Hollywood Babylon

The New American ^ | March 21, 2005 | William F. Jasper

[w6ai5q37b]

The recent Academy Award celebration of last year's movie fare has made transparently obvious the huge chasm between the cultural elitists and Middle America.

The year 2004 is certain to go down as a defining point in the decades-long war for the heart, mind, and soul of America. The cultural elites who reign over the fields of entertainment, the arts, the news media, and academia are triumphantly celebrating our descent into a post-Christian, neopagan society. They are celebrating an ongoing revolution that threatens to transform a culture of life, light, virtue, and hope into a culture of death, darkness, degeneracy, and despair.

This celebration of our moral decline was nowhere more blatantly displayed than at the 77th Academy Awards on February 27. Considered by many to be the premier annual cultural event, broadcast to a global audience of hundreds of millions, the Oscars have been sliding down a slippery slope for many years. But this year's nominees for the coveted golden statue comprised, in the words of USA Today, an especially "bleak slate."

In a February 25 cover story entitled, "Exploring Oscar's Dark Side," USA Today described the grim reality behind this year's glamour and glitz:

Open the winning envelope? For this year's Oscar hopefuls, it's more like opening a vein. Drug addiction, mercy killing, mental illness, genocide, abortion, ill young mothers and borderline alcoholism — these are a few of Oscar's favorite things this year. Here are a few more of Oscar's favorite things, as deduced from the Academy's nominees: homosexuality, pederasty, adultery, pornography, nudity, incest, blasphemy, profanity, and Communist revolutionaries.

[w6ai5q37b]

Related article: Academy Awards TV Audience Down 2 Million

[snarks_when_bored]

How long would it take for Hollywood to re-discover solid American values if people stopped going to their movies? About a week? Two weeks? A month? Not much longer.

I'm doing my part.

[Borges]

For this year's Oscar hopefuls, it's more like opening a vein. Drug addiction, mercy killing, mental illness, genocide, abortion, ill young mothers and borderline alcoholism — these are a few of Oscar's favorite things this year.

Doesn't mention how the subjects dealt with. Or is it wrong to deal with them in any way?

[Borges]

When do you think the schism occured?

[ProudVet77]

Better title:
Hollywood Babble On

[snarks_when_bored]

When do you think the schism occured?

Not sure, but maybe after the John Wayne/Jimmy Stewart generation died? And certainly the Vietnam War polarization of the country contributed; Hollywood woke up to its liberal roots at that time, for sure. There are surely many reasons.

What do you think?

[johnd238]

i couldn't agree with you all more. especially that hotel rwanda movie. what a waste! how stupid to nominate an actor portraying someone who saved over a thousand people from certain death. ugh.

[Borges]

In the mid 1960s the studio system collaped and the old studios were bought up by non movie business conglemorates...beverage companies, communication companies and the like. Those CEOs didn't know anything about movies so they gave the keys to the kingdom to young film school grads. Coppola, Scorsese, Depalma. Who came to dmoniate the industry by the 70s. That was the big change as I see it.

But this article is hyperbolic bilge and I reject the premise utterly. You could make the same list about movies from the 40s many of which featured 'murder', 'alcholism', 'mental illness' and the like. How is mental illness 'offensive'?

[gdani]

For this year's Oscar hopefuls, it's more like opening a vein. Drug addiction, mercy killing, mental illness, genocide, abortion, ill young mothers and borderline alcoholism — these are a few of Oscar's favorite things this year

I don't get it.

Is the author complaining that movies are made with these subjects? If so, pretty stupid.

What's next - complaining because there are books & TV programs that address the same subjects?

[Borges]

Look at the source. It's the Cap Alert mentality. Everything should be all right for young children and should have not have anything even mildly distrubring or upsetting to them.

[colorado tanker]

Around the same time Hollywood abandoned its old code and adopted the MPAA rating system. They awarded Midnight Cowboy the Oscar and forfeited their mass market for the niche they now have. They never recovered the numbers they gave up in the 1960's.

[mel]

I started watching Bonanza on TVLand. That show was awesome. One program talked about honesty, values, justice. And it said those words in the show. Nearly every episode has a value lesson. However, if Bonanza was made today, Adam would be living with his girlfriend, Haas would be divorced with a bunch of kids, and Little Joe would be a homosexual. Pa would probably be on drugs.

[Borges]

The 'Old Code' was geriatric by then. The market now decides what's appropriate not men in a dark room with a checklist. BTW the movie that did it in was 'Who's Afraid of Virgnia Woolf' something that couldn't work without the lnaguage and themes it had to use.

[Darkwolf377]

It's a silly article. The movies of the 60's and 70's addressed real issues as well as churning out the usual popcorn movies. It so happens that most of these issues were shown in a liberal PC view, and that tone has been enforced and continued to the present.

But...so what? There are plenty of movies with various points of view. A movie like "Requiem for a Dream" is probably hated by most people here, yet it is the greatest anti-drug movie ever made.

The fact that these movies address these issues is important to me, and I don't need someone in the movie lecturing me on the "right" view of things. I can see a movie and enjoy it for what it is and ignore the point (propaganda) any liberal tries to slap on it. I don't need a movie to cheerlead for my views--if it's entertaining, I can just ignore the liberal spin its makers put on it.

[Borges]

I can just ignore the liberal spin its makers put on it.

Or better yet, refute it. 'Requiem for a Dream' gave me a headache. It's like one of those 'Scared Straight' PSAs x 100.

[Borges]

Good critics are the only defense against marketing departments and media noise. If you find one or more you agree with its helpful to separate the wheat from the chaff. When you bash critics you're right in bed with the Hollywood marketing guys. They'd love nothing more then to be rid of them.

[what's up]

Used to be that Film Noir was the minority; the majority was movies with, if not overt religious values, than certainly underlying Judeo-Chrisitan values.

Now Film Noir often seems to be the majority and Judeo-Christian values are constantly challenged, even in the comedies.

Same for books and TV...mass culture in general.

[Darkwolf377]

"They awarded Midnight Cowboy the Oscar and forfeited their mass market for the niche they now have. They never recovered the numbers they gave up in the 1960's."

Niche? The average annual box office per year has been climbing steadily since the 1980s. Even if one accounts for inflated ticket prices, that niche is greater than the audience used to be. DVDs and tapes didn't exist in the Midnight Cowboy era, either, nor did cable or pay per view. Considering that people who stopped going to theaters after a certain age have readily-available access to movies they didn't have when only networks played them, the audience for movies is enormous.

[colorado tanker]

Yep, the "market" does decide and since it's dominated by teens and twentysomthings, we'll still be fed a steady diet of cartoon action movies and vacuous chick flicks.