Although I have yet to see the film myself, I have been deeply interested in the discourse that exists over the recent film release The Sound Of Freedom, and how this discourse has demonstrated the decreasing credibility of mainstream sources of film criticism and information in the face of what has so-far been a two-prong strategy of trying to ignore and discredit a film that clearly makes people uncomfortable. From what I can understand of the film, at least, it was made years ago by filmmakers for 20th Century Fox, and was then abandoned by Disney when the original studio was acquired, only to be bought back out of post-development limbo and released by small independent company Angel Studios, only to become a film that is on pace to surpass 100 million domestically in a summer where there have been many disappointments at the box office. The film’s subject matter is child trafficking, and the efforts to combat it, a subject that rightly makes people intensely upset and which accounts for at least some of the unpleasant nature of the discourse about the film.

Mainstream news sources have tended to react to the film’s success in one of two ways. The first way was to ignore it. In a world where people expect coverage of even small arthouse release, the silence about a movie that is selling (so far) in the tens of millions at the box office, well above such mainstream films as Indiana Jones: Dial Of Destiny, the live action remake of The Little Mermaid, or The Flash on a day-to-day basis has been deafening. Ignoring such a film lowers the credibility of news sources when its success can be seen by anyone who is a box office nerd looking at the daily box office results, or who has access to the sort of alternative film criticism that has also, rightly, lauded the film for its bravery in taking on an important social issue.

When it became impossible for people to ignore the film any longer because its box office was doing so well–to the point where it may end up cracking the top ten for the summer box office as a whole if it keeps up its momentum–the strategy of mainstream film critics and pundits and journalists moved to an attempt to discredit the film by association with what they viewed as right-wing conspiracy theories that there is an elite group of child traffickers who desire to take advantage of vulnerable children with impunity. This criticism of the film has only made more people want to see the film, and if they might be disappointed that the film focuses on providing a faithful portrayal of the rescue of children by the film’s protagonist rather than a conspiratorial approach, everything I have heard about the film from those who have seen it is that the film is uncomfortable and unpleasant but also important and well worth seeing.

Why would such a film merit such a response from self-appointed cultural gatekeepers like the incompetent journalists at the Rolling Stone? (As an aside, the Rolling Stone has generally demonstrated a complete unwillingness to properly recognize musical acts that it does not support, and so its bungled foray into film criticism is hardly surprising.) When Tim Ballard originally helped save children from child trafficking in Colombia, his efforts on behalf of vulnerable children achieved appreciative mainstream press, as it was deemed a consensus social matter that working on behalf of such kiddos was a praiseworthy thing. In 2023, the same thing is judged to be a right-wing moral panic. How quickly we have fallen as a society that even to work on behalf of vulnerable children and to believe that the exploitation of children by corrupt and powerful figures is a hyperpartisan matter is rather depressing.

After all, it is by no means a conspiracy theory to think about there being a corrupt elite that exploits vulnerable children. Just last summer I took a trip to the Virgin Islands with my mother, and our ferry between St. Thomas and St. John wound its way besides the small island where Epstein once held sway. Even after his death, the locals we asked about it were reluctant to say anything bad, or much of anything, about the man and his behavior. That sort of reluctance in an area lacking in responsible self-government where the protection of the people was and remains the responsibility of the federal government suggests that blind eyes were turned to the exploitation of vulnerable children for people who were flying to the small private island, and that the place was chosen because the federal government was unwilling to protect children from the grasp of the wealthy and powerful. If that makes people feel uncomfortable, so be it.