printThe “case that Hollywood is liberal” is hardly novel or new, National Review’s Jonah Goldberg observes about Ben Shapiro’s book “Primetime Propaganda.” I’m not even sure that getting “a whole bunch of liberal Hollywood muckety mucks to confess their very liberal agenda” serves to out these shameless idiots.
Does Shapiro get at the core of the problem?
One aspect is that, as I wrote, “Hollywood no longer offers entertainment. Instead, activism has replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories. Instead of a good yarn, you get a yawn.”
However, there’s more to it. Does Shapiro enunciate the fact that on a meta-level, Hollywood’s increasingly impoverished scripts, with few exceptions, have indeed created a parallel reality, one that is increasingly reflected in real life (say, in the workplace)?
*Gender junk: Woman is brawny, brainy, and beautiful; man is a buffoon. An 80-pound waif manages to wallop a 200-pound gangster with no punctures to the silicone sacks. Her hulking cop partner trots after Great Woman obediently, and is forced to endanger his life to compensate for her lack of physical prowess in police work, firefighting, etc. As in “The Killing,” normalized is the dysfunctional life of the anemic, morose midget of a female detective, while her decent male partner, who ought to be her boss, is cast as the out-of-place brute.
*Junk Science: Take your pick. The choice is endless, from the multiple personality disorder falsehood, to the global-warming canard and the root-causes-of-terrorism rot, to the “diseasing” of all aspects of evil.
Who can forget James Cameron, who having “worked extensively with robot submarines,” imagined he could help the film directors of BP to plug the oil plume? Cameron’s plan included that liquid metal robot from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
*Good Government must always temper bad business.
*The canonization of kids and critters. In Hollywood’s case, America’s kids, who’ve never been dumber, are deified. The depiction of the natural world is a cartoon, festooned with errors and ignorance and plain delusions.
This Idiocracy was at work, I believe, in the film “Rio,” in which parrots, who resemble only humans and primates in their unique, brainy ability to manipulate objects with their adorable, human like digits—are depicted as having the claw-configuration of a common bird. Here my T. Cup is manipulating a toy block and reading Reisman’s Capitalism. (T. Cup has since grown his flight feathers and acquired 30 words, including sentences used in context, a feat Hollywood types would find hard to accomplish.)
Such was the ignorance of those who put this film together (and they call conservatives stupid?). Hollywood may mirror the cretinism of America at large, only many times amplified.
*General affirmation of slut and celebrity.
Alas, judging from their Bio information, too many Facebook friends who call themselves conservatives or libertarians profess to favoring movie and TV programing that does all of the above. Other than their penchant for FoxNews, the programing these Facebook friends favor and support is the most perverse of Hollywood programing (in terms of some of the parameters above).
My impression is that unless a protagonist is against G-d or for abortion, conservatives are culturally deaf to the piffle spewed by Hollywood pea brains. What’s more, conservatives are obsessed with Hollywood. If they were serious, they’d write Hollywood off—stop writing about these phony fools, begging them to grace their shows and panels, and simply withhold buying power by not purchasing/patronizing Hollywood’s crappy cultural products.
More later.
Add a third category to what raises the Conservative ire- Patriotism. You cannot say anything against G-d, Abortion or Country. “Avatar” was soundly disliked and boycotted by the Right Wing; because, it resembled what we were doing in the Middle East and they could see a ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ collaboration possibility.
This is why Hollywood has become boring.
Be honest, Ilana: your aversion to AMC’s The Killing has more to do with the liberal, silver-spooned councilman, Richmond, and his disdain for the Ayn Rand loving, Paul Allen-esque entrepreneur whom Richmond goes to when his campaign is in need of financial help. The trust-fund baby begs the tech nerd (who presumably earned his wealth) for money, and then has the gall to paint tech nerd as the bad guy because he believes in the power of markets rather than Richmond’s after-school basketball program (or his community outreach pledge to the local Muslim community). This fictional character wants austerity measures but he also wants the taxpayers to foot the bill for his social programs?! This show certainly understands the vanity of the 21st century progressive politician.
After all of that, and watching so many episodes of AMC’s “best show” (overhyped), I no longer care who killed Rosie Larssen (after X number of episodes I’m left with the conclusion that the lead detective is unusually incompetent relative to her other network TV colleagues in the police force). I just want to make sure Richmond, aka John Edwards with sharper hair, isn’t allowed to enact his budget-busting social programs; though I suspect his Republican rival is a bit of a big-government stooge himself.
[Hilarious; thanks. You made me laugh: I no longer care who killed Rosie Larssen.]
I have seen a sum total of ZERO movies in theaters since 1993 – I guess if I had gone every month to a movie, I would have seen about 200 bad movies and maybe 10 decent ones in that time period – so I doubt I missed very much. Well, I did see a very nice HMS Pinafore at Wolf Trap National Park last Friday for $ 8 – probably less than to see some mediocre mind-numbing movie in a theater with half the audience yakking to each other or on cell phones.
Has anyone noticed the abnormal amount of remakes done over the past couple of years? What better evidence is there of the impoverishment of ideas Shapiro is talking about?
If one wishes to be pedantic, one scene in RIO features a wild pair of Eclectus parrots (my favourite), which are in fact indigenous to the solomon islands, parts of Australia, and other such places which are NOT South America. But it’s really only if one wishes to pick at nits. Your point about the toes is much more powerful. Also, shame on them for making a bare-eyed cockatoo a villain. They are among the friendliest and playful parrots. But then, Pretty = good, ugly = bad, according to Hollywood.
Mercer, you hit so many nails on the head with this post I started not to comment for fear of going a thousand words over the limit. Suffice it to say the twits of show biz and current culture are encouraged by people who mistake cleavage for brains, or so to speak. Right minded people should just avoid the fools of entertainment and stop contributing money by way of tickets. Just like Republican candidates should bypass the NAACP convention. Another excercise in futility.
I find that I don’t really watch as much TV or go to as many movies because 1) lousy plots, 2) tired of having the preaching of the environmental left, 3) men are almost always idiots, 4) women are almost always geniuses and capable of enormous feats of strength, and 5) kids are always right and the parents are idiots, to name a few. Other than that I love to go to the movies and watch TV (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
I do like to watch the old Monty Python shows when the mood strikes me. Sometimes there’s nothing better than some good British Comedy.
PS I will admit I watch college football, a baseball game once in a while, and some pro footbal. I like sports.
I agree that the attention deprived type of Conservative always has to project dissatisfaction onto the hated and collectivist pop culture. A a happier and better strategy is to ignore what one cannot change and focus on yourself and those you can influence.
That Hollywood has not suffered from even greater domestic sales decline is actually a case study on elasticity and the strength of brand inertia and habits.
The irony of the post is the national story of the moment, wherein a pale little effeminate Wiener lies about his attraction to indecent exposure, then refuses to man up and resign like any self-respecting idiot would do.