13 November 2007

Soccer Dog – A Maoist perspective

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Soccer Dog was a 1999 in which a man who misses his soccer days so adopts an orphan in order to play the sport with him. After he brings the orphan home, the man learns that the orphan isn't interested in soccer. His new son (Clay) finds a stray dog and tries to hide it in his bedroom. Clay's father thinks that Clay is not feeling welcome, so he comes into Clay's bedroom to find he was hiding a dog. In the middle of the soccer season, Clay's dog, Lincoln, plays for the team when a team member gets hurt. Lincoln scores a goal minutes afterwards. At the end of the season, the team wins the championship. Lincoln's original owners take their dog back, but Clay gets a puppy at the end.


It looks to me like harmless entertainment that children will enjoy but then I am not a Maoist. Acording to the Maoist International Movement (MIM) In their view:

“ it was inevitable that we would start seeing more and more movies about pets taking on humyn roles. In "Soccer Dog," a dog plays soccer for a boy's team in middle Amerika and promptly proves to be most valuable player. The obsessed coaches, Mafia dad, profiteering trinket sellers and a whole town mad about sports as long as its team wins is all reality TV on Amerika.Nonetheless, this film is crass trash exploiting people for their love of family and pets. It does nothing but express and reinforce the contentment of the Amerikan petty-bourgeoisie focused on family, pets and suburban life.”


So there you have it. If you believe the Maoists then youyou were reinforcing bourgeois Amerikkkkkkkkkkkkkkan (sorry I should have stopped at just three ks) $tereotypes by showing them this film. Personally , I think the Maoists should stop idolising one of history’s worst butchers and do something a little more productive like getting laid!

12 comments:

SabineM said...

I am not a Maoist either.
But wait YOUR post was NOT WORDLESS! ;-)

Amazing Gracie said...

They only want to assuage their guilt because they only prefer dogs served in a stew.

jams o donnell said...

Ah Sabine, the WW post was beneath!

o be honest Gracie, the Western Maoists are a tiny rump but it still amazes me that anyone would provide support to such an ideology. In India and formerly in Nepal and Peru there were very dangerous maoist insurgencies.

Your PR Pal said...

In America (or is it Amerika?), we had a series of movies about sports-playing dogs called "Air Bud." He started with basketball, then moved on to volleyball, baseball, and rugby. I wonder what they would have thought of that?

PS- I just became an "O'Donnell" by marriage, so when I saw your name on the Wordless Wednesday blogroll, I had to check you out!

Roland Dodds said...

The MIM always cracks me up. They even do videogame reviews! The irony in Maoists critiquing videogames is almost too much to take.

jams o donnell said...

Hmm I think the Maoists would explode in sloganeering fury sportslady! I have to tell you that my O'Donnell is a pseudonym. I took it from a Flann O'Brien bookm, the Poor Mouth, which of course gave the name of the blog. Thanks for visiting.

The mind boggles Roland! I dread to think what their response to all other vid games bar Caultural Revolution would be! It would be worth inventing that game just to piss them off

Anonymous said...

The reviews are just excuses so they can watch the stuff without getting in trouble! Seriously, that last line you had cracked me up.

jams o donnell said...

Haha vixen you may ghave a point there!

MC Fanon said...

Maoism has always made me incredibly uncomfortable. Their apologetics for the Chairman himself is not quite on par with Holocaust denial but it certainly relies on the same historical revisionism present in the latter.

Maoism is a relatively small phenomena in the U.S. The MIM has a headquarters here, I believe. And we have the Revolutionary Communist Party, who has perhaps the most demented cult of personality for their "dear leader", Bob Avakien. Both movements are fairly small. Are there any prominent Maoist groups in the U.K.?

jams o donnell said...

Their twists of logic in support of Mao are pretty vile in my view Dave. Mercifully there is no significant Maoist presence here in the UK. To be honest the revolutionary left is a non entity here now. The largest grouping is probably the SWP and they have lost all credibility (if they had any). The Respect grouping of so called trotskyists, conservative muslims and Galloway a media whore on par with Chavez was pathetic

Agnes said...

"Instead of drawing the conclusion
that property relations and patriarchy taint ITAL all END sexual
relationships in this decadent society, Luhrmann lets a certain cultural
variant on that theme off the hook.

This is a form of liberalism which MIM criticized back in 1992.(2)
Saying there is "good sex" in imperialist society allows white patriarchy
to say sex with Black men is bad, allows petty-bourgeois wimmin to put
down less-educated men who don't use the right language to approach
them, and avoids the need for revolution as a way to deal with power which
wimmen have been socialzed against having." - this is Moulin Rouge, as seen and appreciated by the MIM. Ah yes, the same source considers "Boys don't cry" - fight against capitalism, no less. I love them, really.

jams o donnell said...

These people are genuinely in need of more sex in their lives Red. I get the feeling that this atitiude, albeit wrapped in ideology, is a reaction to the fact they aren't getting any and so they take a dog in a manger attitiude.