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Imprimis, On Line -- November, 1992
Imprimis, meaning "in the first place," is a free
monthly publication of Hillsdale College (circulation
360,000 worldwide). Hillsdale College is a liberal arts
institution known for its defense of free market
principles and Western culture and its nearly 150-year
refusal to accept federal funds. Imprimis publishes
lectures by such well-known figures as Ronald Reagan,
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Tom Wolfe, Charlton Heston, and many
more. Permission to reprint is hereby granted, provided
credit is given to Hillsdale College. Copyright 1992.
For more information on free print subscriptions or
back issues, call 1-800-437-2268, or 1-517-439-1524,
ext. 2319.
------------------------------
"Hollywood's Poison Factory:
Making It the Dream Factory Again"
by Michael Medved
Co-Host, "Sneak Previews"
------------------------------
Volume 21, Number 11
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
November 1992
------------------------------
Preview: One of Hillsdale's most popular speakers ever,
PBS film critic Michael Medved addressed an audience of
over 400 students, faculty and outside guests on campus
last March at the Center for Constructive Alternatives
seminar, "Culture Wars." In this edited version of his
remarks, he notes that in recent decades Hollywood has
lost touch with its own audience, and that it has
openly attacked the family, religion, traditional
values, and genuine heroes. Medved argues persuasively
that, goaded by disastrous box office receipts, the
industry can be changed, but that we must all get
actively involved.
------------------------------
America's long-running romance with Hollywood is over.
For millions of people, the entertainment industry no
longer represents a source of enchantment, of magical
fantasy, of uplift, or even of harmless diversion.
Popular culture is viewed now as an implacable enemy, a
threat to their basic values and a menace to the
raising of their children. The Hollywood dream factory
has become the poison factory.
This disenchantment is reflected in poll after
poll. An Associated Press Media General poll released
in 1990 showed that 80 percent of Americans objected to
the amount of foul language in motion pictures; 82
percent objected to the amount of violence, 72 percent
objected to the amount of explicit sexuality, and by a
ratio of 3 to 1 they felt that movies today are worse
than ever.
In reality, you don't need polls or surveys to
understand what is going on. When was the last time you
heard someone say, "You know, by golly, movies today
are better than ever!" Only Jack Valenti, the head of
the Motion Picture Association of America, can make
such statements with a straight face. There is a
general recognition even among those Americans who
still like to go to movies that their quality has
declined. And this has begun to register in disastrous
box office receipts.
Hollywood's Dirty Little Secret
There is a dirty little secret in Hollywood. For movie
attendance, 1991 was the worst year in fifteen years.
The summer season was the worst in twenty-three years.
Forty percent of Americans report that they don't see a
single film in the course of a year--a higher
percentage than ever before. What Hollywood publicizes,
of course, is total box office gross receipts, which
look respectable, but which are misleading. Why?
Because the ticket prices have been raised so much! If
you actually count the number of warm bodies sitting in
theater seats, movie attendance has disastrously
declined.
Major studios like MGM and Orion are teetering on
the verge of collapse. Carolco, which produced
Terminator II, the year's biggest hit, has since scaled
back all operations and fired one-third of its
employees. This is clearly an industry in trouble.
Rather than searching for solutions, Hollywood
looks for scapegoats. The most common line is: "It's
the recession," but this ignores, among other things,
the fact that in the past the movie business has always
proven to be recession proof. Economic downturns
generally saw the movie business profit as people
sought escape.
In recent articles, a few critical colleagues
believe they have discovered the culprit--blaming all
of Hollywood's woes on one "over-the-hill" ex-Warner
Brothers actor who hasn't worked in movies for some
thirty years. His name is Ronald Reagan. Somehow, this
former President was supposed to have singlehandedly
destroyed the quality of American film.
What Hollywood insiders refuse to recognize is
that the crisis of popular culture is at its very core
a crisis of values. The problem isn't that the camera
is out of focus, or that the editing is sloppy, or that
the acting is bad. The problem is with the kind of
stories Hollywood is telling and the kind of messages
that it is sending in film after film. The industry is
bursting with professionalism and prowess. But it
suffers from a sickness of the soul.
