Posted on 12/28/2004 3:52:03 PM PST by pissant
A tsunami of conservatism has moved through American institutions over the last 30 years. First the small magazines (National Review, Reason, The Public Interest), followed by the think tanks (The Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, to name just a few).
Maggie Gallagher
In the late '70s and '80s, the Christian right began to create its own huge counterculture: singers and songwriters, Christian pulp fictions and self-help books, coloring books and cartoons, as well as lobbying organizations (like the Family Research Council). In the '90s, conservatives got their own television news and talk radio shows. What will the future bring?
But tsunami is the wrong metaphor altogether, for these creative ventures in conservative culture-making left their secular, anti-religious and/or liberal cousins intact. Fox News provides an alternative voice, but The New York Times endures. A few extraordinary new colleges and universities have recently been founded (Ave Maria, Patrick Henry). But as The American Enterprise magazine reports, Democratic professors continue to outnumber Republicans by lopsided ratios (www.taemag.com). Among political scientists at two major California universities, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was 46-to-4; among psychologists, 50-to-1; among sociologists 27-to-zip.
Conservative institutions did not overwhelm existing institutions; they simply filled a niche, or rather a huge, gaping void in the marketplace of ideas.
Is Hollywood next?
There are good reasons to think so. In the first place, the market for sexual titillation is now, shall we say, pretty thoroughly saturated. The old Hollywood formula for success -- make a movie that breaks a taboo -- is hard to follow in an era in which there aren't any taboos left, or at least not ones for which a mass market exists. Gay sex, or sympathetic portrayals of pedophilia may still win critical accolades, but the buzz is no longer big box office, simply because the market for such tastes is still tiny.
Meanwhile, capitalism's relentless search for expanding markets is leading Hollywood into a vast undiscovered territory: the red state of mind. USA Today reports that "in a nation still squeamish over wardrobe malfunctions and violence, studios are willing to bet" on "quiet, wholesome entertainment films." "There's been a desire to grow an underserved market with non-cynical family entertainment," said Walden Media CEO Cary Granat.
True enough. But Hollywood will miss something important about the potential new market if it is defined only in reactionary terms (not cynical, not trashy).
Every human heart hungers to be part of a story, to take the disconnected dots of human existence and weave them into a meaningful drama. Yet millions of Americans never, ever see anything of the great aspirational stories of their lives reflected in America's premier storytelling genre, the movies.
Americans are an overwhelmingly religious people, for example, yet the drama of sin and salvation, of divine grace and purpose, is conspicuously absent. Millions of American men and women strive to connect sex, love, marriage and babies into a coherent story for their own life. And yet the particular intense kind of eros that can be experienced only by those so committed to such a connection is almost never glimpsed on television or film. Perhaps Hollywood does not even know it exists.
For millions of entrepreneurial and ambitious Americans, the romance of business is the story of their lives, yet businessman in Hollywood are uniformly portrayed as villains. It took Donald Trump, for goodness sake, to turn the business romance into a surprise television hit in "The Apprentice." Patriotism may be the last refuge of scoundrels in Beverly Hills, but right now, young American soldiers are willing to risk death to fight for their country in Iraq (news - web sites). Where are the epics that express that vision of life?
Putting bodies into seats is the mission of most Hollywood studios, and in their devotion to this mission, Hollywood may well be the next domino to fall. Happy New Year.
Do you remember that in Shadows the cameraman had to hide a camera in his trenchcoat to shoot the long pans in Penn Station because they didn't have permits?
Slacker borrowed heavily from Cul de Sac, a pretty good New Wave film. Forget the director. Also, Linklater had to be inventive in financing and equipment.
My favorite film financing story is Richard Rodriguez submitting to medical experiments to pay for El Mariachi.
you mean David Crosby, R. Kelly and Neil Young, I assume.
David Crosby, Emmett Kelly and Neil Young??? Huh?
Conservatism has not been and isn't going to be a tsunami. It is the steady relentless drop of rain upon a rock. Causing fissures that slowly, eventually will weaken the rock to gravel and grist.
Hollywood will continue to grind out its Corporate Driven, PC laden, written by commission, incredibly lame drek. While independents slip in three or four films that are suitable for the whole family and will make money.
Until there are a few films that reach the status of "The Passion" or "The Incredibles" each year for a decade. Hollywood will take no notice.
Since their films are gauged only by their "Opening Weekend". Should the film do well, you can bet that there will be a sequel.
It's all about money. And it is sickeningly self-perpetuating.
Jack.
'Cul De Sac' is a British film directed by Roman Polanski so good luck finding fans here! :)
As to the point of the article, I don't think that Hollywood will appreciably change until the people change, either inside or by different people. Currently, the Hollywood elite are more committed to drugs, homosexuality and perversion than to anything else, including making money.
Steven Spielberg and Jeff Katzenberg vowed to get Mel Gibson blackballed in Hollywood for making "The Passion of the Christ." They only backed off when their quotes were made public, generating backlash.
Speilberg was asked about the Gibson film when it came out and declined to comment. Where do you get this information? Films about homosexuality and perversion represent a rather small percentage of Hollywood product.
Ford went to the Clinton White House, and Clinton went to the Ford ranch.
There were several stories about it. Spielberg wasn't talking to the press when he said this. It was some party talk that got out. Both he and Katzenberg backtracked very quickly. They were both swearing that they'd never work with him and that they'd use their pull to keep their studios away from him.
Spielberg had once offered Gibson the part of Oscar Schindler. There are 'Hollywood stories' about lots of things. I wouldn't put too much stock in it.
"distinct *lack of quality* to persist in the Christian music industry"
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Jars of Clay.. Third day.. 'nuff said.
There is indeed a revolution underway in movie making. Independents are now getting their hands on some wonderful technology and independent film making is the growth market. Independents can make movies on micro budgets.
Hollywood is not making mid-budget movies. They are rolling the dice on blockbuster attempts using $100+ million dollar budgets. They are also losing a hell of a lot of money doing it.
It's all about "deals" in Hollywood. Movie stars and directors are called "attachments" now. Note the language of lawyers. They think if they blow enough cash, filling the screen with big names, every fool in American will drop $9 to see it, without regard to the quality of the story.
It is gratifying to see these ruthless people losing hundreds of millions of dollars paying self-absorbed, loony actors $15 million apiece to make movies which lose money by the trainload.
Hollywood is a land of dead people walking around. It's a world of dinosaurs, not innovators. The old model is broken and they don't know what to do.
I don't really care about their politics, as long as they don't try to shove it down my throat like the Sarandons, Baldwins, Streisands, Penn's, Depp's of the world and tell me I'm stupid for not agreeing with them
Good job. Keep me posted on how you are doing, I am particularly interested in this as a writer. I believe that the movie business is definitely in the crosshairs for a BIG change in this direction. There is a huge market out there for good, old fashioned movies with good acting and real plots. National Review recently featured an article on this very topic.
"God bless our troupes" LOL HAHAHAHAHAHA
I am guessing you meant this as a play on words since "troupe" is more often used to refer to a group of actors, and we are talking about Hellywierd.
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