No, it's an early '90s thing, not a conservative thing, but I can see how you could get that confused.

Merry Christmas

This was well-known. I dare you to watch (or rewatch) his 101 Dalmatians. The explicit message is that good women stay at home and raise children while evil women focus on their careers. This theme appears in many of his movies. Or his last screenwriting credit, Maid in Manhattan, in which the hero is a Republican Senator.

I've never understood the Hughes worship. He was a conservative jerk.

because some of us can choose to ignore his political leanings and not let them color our perceptions of his work. rightie or not, he still was a fairly brilliant director/writer/film maker who gave me and my generation a gaggle of films that entertained and spoke to us.

personally, i blame him for my getting into david bowie, thanks to that quote at the start of "the breakfast club."

So maybe my analysis is not far off

I guess it "shone through" the movie. I thought the boy saying a prayer and subsequently strapping a rifle over his shoulders was a dead giveaway.

I had read that he grew up in a very suburban Leave it to Beaver world and I think his personal experience comes through. I dont see any political messages in his work. Same for David Lynch, who stays out of the political fray except for his recent admonishing of Romney through a play on words thus supporting Obama. Lynch has often said he came from the perfect childhood where life like that was much the norm.

it's been a while since I saw it but I remember seeing that character as a jerk with conservative attitudes. All my friends at the time were conservatives and they quoted John Hughes movies like they were Gospel.

Wall-to-wall conservacrap in virtually all media. Filmmakers that didn't go along found it hard to get work, television was even worse. The unwritten commandment was thou shalt not criticize Conservative America ® on pain of poverty.

The 80s gave birth to the resurgence of racism, sexism, militarism, and the American Taliban.

Even more so than older Americans. Check the stats.

I found it in my parents' library system (but not my own) so I'm going to have them get it for me.

The "pants suit wearing career woman" thing, for instance. I don't remember anything in that movie regarding her career. I thought they were rich people and always figured she was lucky enough to be a stay at home mom.

And, how is learning self-reliance a conservative value? That's just evolutionary, i'd say. I know not everyone has the same opportunities, and that needs continuous improvement, but it's not conservative on its face.

And how is christian imagery in a christmas movie conservative? It's a christmas movie! There are lots of liberals who celebrate christmas as a religious holiday. I'm not one of them, but there are lots and lots of them.

I think you may be reading too much into a comedy.

She does however appear to fulfill a certain stereotype. The way she dresses, talks on the phone, orders people around.

The whole movie seems to scream "had only there been a loaded weapon in the house".

I am not saying the director intentionally did this, but the fact that others have mentioned in this thread, that the director is a conservative, does not surprise me. I wasn't aware of it, but it does make sense.

As for the christian imagery, well, it is hard to put ones finger on it, but the movie does present a sort of idealized christianity.

"you are always welcome in church" said the old man. Really? I'll show you quite a few churches for which this is not true.

Called 'Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten' (The Bremen Town Musicians).

In it, a group of farm animals decide to move to Bremen to become musicians. On the way, they stop at a farmhouse, which a group of thieves also have their eye on. The animals outwit the bumbling thieves through trickery and such. At the end, they drive them off and live happily ever after.

So it's basically the plot of Home Alone, but with animals instead of Macauley Culkin.

since it showed a family with many kids losing track of one of them.

It's just a funny movie about a kid being left home alone, and some burglars. You can read into it anything you want, but sometimes a movie is just a movie.

About the woman thing, that is a common premise in many movies, even supposedly liberal ones. Notice Baby Boom and others: successful single career woman bad; woman after inheriting baby and gets a husband becomes good and fulfilled. That is neither liberal nor conservative. That is, IMO, because men run Hollywood, and that is their view. Fatal Attraction - single woman crazy; married loyal wife good. Over an over again you will see that.

Notice how in Miracle on 34th Street, Maureen O'Hara is a career woman with a child, and is not a bad person. We haven't come very far in 70 years, as regards women in movies.

Every story carries a message, whether intentional or unintentional. It reveals something about the person telling it and the societal context in which it came to be. The writer *always* has an agenda, whether they know about it or not.

Consider the effect that this movie has on kids. How many boys, after watching this movie, are thinking "when the robbers come I will be prepared"?

That a kid will want to be prepared in a potentially dangerous situation?

But seriously, it's make believe.

At least that's what people in this forum tell me when I say I think violent video games have an effect on minors. They have no effect whatsoever, is what "they" say. Even though most studies say they do. So...either movies and video games have an effect on impressionable minors, or they don't. Which is it?

In this case, I don't see anything objectionable in the movie. The kid is found in a dangerous situation, but instead of melting into a mass of tears, he sets about getting thru it and protecting his home. He's creative, thinks outside the box, and has a can-do attitude, while having fun. I see nothing at all wrong with the movie.

I'm saying that the movie carries themes that are associated with "traditional" conservatism.

Yeah, willingness to defend one's home is a good thing. "Conservative" doesn't automatically mean "objectional" outside of a highly polarized political sphere. Back in the 80s I suppose things weren't as polarized as they are today.

Notice how in the movie every "buerocrat", be it a cop or any person "behind a desk" is portrayed as incompetent or without compassion?

It is just many fragments which, taken together, make up for a conservative vibe. Like in "Ghostbusters". Doesn't mean it is a bad movie.

Edit: As for the video games, of course they have an influence, but that doesn't mean there is a direct cause-and-effect relation between shootings and GTA. Most video games are in fact "classical" tales of heroism.

or they would rescue him, and there would be no movie.

I think the message is....all the grownups are incompetent. We kids have the answers. It's not that it's COPS that are goofs; it's that they are grownups.