Hollywood no longer reflects--or even respects--
the values that most Americans cherish.
Take a look, for example, at the most recent
Oscars. Five very fine actors were nominated for best
actor of the year. Three of them portrayed murderous
psychos: Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear, Warren Beatty in
Bugsy, and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs
(this last a delightful family film about two serial
killers--one eats and the other skins his victims). A
fourth actor, Robin Williams, was nominated for playing
a delusional homeless psycho in The Fisher King. The
most wholesome character was Nick Nolte's, a good old
fashioned manic-depressive-suicidal neurotic in The
Prince of Tides.
These are all good actors, delivering splendid
performances, compelling and technically accomplished.
But isn't it sad when all this artistry is lavished on
films that are so empty, so barren, so unfulfilling?
Isn't it sad when at the Academy Awards--the annual
event that celebrates the highest achievement of which
the film industry is capable--the best we can come up
with is movies that are so floridly, strangely whacked
out?
I repeat: The fundamental problem with Hollywood
has nothing at all to do with the brilliance of the
performers, or the camera work, or the editing. In many
ways, these things are better than ever before. Modern
films are technically brilliant, but they are morally
and spiritually empty.
The Messages
What are the messages in today's films? For a number of
years I have been writing about Hollywood's anti-
religious bias, but I must point out that this
hostility has never been quite as intense as in the
last few years. The 1991 season boasted one religion-
bashing movie after another in which Hollywood was able
to demonstrate that it was an equal-opportunity
offender.
For Protestants there was At Play in the Fields of
the Lord, a lavish $35 million rainforest spectacle
about natives and their wholesome primitive ways and
the sick, disgusting missionaries who try to ruin their
lives. And then for Catholics there was The Pope Must
Die, which was re-released as The Pope Must Diet. It
didn't work either way. It features scenes of the Holy
Father flirting with harlot nuns and hiding in a closet
pigging out on communion wafers. For Jews there was
Naked Tango, written and directed by the brother of the
screenwriter for The Last Temptation of Christ. This
particular epic featured religious Jews operating a
brutal bordello right next door to a synagogue and
forcing women into white slavery.
And then most amazingly there was Cape Fear, which
was nominated for a number of the most prestigious
Academy Awards. It wasn't an original concept. Cape
Fear was a remake of a 1962 movie in which Robert
Mitchum plays a released convict intent on revenge who
tracks down his old defense attorney. Gregory Peck
portrays the defense attorney, a strong, stalwart and
upright man who defends his family against this crazed
killer. In the remake, by Last Temptation director
Martin Scorsese, there is a new twist: the released
convict is not just an ordinary maniac, but a "Killer
Christian from Hell." To prevent anyone from missing
the point, his muscular back has a gigantic cross
tattooed on it, and he has Biblical verses tattooed on
both arms.
When he is about to rape the attorney's wife,
played by Jessica Lange, he says, "Are you ready to be
born again? After just one hour with me, you'll be
talking in tongues." He carries a Bible with him in
scenes in which he is persecuting his family, and he
tells people that he is a member of a Pentecostal
church.
The most surprising aspect of this utterly
insulting characterization is that it drew so little
protest. Imagine that DeNiro's character had been
portrayed as a gay rights activist. Homosexual groups
would have howled in protest, condemning this
caricature as an example of bigotry. But we are so
accustomed to Hollywood'sinsulting stereotypes of
religious believers that no one even seems to notice
the hatred behind them.
The entertainment industry further demonstrates
its hostility to organized religion by eliminating
faith and ritual as a factor in the lives of nearly all
the characters it creates. Forty to fifty percent of
all Americans go to church or synagogue every week.
When was the last time you saw anybody in a motion
picture going to church, unless that person was some
kind of crook, or a mental case, or a flagrant
hypocrite?
Hollywood even removes religious elements from
situations in which they clearly belong. The summer of
1991 offered a spate of medical melodramas like
Regarding Henry, Dying Young, and The Doctor. Did you
notice that all these characters go into the operating
room without once invoking the name of God, or
whispering one little prayer, or asking for clergy? I
wrote a nonfiction book about hospital life once, and I
guarantee that just as there are no atheists in
foxholes, there are no atheists in operating rooms--
only in Hollywood.
