The story of the Seven Ronin (I believe that was the number) is an example of the former while the example of Japan post 1945 is an example of the latter.

The 60’s counterculture movement was about the rejection of traditional values. The moviemakers reviled the type of movie where the villian was enlightened, at its end, to become moral, thus serving as a guide and as encouragement for the audience to do better themselves. We got “slice of life” movies from them; and they gave us movies filled with bitter cynicism towards American life, or movies where traditionalists were idiotic or evil, and by the end the new liberals had showed the benefits of the new way.

New memes, new object lessons for the American audience. In their own way the better of them tried to elevate the audience. However, nearly without exception these movies are hostile to traditional values. Traditionalists of all sorts are presented as venal and simple-minded at best, corrupt and vicious and evil at worst. This has continued up to the present day. The culture war began then, and it has never stopped, not for a moment.

Consider how even a well-done movie such as ‘The Graduate’ depicts traditional society, treating all the people who live in it as villianous, depraved, corrupt, etc.

Then I compare that to a little alternative gem called ‘Breaking Away’, about a cycling enthusiast teenager and his friends, sons of a stone cutters, enemies of the college students. In this coming of age story, the enemies are worth cheering against, but by the end of the movie, they’re certainly not seen as villianous, depraved, corrupt, etc. I left that movie feeling mighty good about myself and everyone else, and I liked its object lesson about maturing and striving for your dreams.

The worst of the counterculture, becoming more prevalent every day now, is where the very idea of a noble, good human is thrown into the audience’s faces. We are all worthless, venal animals, worthy only of crawling through the mud, and we deserve degradation, every single one of us. Sitting through those movies is like being forced to crawl through a sewer. “See how vile human life is?” is the main point of such movies. If you’ve ever come out of a movie wanting to take a shower, you’ve been through one of these movies.

If you believe in Satan, you know that he was outraged that God would elevate stinking crawling humans to a noble status in heaven, and part of Satan’s purpose is to reduce us to the same stinking, crawling, depraved status that these movies do.

I suppose my point is that this IS a culture war, and your choices for entertainment should reflect your values.