MOVIE REVIEW: The 3 Big Lies in the 'Won’t Back Down' movie...
I saw the “Won’t Back Down” movie last night. The crowd loved it, and I would have liked it, too, if I hadn’t known why it was produced or been aware of the three big lies at the heart of the movie.
Scabs like "Won't Back Down" stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, left, Viola Davis and Rosie Perez should explain to the Screen Actors Guild and other union brothers and sisters why they should not be awarded a Scab Jacket for their work. Since Jeb Bush and other Republican leaders praised their movie, it's been clear to everyone associated with the union movement that "Won't Back Down" is an attack on public schools and teachers unions. Above, "Won't Back Down" scab actors Maggie Gyllenhaal, left, Viola Davis and Rosie Perez with director Daniel Barnz at the New York screening of the film.After all, it’s just a movie, right? And a successful feel-good movie at that. Not being at all connected to reality (despite the big announcement at the very beginning that it was “inspired by actual events”) shouldn’t matter, right? I mean, did “Coma” accurately depict the way medicine really works? Could scientists reproduce all the effects in the “Star Wars” movies? Would a celebrity impersonator like “Dave” really get away with switching places with a comatose president and make government serve the people again?
Of course not, and no one attacks those movies’ accuracy.
The difference here is that the producers of “Won’t Back Down” have publicly acknowledged that the movie was designed to sell parent trigger laws to parent and state legislatures. Our screening in Chicago was introduced by, among others, a staff member from New Schools for Chicago, which pushes charter schools. The “goody bag” we were all promised at the end of the movie ended up being a WBD totebag with a brochure for New Schools for Chicago in it. Oh, goody.
As propaganda, then, the movie’s lies are fair game.
WBD Big Lie #1: Teachers union contracts do not allow teachers to stay after school to give children extra help.
Anyone who has been in a public school for more than 10 minutes knows this is a lie. Teachers are there after school, before school, and during lunch and recess helping students.
But this lie is a critical dramatic device in the movie, Mom Maggie Gyllenhaal’s first major “aha” moment. When she runs into the classroom in the middle of what passes for a lesson in Terrible Teacher’s room, demanding that the teacher stay after school and tutor her child, the teacher says, “School ends at 3 pm.” Mom runs out of the room, a furious and defiant look on her face. Later conversations reinforce the lie that teachers are not allowed to stay after school to “give the children what they need.”
WBD Big Lie #2: School turnarounds result from parents and teachers voting to “change the school.”
The movie shows teachers agonizing over their vote on the”Fail Safe” program, the movie’s name for the parent trigger. But the real parent trigger laws DO NOT ALLOW TEACHERS A VOTE OR A VOICE. One could brush this difference off as mere dramatic license, but the movie depends
completely on the alliance between Mom Maggie and Teacher Viola Davis, who is depicted as an angel of a teacher as well as a deeply loving mother. Yet the premise is a lie.
WBD Big Lie #3: Great schools are easy.
This was honestly the most idiotic part of the movie. Not that it’s easy to portray something complicated in movie language. But really. Mom Maggie goes to the district office. She has coffee with the receptionist who tells her about the “Fail Safe” law. Maggie’s takeaway? All you need to turn a school around is to “get one teacher, and stick it out.”
Later we see Mom With Two Part-Time Jobs and Dyslexia personally writing a 400-page proposal for the new school, which includes fun “ideas” from various teachers like “field trips” and “Shakespeare.” Hero Teacher Viola contributes the idea that the curriculum should be “integrated.”
Yes, it’s a movie. “Coma,” “Star Wars” and “Dave” didn’t have to prove that they were valid in the real world.
But when people use a movie to disrupt and potentially damage the real lives of real children and real adults, they do have to be held accountable to the rest of us.
"Won't Back Down" stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, left, Viola Davis and Rosie Perez with director Daniel Barnz at the New York screening of the film. (Marion Curtis)
Comments:
By: Anthony Smith
Lets Boycott Maggie, Viola and Rosie! They are SCABS!
These ladies chose to be in this film. They could have chosen another, that is if their careers allowed for that at this point, acting gig.
I say we choose to avoid their movies, tv shows, radio discussions, and articles in response.
To have the protection of a Union of their own and to attack the teachers Union in this propagandist one-sided film is the height of hypocrisy.
