film. In addition, it doesn't hurt to remember the source material (arranged marrige is okay, the Beast has a good heart behind the hideous form).
Star Wars (the originals) - Y'all know what scene we're talking about - the infamous golden bikini. Here, the criticism is based on how women are portrayed on film historically and the context the movie gives is largely ignored. Also, interestingly, many female critics' reaction to this scene seem to be tied to the pop culture talking points (eg. Friends) instead of the actual film. Female viewers, who loved the film and saw Leia liberating herself from the perverted bastard who imprisoned her as empowering, are dismissed. We agree on the historical criticism on the objectification of female characters but think it is equally important to recognize the different contexts that different films give (this also applies to Blade Runner).
Temple of Doom & True Lies - Horrible depiction of women, yes, but these films are interesting to analyze, for instance, from the auteur - theory branch of criticism. For example, how the two directors' divorces affected the aforementioned movies' image of women.
The Last Crusade - Now this film had probably the most ridiculous criticism we've ever heard. The criticism of Indiana Jones of "pushing himself" on the female character ignores the entire rest of the movie. It becomes pretty clear later on in the film that she is a Nazi spy who used the exact same ploy on Jones' father. That the main character would be so gullible as to fall for such an obvious trick makes him a little bit more human.
A lot of older movies also get an unfair shake, ignoring the time when they were made, history, etc. and these movies are instead placed to modern context and interpreted through that lens. It's not that we love all these movies that many moralists excoriate but we do think that they're getting a somewhat simplistic treatment.
Now for some examples where the movies garnered praise from a number of moralist critics.
Beauty and the Beast (the remake) - Again, another film we've spent significant walls of text writing about. According to moralists, this film was apparently the more progressive feminist version that the original should've been. We find that claim utterly ridiculous - the character arcs for the men are gone, Belle didn't get a character arc and even her agency was taken away. The feminism in this movie is fucking window dressing and funnily enough, written by two dudes, whereas the original was written by a woman. And don't even get us started on the horrible class reductionism in this film.
The Last Jedi & Force Awakens - One of us wrote an entire column on The Last Jedi, so to put it as succinctly as possible, these movies have been commended for their inclusion of women and some radical politics they have (especially The Last Jedi). We actually found these movies rather regressive towards women, since they allow men to have some humanity but women are trapped in perfection. It's benevolent sexism, and if we are being completely honest, we actually hate it much more than the more visible misogyny. And what comes to the "radical" politics, even Aliens does anti-capitalism better.
Snowden - Now this movie is lauded mostly by the left purity people (as we like to call them) and was completely overlooked by most moralists (who are largely focused on gender and race). Though we agree with the film's ideology (spying on citizens is wrong) the movie is so self-righteous and makes Snowden larger-than-life and leaves no room for complexities in his character that we find the movie rather boring and obvious. This makes also the film's political message quite hamfisted and closer to propaganda than actual film-making. You wanna see a film with an actual human character about this event, watch Citizenfour. We're planning to write about this film in more detail later.
Knives Out - This film got praise for both its female lead and the class consciousness aspect. Here we go again with the "paragon of virtue", a poor working-class woman of colour who always does the right thing (as we find out in the end) and possesses no discernible personality. The rich leeches end up being far more interesting characters, which was probably not the intention of the filmmaker. The class criticism that supposedly exists in this film is on pretty shaky ground - it's fine to own that much money if you are a good person.
However, since we are mostly character driven viewers, we wouldn't give two shits what these movies are preaching if we liked the characters. Unfortunately the movies that pander to moralistic critique tend to lack in character narratives and thus hold no interest for us.
Despite our apparent distaste for this particular branch of criticism we don't see moral film critique as useless. For example, we doubt that many people would hail Birth of a Nation as objectively a good film (and you'd better be worried if someone claims it as their favourite film) since the film is completely seeped through in racist ideology. It's pretty impossible to see Birth of a Nation in any other way but racist propaganda, yet one can still admire the great technical achievements the film made. We also use ideological criticism in our texts sometimes, especially if we're talking class critique. We are big believers of economic equality being one of the cornerstones of all equality and fairness, hence this belief can pretty often show up in our movie criticisms as well. Moral criticism in film is a rather recent phenomenon and there are quite a few films that pander to this type of thinking, which for us makes films far duller, unambiguous and barely leaves room for different interpretations. The reason we've always liked films is because they aren't always clear and don't always give you absolute answers and you don't necessarily know if something is right or true. In our religion one always had to know if something was true or right and one had to declare it to others, so we have some serious aversion to the kind of criticism that claims to know whether something is right or true. That is a rather absolutist view on art, which is in the end fiction and never reality, and thus subjective. You can love a movie despite its shortcomings.