Religion isn't Hollywood's only target; the
traditional family has also received surprisingly harsh
treatment from today's movie moguls. Look again at Cape
Fear. The remake didn't only change the killer; it also
changed the hero, and this brings me to the second
message that Hollywood regularly broadcasts. As I
mentioned, the original character Gregory Peck plays is
a decent and honorable man. In the remake, Nick Nolte's
character is, not to put too fine a point on it, a
sleazeball. He is repeatedly unfaithful to his wife;
when his wife dares to question that practice, he hits
her. He tries to beat up his daughter on one occasion
because she is smoking marijuana. He is not a likeable
person. That a happily married, family-defending hero--
the kind of person that people can identify with--is
transformed into a sadistic, cheating, bitter man, says
volumes about the direction of American movies.
Did you ever notice how few movies there are about
happily married people? There are very few movies about
married people at all, but those that are made tend to
portray marriage as a disaster, as a dangerous
situation, as a battleground--with a long series of
murderous marriage movies.
There was Sleeping with the Enemy, in which
Patrick Bergin beats up Julia Roberts so mercilessly
that she has to run away. When he comes after her, she
eventually kills him. There was also Mortal Thoughts in
which Bruce Willis beats up his wife and he is killed
by his wife's best friend. In Thelma and Louise, there
is another horrible, brutal and insensitive husband to
run away from. In A Kiss Before Dying, Matt Dillon
persuades twin sisters to marry him. He kills the first
one and then tries to kill the second, but she gets to
him first.
In She-Devil, Rosanne Barr torments her cheating
husband Ed Begley, Jr., and in Total Recall, Sharon
Stone pretends to be married to Arnold Schwarzenegger
and tries to kill him. When he gets the upper hand, she
objects, "But you can't hurt me! I'm your wife." Arnold
shoots her through the forehead and says, "Consider
that a divorce." And then there was a more recent film,
Deceived, starring Goldie Hawn. The advertisement for
the movie says, "She thought her life was perfect,"
and, of course, her model husband turns out to be a
murderous monster. Deceived is an appropriate title,
because we all have been deceived by Hollywood's
portrayal of marriage. It even applies to television.
The New York Times reports that in the past TV season
there were seven different pregnancies. What did six of
the seven pregnancies have in common? They were out of
wedlock. The message is that marriage is outmoded, it
is dangerous, oppressive, unhealthy.
But is it true? Recently, I made an interesting
discovery. The conventional wisdom is that the divorce
rate in America stands at 50 percent. This figure is
used repeatedly in the media. But the 1990 U.S. Census
Bureau has a category listing the number of people who
have ever been married and who have ever been divorced.
Less than twenty percent have been divorced! The
evidence is overwhelming that the idea of a 50 percent
divorce rate is more than a slight over-statement; it
is a destructive and misleading myth.
Yet for years Hollywood has been selling divorce.
Remember The Last Married Couple in America, starring
the late Natalie Wood? That may be a Hollywood
prophecy, but it is not the reality of the American
heartland. In this matter, as in so many others, by
overstating the negative, the film industry leads
viewers to feel terrified and/or insecure, and their
behavior is adversely affected. I know many people who
say, "I'm reluctant to get married because I know
there's a 50 percent chance I'm going to get divorced."
Wouldn't it make a difference if they knew there was an
80 percent chance of staying together?
Another negative message is America-bashing. This
is a very patriotic country, one of the most patriotic
countries in the world. Let me get personal for a
minute: My mother was born in Germany. She was lucky
enough to get out with her family in 1935. There were
other family members who were not fortunate enough to
get out, and most who stayed behind died in Hitler's
holocaust. In any event, my mother had a first cousin,
Hans, who also got out of Germany, and within a year of
arriving in the United States, speaking only broken,
heavily-accented English, he enlisted in the Army Air
Corps. He became a tail gunner and flew 25 bombing
missions. On the last, when he was 21 years old, he was
shot down and killed over Romania. His parents, for
whom he was the only child, had a little shrine in
their home ever afterwards, with an American flag and a
picture of Hans in his airman's uniform. They often
used to say, "We're proud that he died for this
wonderful country."
