Reblogged:
Is Hollywood Biased?
(updated with comments 8/16 - proof that extremism exists on both sides)
Duh! But many blogs are gloating over poor financial performance at the Hollywood Box Office and making the claim it is a conservative backlash.
Given that most movie goers are teens and young adults (and that movies are geared to that not-so-mature point of view), I say hoo-ey. The majority of young people are chronically apolitical and make their entertainment purchasing decisions on, dare I say it, entertainment value....
Duh! But many blogs are gloating over poor financial performance at the Hollywood Box Office and making the claim it is a conservative backlash.
Given that most movie goers are teens and young adults (and that movies are geared to that not-so-mature point of view), I say hoo-ey. The majority of young people are chronically apolitical and make their entertainment purchasing decisions on, dare I say it, entertainment value....
posted by Jay Cline | 12:08 PM
2 Comments:
From The Fightin Titan blog:
The Fightin Titan has long chronicled the declines in the Hollywood Box Office and theorized possible causes for the decline (which I posted here in Hollywood in Denial). It has long been my belief that box office revenues are down because conservatives are fed up with Hollywood elitists and are voicing their disapproval with their pocketbooks by staying home. ...
Post from the Fightin Titan August 09, 2005
Given that the big headliners in the movie theaters in recent months have been 'Star Wars: Episode III,' 'Madagascar,' 'Batman Begins,' 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith,' and 'War of the Worlds', I'm not finding a whole lot of left-wing bias, at least in the box office receipts.
Not that I wouldn't like to see Hollywood take a black eye for its Xtreme giant-zit-on-their-nose support for liberal causes and party hacks, but could someone please explain why a bunch of penguins planning a zoo breakout is considered ultra-liberal?
Posted by: Jay Cline | August 10, 2005 07:49 PM
It's not that the movies are always filled with bias. I don't find the subject matter of Mystic River to be anti-American. But why would I want to put any of my hard earned dollars into the pockets of Tim Robbins and Sean Penn.
There are times however when there is bias in movies but its subtle and well disguised. I give you as an example the awful, but harmless "Two Weeks Notice" starring Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock.
...
As for "Star Wars Episode III," George Lucas commented at Cannes that he would like to see Episode III viewed as an anit-Bush administration film. I still haven't figured out what he meant by this, but the director claimed that dialogue in the film poked fun at Bush Administration policies.
Posted by: The Fightin Titan | August 10, 2005 09:05 PM
The dialogue in SW:III was in the climatic battle between Obi Wan and Darth Vader. Vader appeals to Obi Wan to join in, saying, in effect, you are either with or against me.
Same thing Bush told the world after 9/11.
Obi Wan's response to Vader (and obviously Lucas' response to Bush) implies that only evil talks in such absolute terms.
Yeah, there is bias. For every Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, there is a Gibson's Passion of Christ. Big business in the entertainment industry boycotted both films.
But to claim some moral victory over Hollywood by reading tea leaves in financial reports, well, I guess I just don't get it.
Also, I don't think even Lucas realizes the real moral of his story. Because Obi Wan didn't have the moral courage to vanquish the enemy when he had a chance, how many billions of people suffered and died until Luke Skywalker finished the job?
Truth has a nasty habit of transcending even script writers.
Posted by: Jay Cline | August 13, 2005 09:42 AM
How much did Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, Sum of all Fears make at the Hollywood Box Office?
How about all those 007 movies?
Posted by: Jay Cline | August 13, 2005 11:10 AM
I wish it was true that for every Fahrenheit 9/11 there was a Passion of the Christ.
As for the success of those other films, lets look at The Sum of all Fears. In the original novel, weren't the terrorists Islamo-fascists, but in the Hollywood version I believe they magically became white supremacists. This is typical of Hollywood, that after the events of 9/11, Hollywood views neo-nazis as the greatest threat to our way of life.
I think this change had alot to do with the lack of success of this film in a post 9/11 world and it's a clear a case of Hollywood bias as I can offer.
Posted by: The Fightin Titan | August 14, 2005 09:25 AM
Your right. It was not my intent to claim Hollywood is "fair and balanced" to the last decimal.
But the only balance, on balance, they really care about is the balance sheet. If Hollywood was as biased as a lot of blogs imply, then we wouldn't get any Tom Clancy or 007, or Shindler's List or Law and Order or CSI or JAG, etc etc etc.
And they wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry...
Posted by: Jay Cline | August 15, 2005 01:42 PM
I feel like a dog with doggie chew that I just can't let go...
White supremacists and neo-nazis are preferable to Islamofascists?
C'mon!
Adolph Eichmann and Timothy McVeigh should be given a pass because they're white and Christian, or at the very least not Islamic?
Who's really biased here?
Fact is that if the prime villians of "Sum of all Fears" (2002) were changed in the aftermath of 9/11 from Islamofascists, it was for strictly monetary reasons. Some people who like to criticize Hollywood (like me) are very quick to criticize Hollywood for exploiting people's grief. You know, agents lining up for movie rights after the shoot up at Columbine, or after Timothy McVeigh was identified....
How many TV shows in Fall of 2001 (like "24" and what was that show about the CIA with the college grad whose Dad was a CIA agent as well?) postponed episodes filmed before 9/11 because they were just too real and too raw in the weeks after 9/11?
So when they do right, what? no kudos? Of course not. Hollywood is just a business with commercial motivation.
(so, you really think the white supremacists and neo-nazis who bombed Oklahoma City are preferable to Islamofascists?!)
Posted by: Jay Cline | August 16, 2005 02:17 PM
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