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.

[editor-surveyor]

"The market now decides what's appropriate not men in a dark room with a checklist."

B.S.

They continue to make their garbage movies, even though the market has rejected them. All of those movies loose money, but they won't back down. Mel Gibson made fools of them last year with his "passion" which was carved up un mercifully by the critics, and largely ignored by the news media for as long as they could. The people voted with their wallets for The Passion.

[Borges]

This is Hollywood we're talking about, do you have any doubts about how they deal with the things that are dear to them?

Uum yes I do. The Oscar Nominees this year were the most imaginative in years actually. This article didn't mention that things were dealt with badly but seems to object to them being dealt with at all. I don't know if the person writing had actually seen most of these movies. I have. Most of this sort of alarmist Chicken Little complaining comes from people who 'haven't been to a movie in years'.

[Borges]

What movies are you reffering to? The Best Picture nominees all made decent money. Ray, Sideways and 'Million Dollar Baby' doubled and tripled their production cost. The Aviator is closing on 100 Million.

[editor-surveyor]

The Passion has made more than 25 times it's 'production cost.'

[Borges]

The Passion has made more than 25 times it's 'production cost.'

Never said it didn't. I was addressing the 'sight unseen' dismissal of American filmmaking in the article above.

[Lady Heron]

In Hollywood studios, I suspect a major reason the Left won is

Has the left won really???? The academy awards perhaps but the worldwide audience does not pay to see what they promote as good.

Worldwide

1)Titanic

2)Return of the King

3)Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

4)Lord of the Rings: Two Towers

5)Star Wars Episode I

6)Shrek 2

7)Jurassic Park

8)Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets

9)Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

10)Finding Nemo

11)Spider-man

12)Independence Day

13)E.T

14)Harry Potter: Prizoner of Azkaban

15)Spider-man 2

16)Lion King

17)Star Wars

18)Matrix Reloaded

19)Forrest Gump

20)6th Sense

21)Pirates of the Caribbean

22)Star Wars: Episode II

23)The Incredibly

24)The Lost World: Jurasssic Park

25)The Passion of the Christ

26)Men in Black

27)Armageddon

28)Mission Impossible II

29)Day After Tomorrow

30)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back

31)Monsters Inc.

32)Terminator 2

33)Ghost

34)Aladdin

35)Troy

36)Twister

37)Toy Story 2

38)Bruce Almighty

39)Shrek

40)Saving Private Ryan

41)Meet the Fockers

42)Home Alone

43)Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

44)Indiana Jones: Last Crusade

45)Jaws

46)Pretty Woman

47)The Matrix

48)Gladiator

49)Last Samurai

50)Mission Impossible

Not a whole lot of Hollywood's cutting edge movies make money, what we basically have are Kids movies, good v evil, love stories, Disaster flicks, Action, Fantasy and Sci-fi, out of control animals and robots couple of comedies and more kids flicks where there is not a whole lot of grey, good trumps over evil.

So when Hollywood wants to make money they are pretty tame, but when they want to pat themselves on the back, nobody watches.

[Lady Heron]

LOL!

[Borges]

Are you talking about the film versions of Lolita? Forget them! Read the novel which is is extraordinary. Ever read it?

I plead guilty to an MA in English Literature and lots of dalliances with the Post modernists (of which Nabokov and Borges were the primary progenitors).

[Borges]

Thanks for the advice. I disagree with lots of things I was taught...especially the Marxist stuff. You're really missing out on Nabokov. Pornography it isn't. He's one of my aesthetic heroes. Despite the lascivious reputation of Lolita, he was actually a conservative man. He was friends with William F Buckley. Seriously he's right there with James Joyce among 20th century writers in English. And btw he's not all that popular in academia. I didn't encounter him once. They're missing out as well.

[Borges]

Most of the 'cutting edge' stuff is actually made by indies outside of Hollywood.

[Borges]

Read just bits and pieces of Paglia. I like her...forthright. Nabokov was an enemy of the French school! His aesthetics were stringently focused on the individual genius without regard to social class or 'identity'. He would have hated Post modernism and despised Marxism and Freudians.

[Borges]

Will do. BTW did you know that J.K. Galbraith is still alive? He will turn 97 in October.

[Siamese Princess]

I wonder if that take can be broken down to only movies shown theatrically. It should be broken down to theatrically shown movies and straight to Skinemax movies.

I have no idea. Many "theatrical" films, including ones starring well-known performers, are virtual "straight-to-video." It seems that they are in the theatres for two or three weeks and then they disappear.

[ComplexUnion182]

What is unfortunate is that this relative wants to make movies bashing the Christian faith. I don't believe that people have to have faith to be good people. But faith, and religion is another hobby just like people who jog. I say let people believe what they want. I do pray for your relative, and hope that even though these movies have dark themes there's a positive moral to be drawn from them both.

[Gal.5:1]

Yes, it is unfortunate, the depressing themes of these movies. Your philosophy sounds nice, but the difficult (and often uncomfortable) truth is that while one does not need faith to be a good person, one does need faith (in Jesus) to be saved. (Ooh! That does sound uncool these days.) But truly, faith in Jesus is far more than a hobby like jogging, but the only way to God. I understand fully that belief in this truth will become more and more uncool and unacceptable and ridiculous sounding. I am not ashamed to admit my belief in Jesus to you, though. :)