I relate this story not because it is exceptional
but because it is typical. Don't we all have personal
stories that show our love, our pride, our gratitude
for being born in this amazingly fortunate situation in
which we find ourselves? The luckiest people on earth--
that's how most Americans feel. But what do they see on
their movie and television screens? What is the dream
of America that is portrayed? It is a dream of a
nightmarish land, where nothing is going right, where
evil powers dominate. Consider for example that full-
color, breathless guided tour of the fetid fever swamps
of Oliver Stone's paranoid imagination--the movie JFK,
a tale in which Stone suggests a conspiracy so grand,
so enormous, so corrupt that it involves absolutely
every conceivable American institution and organization
except the CampFire Girls.
Oliver Stone's nightmare has increasingly become
Hollywood's dream of America. Once upon a time, one of
the ways that my immigrant mother, and my immigrant
grandparents on my father's side, learned about America
was through movies. Movies glorified the American past,
and some of them were very good, like Drums Along the
Mohawk or Young Mr. Lincoln. Today, if Hollywood made a
movie about young Mr. Lincoln he would be an abused
child and grow up to be corrupt and power-lusting.
The American past, according to Hollywood, is
mainly about the rise of evil businessmen and the
"exploitative" capitalist system, or, alternately,
about the supposedly glorious 1960s. There are a
plethora of phony Sixties nostalgia movies clearly made
by people who are determined to glorify all those who
protested against the Vietnam War and to insult all
those who actually fought it. Is there a more insulted
and abused group of people than Vietnam vets? You
always see them with twitches, right? They're always
weird guys. If a screenwriter needs to come up with an
explanation for why a character is a crazed killer,
there is always: "Oh, he was in 'Nam." But three
million Americans fought in Vietnam and they are not
all crazed killers.
The other era that the movies tend to focus on
obsessively is the 1930s, with those wonderful dramatic
elements of negativity, the Depression and gangsters.
The glories of our history? Forget it.
In 1985, there was an attempt to make a movie
about the American Revolution that cost $35 million and
showcased Al Pacino, his Brooklyn accent firmly intact,
as a soldier in the Continental Army. But this movie
made the Americans the bad guys! Did it take a genius
to tell Warner Brothers that if you make a movie about
the Revolution that runs two and a half hours and makes
the Americans the bad guys, no one will want to see it?
Recently, we went through an amazing national
experience when America rallied with a unanimity that
has not been seen in my lifetime behind Operation
Desert Storm. Many commentators predicted that there
would be a glut of movies about it. Wouldn't Hollywood
be eager to exploit the Gulf War? Not one is currently
in production or even in development.
By contrast, there are currently five major
studio projects in development about the Black Panther
Party--that tiny, briefly fashionable gang of thugs who
murdered many of their own members. An industry that
thinks that the American people are more interested in
the Black Panthers than in the genuine heroes of our
armed forces is an industry that is profoundly out of
touch.
The Motivation
What is the motivation behind the messages Hollywood is
sending? Some people say, "Well, you know, the movie
business is perfect capitalism; it's merely giving the
people what they want."
But a simple analysis of the controversial content
of recent films and their corresponding box office
performance shows that this is not the case. Over 60
percent of all the feature films are now rated "R"--
despite the fact that they consistently earn less money
than those rated "G" or "PG." In 1991, PG-rated films
drew a median box office gross three times larger than
R-rated films--but Hollywood persists in keeping the
majority of its releases as gore-and-sex drenched R-
rated shockers. Is this an example of responding to the
public?
Hollywood expresses its underlying values most
clearly with those projects which it considers serious
"art" films--films that make some philosophical or
political statement. Consider the 1990 bomb, Guilty by
Suspicion, a dark, tragic tale of an idealistic,
blacklisted left-wing director in the 1950s. How could
Warner Brothers possibly assume it would make money on
this very expensive Robert DeNiro project--especially
when more than a half-dozen previous films about the
horrors of the McCarthy era had all failed miserably at
the box office?
