Paramount Pictures is releasing 13 Hours: Secret Soldiers of Benghazi nation-wide on Friday. It tells the story of the attack on two U.S. diplomatic outposts in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 that took four American lives, including that of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya. Despite claims from Paramount and director Michael Bay that the film isn’t political (the book on which it’s based certainly wasn’t), The Hollywood Reporter has noted that it’s being marketed specifically to conservatives.
So they’re specifically targeting one side of the political aisle while more or less neglecting the other? Well, yeah. You don’t shop kryptonite to Superman.
Ads for 13 Hours are appearing on Fox News, and National Review is partnering with Paramount to promote the film to its readers. Townhall.com published an exclusive interview with star John Krasinski. Guns & Ammo’s current issue has a behind-the-scenes feature on the “Guns and Gear of Benghazi’s Secret Soldiers.” And the film’s premier at AT&T Stadium (where the Cowboys play) included performances by patriotic country music acts, and conservative PACs have held screenings.
This marketing focus isn’t surprising; it wouldn’t be noteworthy if we weren’t in a presidential election year that is in part a referendum on Obama’s foreign policy and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in it.
THR noted that “prerelease surveys show the film has the least traction in liberal areas of the Northeast and Northwest.” The article quoted Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore as saying, “Movies that honor the military, like Lone Survivor, definitely do better in Texas, Arizona and Nevada than in San Francisco and New York … This film has those same elements of military heroism — elements that appeal to a conservative audience.” In short, sell your product to people inclined to buy it.
That the marketing plan makes eminent sense doesn’t make its necessity any less sad. Why can’t you confidently market a film about American valor to liberal audiences?
Yes, Benghazi happened on Obama’s watch, in a country where he chose to intervene and at a politically inconvenient time when he was boasting that his policies had terrorism on the run. And yes, his administration’s response (very much including Secretary Clinton) to the attack was bumbling and dishonest. But a story that redeems something from that mess and that eschews placing political blame should be able to overcome liberals’ embarrassment.
But the problem isn’t 13 Hours. It’s progressives’ reflexive anti-American and anti-military bent.
Consider the left’s reaction to American Sniper. That movie was called “idiotic” and compared to Nazi propaganda. Chris Kyle was called a coward and a racist and compared to mass killers. Entertainers sneered at Kyle’s overt patriotism and journalists called him “kind of a d*ck.”
Before that, there was Lone Survivor, which LA Weekly dismissed as “Brown people bad, American people good.”
Meanwhile, can anybody remember the names of the raft of late-Bush years anti-war films nobody went to see? Robert Redford had one, didn’t he? Brian DePalma too. Oh, and Matt Damon made something about Iraq with Americans as the villains.
Perhaps the public’s disinterest in paying to watch the nation and its warriors run down on the big screen just gives liberals something else to feel superior about. But Paramount’s in business to make money, and it knows the detested flyover types will happily pay to watch American heroes get the treatment they deserve.
As for lefty movie goers, to paraphrase a famous liberal: progressives need movies about patriotism and valor like a fish needs a bicycle.