The parents and older siblings are goofs, the cops, the criminals...everyone but the kid. Because he's the hero.

Even in the TV movie "The Christmas Story" that is played every year...the parents are goofs and stupid, easily fooled and maniuplated. That's a common theme among comedies for kids.

That's the way I see it.

And yet, learning from the replies in this thread that the director is a conservative did not surprise me.

But you are right in that the WRITER was apparently conservative. Here's what rightwing P J O'Rourke said about Hughes:

I asked O'Rourke whether conservatism made it into Hughes's films and he said, "It's there for those who care to see it. 'Home Alone' is all abut self sufficiency, freedom and responsibility, basically. The kid eats all the junk food in the house then watches all the terrible movies and then he has to bring himself together." So "Home Alone" was an allegory of American history from the Woodstock generation all the way to Reaganism? Who knew?

Read more: John Hughes, conservative Republican http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/movies/john_hughes_conservative_republican_EqtAi9xchvZL1XsVD729xI#ixzz2GGs8dysa

I think it is true with books, and to perhaps a much larger degree with films, that if something is obviously the result of highly competent craftsmanship (which I think "Home Alone" certainly is) then it is reasonable to assume that a huge amount of time and effort went into crafting every little detail of it. Every angle, every cut, every piece of decoration is the result of a conscious decision made by someone. Thus I think it is always valid to ask oneself why a decision was made the way it was. What is the "tone" of this scene? Why is this scene necessary? What function does it fulfill? Would I have made it differently? Why is that poster on that wall?

I am not saying that every author consciously attempts to write propaganda. I just think that a person's biases and experiences may enter into their works, in particular into the works into which they have put lots of effort. And sometimes things go beyond that and are in fact propaganda. What is the function of "Walter Peck" in Ghostbusters other than to "show" that "environmentalist regulators" are trash? I cannot think of one.

In one scene that is guaranteed to produce goose-bumps in every eleven year old boy, Kevin solemnly proclaims "This is MY house, and I've got to defend it!". If this scene does not project the ideal of the rugged masculine individualist nothing does. The church scene is also extremely powerful, way beyond much of what is done in many movies that "officially" wear a Christian label.

Granted, I watched "Home Alone" many many times when I was a kid. When I watched it again recently I remembered pretty much every scene and could tell what comes next.

On edit:

I think another possible observation here is that conservatism was a different animal in the 80s and 90s than it is now. I'd say there was more legitimacy to it then than there is now. Thanks to the Palins, Shrubs, Teabaggers and so on, conservatism is indeed in bad bad shape.

By the way, I recently watched "Wreck it Ralph". I think it is a liberal movie ("friendship is more important than status", "look beyond people's flaws", "treat everyone with equal respect regardless of their background" ....). It is also quite entertaining for a person who grew up in the 80s.

sticking to the 90's cliches of the time. I thought it was a good movie, though.

At least I never noticed anyway. Most of his movies were just...........fun.

The premise of the movie is that the kid is left behind to fend for himself against robbers. In order to set up that premise the parents and the rest of the family must 'forget' him. It's just the plot.

It actually makes all adults look like idiots who can be outwitted by a little kid. It's just a movie based on the impossible and it makes people laugh. It's actually much harder on men than on women.

To avoid repetitive posts with the same content, here my thoughts on the subject:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2078619

They had by far the nicest, most idyllic house on the block. Remember how the place was spotless even after they rushed to get up to make it to the airport. All the beds were made, the kitchen cleaned, no issues anywhere. The whole thing was set up as fantasy much like the Harry Potter stories are the imagination of what we used to call attic children, a game of the mind wherein the kid who is an orphan, doomed to live in his evil aunt and uncle's home, dreams of a world and as school where he is all-powerfuland magical, although always haunted by the evil specter.

Of course none of this happened...they're all movies...I know this.

Weird how I didn't pick up on that when watching the movie as a kid, which I did repeatedly.

John Hughes was very conservative, at least by Hollywood standards. His view of America matches those of GOP members to some extent. For example just look at the issue of race. Almost all of his films were set in or around Chicago but you won't find too many (if any) minorities in his flicks. Yeah, suburban Chicago wasn't the most desegregated corner of America but still his films are extremely "white bread" if you know what I mean. His characters can have posters of Michael Jordan or do a Michael Jackson dance, but that's about as far as they go in terms of experiencing diversity. There was some literature/articles written about this aspect of Hughes' films in the past so it wasn't any secret. These characteristics just went unnoticed back then by the vast majority of moviegoers. That being said I still enjoyed or loved many of his films even though I'm African American.

he then offers he up for another guy- enouraging him to have a go at her all because it's inconvienient for he himself to get her home.
That's the GOOD guy, or so teens in the 80's were told.

if you're looking for subliminal messages in freaking Home Alone.

I wasn't aware of this, but considering this fact, I guess I was not so far off the mark by picking up a conservative vibe from the movie.

aka the first Iraq war. I think it somehow played on the fears of children as TV screens were filled with images from smart bombs going down chimneys at Christmas time.

Siskel and Ebert gave it 2 thumbs down but revised their ratings after it was a hit.

I think you are over-thinking here.

And I always thought Maureen O'Hara's mother was great. She ended her vacation and travelled thousands of miles on a single-minded quest to make sure her son was safe. Yes, she forgot him in the first place, but I feel like that was more a commentary (maybe) on how the rush and hubub of Christmas makes us lose sight of what's important. But she's also the first one that realizes what's wrong.

Catholic and still has his first wife. He used to put his extended family in his movies.

Fun fact: His brother-in-law is the Bailiff on Judge Mathis.

That seems to accept the RW frame that the two parties are individualists versus collectivists, which is not true.