Or take a look at the three gigantically
expensive film biographies that are coming out in 1992.
You know what they're about? They're about three
terrific American heroes. One of them is Jimmy Hoffa,
played by Jack Nicholson. The second is about Malcolm
X, directed by Spike Lee. The third is about Charlie
Chaplin, specifically about his struggles with
McCarthyism during the 1950s and about how he
eventually had to flee to a self-imposed exile because
of his left-wing politics.
If we can assume that the primary purpose of these
movies, each of which will cost tens of millions of
dollars, is not to make money, then what is it? Why
does Hollywood persist in making films that so
constantly revel in the dark side, in gloom and
despair, destruction and horror? I'll try to offer a
brief explanation, but it's a complicated psychological
problem. Someone versed in clinical psychology might be
better able to diagnose the situation.
People in the movie business are motivated by a
tremendous desire to be taken seriously. They don't
want to be thought of as just entertainers. They want
to be respected as "artists." And the view today is
that in order to be a serious artist--to make a
statement--you have to be removed from the mainstream
in your own country.
This view ignores all of Western history. Was
William Shakespeare alienated from the Tudor monarchy?
He wrote play after play glorifying Elizabeth's
antecedents and became a court favorite. He was part of
the establishment and proud of it. When Johann
Sebastian Bach wrote the imperishable glories for which
he is known, he wrote for Prince Leopold, for the
elector of Brandenburg, and for the Church of St.
Thomas in Leipzig. He composed more than 600 sacred
cantatas and chorales, devotedly serving the religious
hierarchy of his time.
In the past, most great artists served and
respected the society they lived in. To be sure, they
were not content with all its aspects, but they weren't
off on the sidelines wearing black turtlenecks saying
that life is meaningless and bleak or immersing
crucifixes in their own urine. Today the "serious
artist alienated from society" syndrome has ruined the
visual arts, poetry, and classical music. It has even
begun to destroy popular culture, which heretofore has
been more in tune with ordinary people.
Today to win the highest critical praise, or to
receive leading Oscar consideration, you have to make a
movie that says life is short and bitter, and it
stinks. Mel Brooks recently made the least successful
movie of his career. Do you know what it was called?
Life Stinks. Pretend for a moment that you are the head
of MGM, and Mel comes to you and says, "Hey, I have an
idea for a fun comedy called Life Stinks. Think that's
gonna sell?" No, but it will help Mel get taken
seriously as an "artist."
These are not bad people. They are very well
intentioned. There isn't a single AIDS benefit that
they will miss. If there is any kind of dinner to save
the rainforests, they are there. They want to be loved.
But they earnestly believe that the only way they will
receive respect from those who "count"--the critics,
the industry heavyweights, the media, the intellectual
elites--is to make brutal, bitter, America-bashing,
family-bashing, religion-bashing movies.
What Do We Do?
What do we do about it? At a recent conference on
popular culture and values, I was on a panel that
included Jack Valenti, William Bennett and Robert Bork.
The question of regulating the content of movies came
up. Interestingly enough, Judge Bork was generally in
favor of government intervention, i.e., censorship. He
pointed out that all law is based upon moral judgments.
Law exists to influence the moral behavior of its
citizens.
This is certainly a convincing argument, but I
don't think censorship is a good idea for one very
simple reason: the government makes a mess of
everything it does, and it would make a huge mess of
determining what goes into movies! It always surprises
me that conservatives, who understand that the
government is remarkably inept, even at running the
postal system, believe that state power can somehow
suddenly be counted upon to raise the moral tone of our
popular culture. It can't--forget it, it is only
wishful thinking.
This does not mean that we can't talk about values
in movies. I have drawn a good deal of criticism over
the years because as a professional critic I try to
consider the values and the message in movies--not just
their technical excellence--and I speak out about this
in the national press and on television. It is vital
that those considerations should play a more prominent
role in our public discussions of contemporary cinema.