A REAL actor would do their homework and get the facts. They would be committed to the truth.
Bad Karma ladies, bad karma.
By: Ethan Young
Won't back down
Actors gonna act. They don't have as much clout as it may seem. But they can be shamed. Instead of a boycott, they should be challenged to defend or reject the movie's indefensible message. Maggie & Rosie are leftys - Maggie's mom useta be married to the great historian Eric Foner! So let's ask them in public to face the music. We might be surprised by what happens next.
By: Julie Woestehoff
Won't back down actors
I don't know that the actors should be the target here. The movie itself, while taking a negative approach to some teachers and the union, and unrealistically making charter schools seem like paradise, isn't really all that offensive. The actors, like the musicians at the "Teacher Rock" concert, probably had no idea about the way the film was going to be used. The real target should be, for example, NBC's Education Nation which is holding a world premier of the movie during its events next week, while putting Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and Rep George Miller on their "parent town hall panel."
By: George N. Schmidt
Scab actors are still scabs
By this logic, the people who made "Birth of a Nation," many of the most racist movies of the 1920s and 1930s, "Triumph of the Will," and "Gone with the Wind" are also to be absolved. They made their choice after reading their scripts to lend their talents to a teacher bashing, union busting movie. Were they participating in a racist or blatantly sexist movie would your logic be the same? Somehow, I doubt it. Just because the issue here is class and the betrayal of class doesn't make a damned bit of difference. They are scabs.
And if previous marriages or ancestries mattered in this debate (although it's delightful to read about it) then all of us would be trapped by that bit of destiny.
They have made the latest in a long line of teacher bashing and union busting Hollywood propaganda movies. For us at Substance, this latest genre stretches back to "Welcome to Success: The Marva Collins Story", continues through "Stand and Deliver" and continues into all of those odious Teacher-As-Superhero (or Heroine) movies. They've all fed into the same mainstream of propaganda sludge that some member of my family thought, way back in the day, was how to overcome the mistreatment meted out after Versailles.
No deal then, when my grandfather thought the Bunds were a lively alternative to reality, until the rest of the family went out and killed Nazis for a few years.
Sorry. Your kind of liberalism doesn't make a serious argument at this point in history. "Won't Back Down" is ruling class propaganda. And somehow, given the ideological confusion of the past 40 years, I think if this propaganda had been racist or sexist you'd be quicker to call out "Maggie and Rosie."
So call them up about it, since you seem to know them, and we'll begin to print their apologies (but not offer forgiveness since the damage is being done as we share these tender thoughts.)
By: Ethan Young
Hulk smash teachers?
I don''t know them but smearing them is barking up the wrong tree. You give actors too much credit for political consciousness. It's not about giving the movie a pass because it's not racist or sexist, 'only' anti-teacher. Anti-teacher IS racist & sexist. The question is how to get the best results — like getting the stars to disown the film & take a stand for teachers & public ed, which I''m suggesting can be done. Old timer, you can step on my blue suede shoes, but you know I ain't no liberal.
By: Anthony Smith
No, HULK SMASH anti-union actors, heh, heh!
Once Upon a Time, I was married to an actress. She was considered tops in theater in Chicago. She had (and most likely still has) a great deal of integrity. She was very conscientious of her acting choices for moral and spiritual reasons.
I don't suggest boycotting the movie and making a big production out of it, the movie will do well or not based on the 1%'s "free market" attitude. And it looks like it won't be doing big box office anytime soon.
Your suggestion has merit. But until the actors "come out" and take a stand, I say we boycott them, all of them. And I will miss Ving Rhames, even though his last syfy movie with a zombie apocalypse theme should have been the catalyst to make me stop watching him in the first place.
So, if and when we hear from them, loud an proud, regarding their stance, I say Hulk smash anti-union actors!
By: Joe Hill
Scabs Gyllenhaal, Davis and Perez should be treated as scabs
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Rosie Perez are all doing well in Hollywood because they are served by SAG, the Screen Actors Guild. But many of the others who work in film work harder and for much less money, and need SAG even more than these three. What will happen when union crews refuse to service these three scabs until they withdraw the move and apologize to all of the union teachers in the USA for making union-busitng propaganda, a teacher-bashing movie, and promoting privatization as the solution for public schools?