Thought of the Day 01.23.09

In the last few years, opponents of President Bush have released a number of movies designed to criticize his policies. That the vast majority of them failed to make very much money probably baffled the makers, but it makes perfect sense to me.

Very few people like to be browbeat into believing something. And if Christians can sometimes be accused of Bible-thumping, we can certainly accuse Hollywood of movie-thumping. But there is a much deeper irony here.

See, these movies usually fashion themselves as advocating freedom and opposing the fascism which they accuse Bush of creating. But the core problem with abusive governments is that they do not trust their citizens to make their own choices. Yet these movies are so blunt and overpowering that it’s clear they do not trust their audiences in precisely the same way.

Such artistic totalitarianism may style itself the champion of freedom, but at its heart it is virtually identical with the political totalitarianism it purports to oppose.
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3 comments:

Naum said...

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/01/big-hollywood-and-why-i-admire-david.html

"Now, John," you might say, as a reasonable human, "that's not fair. Big Hollywood's argument is that the anemic box office domestically indicates Americans don't want to see movies that show America in a bad light, and despite that fact Hollywood produces lots of them -- okay, not lots of them but anyway -- still produces these movies because of its liberal bias. You should engage his intended argument, not his actual one."

Well, first off, for a trillion dollar industry dedicated to pushing anti-War movies on America, dedicating to this cause less than 5% of the last 300 movies kind of indicates our hearts aren't really into it. Not to mention the limited number of release theaters for most of the movies we discussed. FIFTEEN THEATERS for Redacted, for chrissake. Here's a quick clue -- when Hollywood wants to sell something, we make it as widely available as possible for purchase. Crazy, I know. What sort of marketing mumbo-jumbo is this?

You'll note thay evil "Hollywood" kind of lay down on the oppression job, allowing An American Carol to be released in 1600+ theaters, and Proud American to be released in 750 theaters, and Expelled to be released in over 1000 theaters, the widest release of a documentary in history. As far as soul-crushing propaganda machines go, we are not getting the memos out, apparently.

Let's take a moment to address the first, possibly non-crazy part of that argument: we should use domestic box office. No, because Nolte was right to use the worldwide box office in his argument.

This is how it works, kids. Hollywood is run by large corporations. Large corporations do not want to make controversial political movies. Which is why, by and large, they don't. They want to make franchise-friendly four-quadrant super-profitable family entertainment, with some sex comedies for the teens/dumb-guy comedies for college students, sprinkled liberally with horror movies for Date Night. Which is why, by and large, they do.

This is not hard. This is capitalism. Capitalism is our friend.

Artsy People in Hollywood, on the other hand, often want to do something artistically satisfying, or personally important. And, too, studios sometimes want to win awards, because with that prestige comes more bargaining power with the Artsy People, and often more profits. And, hey, some Execs are secret Artsy People. It's kind of cool, actually.

January 23, 2009 at 8:09 PM
Andrew Tallman said...

The question of bias within the industry at large is interesting, but that wasn't really the point of the Thought of the Day. The point was that there is distinct similarity between the pattern of these political movies and the thing against which they rant in that both are reluctant to trust the end user too much to figure things out for himself. So it sounds off key to use manipulative and oppressive fiction to criticize manipulative and oppressive government. That's all. =)

January 26, 2009 at 3:23 PM
Naum said...

No, the point was you used a false premise for your TotD — that (a) the goal for those movie makers was to make a lot of money and that (b) they were "browbeating" viewers into believing something…

In fact, it could be argued, those movies are revealing the truth that is shielded by the quotidian flow of propaganda that masks such realities with a largely mythical idyllic veneer of American exceptionalism.

January 30, 2009 at 7:16 AM

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