That is alternative number one to censorship. No movie
is morally neutral, no movie fails to send a message,
no movie doesn't change you to some extent when you see
it. Movies have a cumulative, potent and lasting
impact.
Another alternative to censorship is corporate
responsibility. The great business conglomerates that
are making entertainment have to exercise a more mature
sense of social and corporate accountability. We are
living in an age when increasingly we are asking
corporations to be responsible for their pollution of
the air and the water; why shouldn't they be
responsible for the pollution of the cultural
environment around us? In the same way that other
activists use boycotts and stockholders meetings and
every sort of public pressure, popular culture
activists must develop a new sense of determination and
resourcefulness. The impact of popular culture on our
children and our future is too important an issue to
leave in the hands of a few isolated movie moguls in
Hollywood--or to self-important politicians in
Washington.
There are many indications that the entertainment
industry may be eager to reconnect with the grass
roots--and to entertain an expanded notion of its own
obligations to the public. The industry has, in some
areas, behaved responsibly. In the past five years it
changed its message about drugs. No longer is it making
movies in which marijuana, cocaine and other drugs are
glamorized. Hollywood made a decision. Was it self-
censorship? You bet. Was it responsible? Yes.
We can challenge the industry to adapt a more
wholesome outlook, to send more constructive messages.
We can clamor for movies that don't portray marriage as
a living hell, that recognize the spiritual side of
man's nature, that glorify the blessings in life we
enjoy as Americans and the people who make sacrifices
to ensure that others will be able to enjoy them.
The box office crisis put Hollywood in a receptive
mood. Already two film corporations have committed to a
schedule of family movies for a very simple reason:
they are wildly successful. Only two percent of movies
released in 1991 were G-rated--just 14 titles--but at
least 8 of these 14 proved to be unequivocably
profitable. (By comparison, of more than 600 other
titles, at most 20 percent earned back their
investment.) Look at Beauty and the Beast, my choice
for Best Movie of 1991. It was a stunning financial
success. We need many more pictures like this, and not
just animated features geared for younger audiences.
Shouldn't it be possible to create movies with adult
themes but without foul language, graphic sex or
cinematic brutality? During Hollywood's golden age,
industry leaders understood that there was nothing
inherently mature about these unsettling elements.
Rekindling Our Love Affair with Hollywood
People tell me sometimes, "Boy, the way you talk, it
sounds as though you really hate movies." The fact is
that I don't. I'm a film critic because I love movies.
And I want to tell you something: All of the people who
are trying to make a difference in this business love
movies and they love the industry, despite all its
faults. They love what it has done in the past, and
they love its potential for the future. They believe
that Hollywood can be the dream factory again.
When I go to a screening, sit in a theater seat,
and the lights go down, there's a little something
inside me that hopes against all rational expectation
that what I'm going to see on the screen is going to
delight me, enchant me, and entice me, like the best
movies do. I began by declaring that America's long-
running romance with Hollywood is over. It is a
romance, however, that can be rekindled, if this
appalling, amazing industry can once again create
movies that are worthy of love and that merit the
ardent affection of its audience.
------------------------------
Michael Medved is known to millions of Americans as the
co-host of the weekly PBS television program, "Sneak
Previews." He is the author of seven nonfiction books,
including the best-sellers: What Really Happened to the
Class of '65? (with David Wallechinsky, Random House,
1976), which became the basis for a weekly series on
NBC, The Golden Turkey Awards (with Harry Medved,
Putnam Perigee Books, 1980), and Hospital: The Hidden
Lives of a Medical Center Staff (Simon and Schuster,
1983). Mr. Medved has been a frequent guest on "The To-
night Show," "Oprah Winfrey," "David Letterman," "ABC
Nightline," "Today," "Good Morning America," and other
programs. He is active in a wide variety of Jewish
causes and is president of the Pacific Jewish Center in
Venice, California. He is also a Hillsdale College Life
Associate. This lecture is based on his latest book,
Hollywood vs. America, which was published by
HarperCollins and Zondervan in October 1992.
###
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End of this issue of Imprimis, On Line; Information
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Inc., is in the file, IMPR_BY.TXT
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