Hollywood's Hidden Conservatism

So obviously Hollywood would never consciously produce a film with anything but an ultra-liberal message, but a few current examples suggest that, when packaged with enough sex, obscenity, and violence, a hint of conservatism might sneak through and end up on the silver screen. I already wrote about Tarantino's Death Proof and its pro-gun, anti-victimhood message. Today, Hugh Hewitt's movie guy, talking about the extraordinarily vulgar Knocked Up, said that it would be very difficult to have an abortion after having seen the film and its full-screen sonograms (follow the Hewitt link for audio). Also today, a zombie-loving friend excitedly sent me a link to this movie, which, at least based on the trailer, could be seen as a parable about the dangers of abusing an illegal immigrant underclass to tend the lawns of the WSJ editorial board (although I am, as you may remember, greatly turned off by anti-Fifties themes in cinema).

Whit Stillman managed to film a first-class conservative body of work by writing scripts that went over liberals' heads, getting the critics, whose default setting is to praise that which they do not understand, to applaud works about their own shallow immorality. For those of us without Stillman's skills, however, it now seems that there is another way to sneak some sense past the p.c. focus groupthink. Call it the Apatow Approach: the most square, most old-fashioned values in the world can make it big in Hollywood as long as you couch them in enough swear words, penis jokes, and, in extreme cases, an occasional disembowelment.

UPDATE: A quick Google search on "Apatow's conservatism" reveals that Ross Douthat and the New York Times beat me to the punch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: My tip made it onto HotAir!

OKAY, LAST ONE: Prof Althouse mentions the surprising theme of Knocked Up, too!

Chutzpah

Example 1: The boy who kills his parents, then asks for the court's mercy because he's an orphan.

Example 2: The Bush Administration, in the midst of all the furor over the amnesty bill, doing this.

(h/t: HotAir)

"For someone this disdainful of the American underclass, why do you want to double the size of it?"

Many thanks to Udolpho for pointing the way to the quite hilarious evisceration of Bryan Caplan in his own comments section. I have no idea who Tino is, but I'm a little bit in love. I would urge you to read all of Tino's remarks, but if you're in a hurry, just focus on his first comment, the third one down (no permalink, sorry).

p.s. my favorite line from Udolpho's post: "Instead of debate there is, on the one side, immigration skeptics pointing to demographic trends, class and social realities, and a sea of worrisome data, and on the other side a bunch of deluded pseudo-hippies shouting catchphrases: "YOU CAN'T PUT AN ARMY ON THE BORDER, YOU CAN'T DEPORT THEM ALL, THEY DO THE WORK AMERICANS WON'T DO.""

UPDATE: From another comments thread, I really liked this remark, from Steve Burton: "Those who support open borders like to point out that, in the past, the U.S. has successfully assimilated all sorts of ethnically distinct immigrants.
But the great waves of American immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries swept ashore in a relatively harsh, sink-or-swim society where one had little choice but to fit in, and to make one's own way.
The Latin American immigrants of today, on the other hand, show up in an advanced welfare state which positively *encourages* them to maintain and to exploit their separate ethnic identity for political and economic advantage.
That's a whole different ballgame."

FURTHER UPDATE: Just to avoid any confusion, I am not the 'adrian' from those comment threads.