Knives Out movie: Migrants are better than Native-born Americans

When at Universal Orlando… see a movie! My Irish friend and I saw Knives Out, in which Daniel Craig speaks in a Southern accent that no Southerner since the 19th century (or ever?) has used.

Despite the anachronistic accent, this is perhaps the most modern Hollywood film. It concerns an extended multi-generational family of native-born Americans. They are mendacious and lazy. One even might be a Trump supporter and Wall advocate! All seek to live off the money earned by the patriarch. Their fertility is low, with a one-child maximum.

On the other side of the scale is a hard-working migrant from Latin America. Her mother is undocumented, but somehow she and a sister are citizens. So that the mom can be a completely heroic “single mom,” no father is mentioned nor appears.

It’s a mystery so I don’t want to spoil the rest!

It is worth seeing just to see how thick Hollywood is willing to lay on the “immigrants are better than natives and the U.S. will be better off once the natives have been replaced” message.

[There is a technical inaccuracy. The citizen migrant is supposedly concerned that her undocumented mother will be deported. But the citizen is over age 18 and therefore has an automatic right to bring in her parents (including a father, if one can be identified) via chain migration.]

7 thoughts on “Knives Out movie: Migrants are better than Native-born Americans

  1. Yeah, Hollywood really hates Americans, doesn’t it? As Trump pointed out, they gave the Best Picture award to a foreign film just a few weeks ago.

    You’re probably mistaken about your last point on immigration law. The citizen in question wouldn’t be bringing in a parent from outside the country if that parent is already present in the country.

    • Vince: I think if the parent is has been living here without documents (not to say “illegally”, of course, since no human being is illegal), he or she can simply step over the border into Canada or Mexico and then be “brought in”. That’s a detail that any competent immigration attorney can work out. After that, automatic green card and citizenship (though perhaps Trump is making this a touch more challenging if the parent begins to collect welfare prior to obtaining the green card? Someone such as Obama’s Aunt Zeituni, for example (see https://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/obama-aunt-who-stayed-in-us-illegally-dies-at-61-105512 )).

      (And maybe there is a way to transform the undocumented immigrant into a citizen without the one-day trip to Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, etc.)

    • Perhaps I was reading your comment too literally. If ICE were to show up and take the mother into custody and begin deportation proceedings, the fact that the daughter is a citizen wouldn’t have any bearings on the mother’s fate. Also, “he or she can simply step over the border into Canada or Mexico and then be brought in” is almost certainly literally accurate. The processing of the paperwork must take some time.

  2. Regardless of all of the politicizing I found the movie to be enjoyable! I would recommend it to other people especially if they like mystery movies.

  3. I love how when the non-white character is the heroine it becomes an “immigrants are better than natives message” yet the previous 70 years of movies that did the opposite somehow had no message?

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