David, Thanks for your pithy replies. On most of it we're just going to
disagree, I think. When you write,

"A superior filmmaker has more complexity thanto allow one element to
outweigh others in such a vulgar manner,"

if your "such a vulgar manner" refers to "To Kill a Mockingbird," then I
don't agree about that film. I do think that most "superior filmmakers"
can be defended on your terms: "The Searchers" is far more complex in
its racial views than the racism some impute to it, for example. But I
also don't think there are *any* rules about what a great film is, so
I'm willing to believe there is a great film with extremely bad politics
presented in a vulgar manner.

Also, I want to make clear that I don't want to exclude social
criticisms. They are important. And one cannot, and certainly should not
abandon one's knowledge of history or moral sense. When I finally was
able to visit Rome a year ago, I found I didn't *want* to forget that
its stupendous monuments were made possible by the labor of slaves, and
that knowledge contaminated my appreciation of them a little bit, as I
think it should have, just as my knowledge of its use in human sacrifice
will always affect my viewing of sculptures of Tlaloc, or my knowledge
of the tauntings and beatings of Jews that accompanied German showings
of "The Triumph of the Will" will always affect my viewing of
Riefenstahl's films.

It's when such things are said to be "flaws" as compared with other
"superior" works of art that are supposedly not so flawed that I get off
the bus.

As someone else said, citing Tag, I'm not convinced that we have evolved
"superior" morals to those works we judge. It's hard to judge yourself.
Maybe the U.S. response to 9/11, paid for by our tax dollars no matter
who we voted for, will, if it leads to the worldwide holocaust I fear,
come to seem far more ignorant and deadly and stupid and evil than many
of the thigns we criticize films for. Though an atheist, I still put
great credit in the wisdom underlying Christianity's injunction against
judging others too easily. Reversing the "you're better than that"
cliché, I'm not good enough for that, nor do I think the culture that I
live in is either. The Aztecs who sacrificed children to bring about
rain had not overrun the planet with their machines, were not causing
the extinction of tens of thousands of entire species each year, and
were not threatening the future of life on earth with their pollutants.

- Fred