Painting Pictures of Right and Left

In “Left Good. Right Bad. It’s Called Art” (Commentary, Oct. 18), Andrew Klavan notes that recently there have been no conservative heroes either in books or in movies. He’s right because a conservative character is inherently undramatic, by definition a character who knows what he is, likes it and won’t change. The wife who is “happy with her life choice” or the “intelligent Christian who [isn’t] a priest or a milquetoast” are static or flat characters, content with the way things are and with the answers they’ve found. Drama is not born of contentment but of conflict.

Jack Swanson

Irvine

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Klavan has a problem with definition, as do we all. A “conservative” is defined as one who adheres to past methods, but to conserve is defined as “to protect from loss, to preserve.” Past methods frequently do not preserve what we have, but those who seek to protect anything, from the environment to the economy to quality of life, are called liberal. For instance, the film “Erin Brockovich” was about a conservative hero who sought to protect the environment and the people living there from rapacious managers who rated profit above all else.

Larry Severson

Fountain Valley

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If Klavan can loudly wring his hands over the liberal-leaning output of many artists, then I want to broadcast my frustration with the lack of tree hugging in the farming, trucking and other right-wing communities. His assertion that artists should change their stripes and project a rosier view of all things conservative is Bush-esque in its righteousness. Within his short piece I counted four occurrences of the word “should,” all directed at how artists fail to embrace good old family and “traditionalist values.” Artists should do just that on the day the NRA has a peace march.

Dan Marfisi

Los Angeles

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Klavan is pointing the finger at the wrong culprit. The reason there are no acceptable, money-making movies that depict his conservative ideals is that all of the qualified, creative fictional writers and illusionists of conservative causes are already gainfully employed by Karl Rove and the Republican Party writing speeches and campaign ads for his cause.

Edward Saade

Poway, Calif.

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If the movie industry is a monolithic, tree-hugging nation, why are there so many movies glorifying war? That would seem to help the current Christian conservative agenda and hurt left-wing peaceniks.

A persecution complex is part of the conservative identity. Now that they run the government, they still can’t give up that special spot in their hearts for paranoia. It’s pathetic.

Branden Frankel

Newport Beach

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I’ve always believed that art is a response to our senses. It’s what we hear and see and taste and smell and touch. It’s also what we sense emotionally. And I tend to sense, from a gut level, “left good, right bad.” And you know why? It isn’t because fundamentalists care that I’m gay or had an abortion. Fundamentally, they don’t care if I go to hell. They want to control their children and, to do that, they must control society.

Using the word “value” entitles them to assert their morality on the rest of us. They are unable to cope with truth and, much like their role model, George W. Bush, they create versions of reality to control truth: This is good and that is bad and there’s no room for gray. But America is all about the gray areas ... that’s where freedom resides. Fundamentalism is a curse that sucks freedom from this country.

Pamela Fiore

Flemington, N.J.