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SONGCATCHER

"Romantically Inclined, Big Time"

What You Need To Know:

Set in 1907, SONGCATCHER tells the story of Lily, a music professor. Lily goes to visit her lesbian sister, who’s running a schoolhouse in the Appalachian, North Carolina backwoods. There, under the tutelage of a local elderly woman and a scarlet-throated orphan, Lily learns about the local music and starts recording their haunting songs on a phonograph. Lily finds that the “simple” backwoods folk are not so simple, after all, and that they have put a mountain twang on the old English ballads she loves. Lily even falls for one of the mountain men, a war veteran. Of course, disaster strikes when a couple local bullies, and, naturally, one of the local Christian preachers, learns about the lesbianism of Lily’s sister.

SONGCATCHER could have been a really great movie about the importance of old-time folk and country music, including Negro spirituals and other Christian Gospel music, that has had such an important, redemptive impact on so much of modern popular music. Instead, the Romantic, anti-Christian, politically-correct, feminist worldview of the writer and director, Maggie Greenwald, gets in the way. This is nothing less than the illegitimate, abhorrent appropriation of American history by the looney left.

Content:

(RoRoRo, PCPCPC, FeFeFe, ACapACap, ABAB, Cap, C, LL, V, S, NN, AA, D, M) Strong romantic worldview pushing political correctness, feminism, &, to a lesser extent, anti-capitalism, with some anti-Christian, anti-Bible elements, a pro-capitalist resolution of one plot angle & brief, minor, noncommittal references to God & Christian teachings; 6 obscenities & 8 mild, exclamatory profanities; mild violence such as man wrecks cart, arson committed & fighting; implied fornication, implied lesbian sex & two women kiss, caress & embrace; partial female nudity in lesbian revelation scene & women in old-fashioned underwear; alcohol use & drunkenness results in a fight; smoking; and, arson, destruction of private property & malice rebuked, but adultery & homosexuality not rebuked.

More Detail:

British historian Paul Johnson correctly notes in his wonderful book, INTELLECTUALS, that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French Romantic philosopher (1712-78), was the first and perhaps most influential of the modern secular intellectuals. “All our modern ideas of education are affected to some degree by Rousseau’s doctrine,” Johnson adds. Thus, the “progressive” education movement (that has all but destroyed America’s public schools, and many private ones) borrowed from at least three important Rousseau concepts: 1) focusing on a child-centered rather than a truth-centered curriculum and teaching method; 2) the evils of competition and private property which Rousseau (and his deranged stepchild, Karl Marx) thought corrupted men, causing them to become alienated from their fellow human beings and psychologically disturbed; and, 3) “the proposition that education was the key to social and moral improvement and, this being so, it was the concern of the State (which) must form the minds of all, not only as children . . . but as adult citizens.” Thus, the anti-Christian social and educational policies of the liberal left in America stem from the Romantic worldview of Rousseau, a man who, despite his self-proclaimed concern for children, abandoned his five nameless babies birthed by his mistress, Therese, at a hospital orphanage, where “two-thirds of the babies died in their first year,” according to Johnson.

Understanding all of these facts is key to understanding the Romantic worldview of the movie SONGCATCHER. Set in 1907 and based on some historical facts, SONGCATCHER tells the story of Lily Penleric, a university music professor, played by Janet McTeer from THE KING IS ALIVE and TUMBLEWEEDS. On vacation from her university job, where the “evil” male faculty has passed her over for promotion (even her married lover, Arthur), Lily goes to visit her younger sister, Elna, who’s running a schoolhouse in the Appalachian backwoods of North Carolina. There, Lily discovers that her sister is having a lesbian affair with her colleague, an older woman named Harriet. Disgusted and ashamed at first, Lily eventually comes to accept this perverted, unlawful affair, if not to sympathize with it.

Then, under the shotgun-toting tutelage of local expert Viney Butler, played by Pat Carroll, and a scarlet-throated orphan, Deladis Slocumb, played by real-life opera star Emmy Rossum, Lily begins to learn about the local music. She takes extensive notes and even starts recording their haunting songs on the old Victrola she has brought to her. To her amazement, Lily finds that the “simple” backwoods folk are not so simple, after all, and that they have, in fact, put a Southern mountain twang on the old English folksong ballads she loves. Lily even falls in love with one of the mountain men, a war veteran played by Aidan Quinn from AVALON and MUSIC OF THE HEART.

Of course, disaster eventually strikes when a couple of local bullies, and, naturally, one of the local Christian preachers, a man who gave up singing secular music for his faith, learn what’s been going on between Lily’s sister and the other female schoolteacher. Thus, the “honest,” “compassionate,” “natural” intentions of the progressive education movement’s paganization of America are thwarted, for the time being, by the “ignorant,” “uneducated,” “evil,” “patriarchal,” “bigots” of Christendom.

SONGCATCHER could have been a really great movie about the importance of old-time folk and country music, including Negro spirituals and other Christian Gospel music, that has had such an important, redemptive impact on so much of modern popular music. (This is true of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and even jazz.) Instead, the Romantic, anti-Christian, politically-correct, radical feminist worldview of the writer and director, Maggie Greenwald, gets in the way. Not only does this tendency turn SONGCATCHER into a predictable mess, with cardboard characters and repetitious situations, it also is nothing less than the illegitimate, abhorrent appropriation of American history by the liberal left. Thus, when the nasty dispositioned mountain man played by Quinn turns out to be a worldly, “compassionate” war veteran who hates the capitalistic, environment-destroying coal mining companies and who doesn’t mind the homosexual “orientation” of Lily’s John Dewey-eyed, liberal sister, knowledgeable and media-wise people will realize (hopefully) that their brains and senses have been mauled by a Neo-Marxist, Romantic ideologue.

Of course, the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Cor. 13:6, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth.” In fact, Jesus Himself condemns fornications (or unlawful sexual practices) like Elna’s homosexuality and Lily’s premarital affair in Mark 7:21. Throughout the four gospels of the New Testament, Jesus also condemns those who willfully and unrepentantly oppose His truth and His teachings, and the truth and teachings of God in the Holy Scriptures. Happily, however, Jesus offers His shed blood to redeem us from such sins, including the sins of Atheist Marxism and Romanticism.

O Happy Day, when Jesus washed all my sins away!