(This is Part 2 of Michael Medved's article. To read Part 1, please click on “Politicos vs. Hollywood” in the upper left-hand corner.)
The scene at a riverbank, involving a Bible-toting pastor and ecstatic, hand-waving true believers, repeatedly reappears in connection with the most monstrous cruelty. The movie suggests that the future killer’s abusive father held him down too long in the water, causing him now to drown his female kidnap victims in a huge glass tank in a demented echo of the Christian rite.
Imagine, for the sake of argument, that the script for the film had associated such vicious behavior not with baptism, but with Bar Mitzvah — or some other ritual of a minority religion. Isn’t it obvious that some executive at the studio (New Line Pictures, in this instance) would have protested, saying that such a gratuitous insult needlessly would have offended Jews — or Buddhists, or Hindus? Why, then, should Baptists, who outnumber such groups in this society many times over, receive less sensitive consideration?
As a matter of fact, the utterly fictitious notion of crazed, unspeakably vicious serial killers who’ve been warped by traditional Christianity has become a sick, curious cliché in today’s Holly-weird. For characters played by Kevin Spacey in Seven, Harry Connick, Jr., in Copy Cats, Robert De Niro in Cape Fear and Ed Harris in Just Cause, multiple murders and brutal torture come connected with flamboyant displays of Christian religiosity. The cruel caricature of committed Christians — especially Fundamentalists and Pentecostals — remains a rare form of religious bigotry not only accepted, but repeatedly promoted by Hollywood. It also makes no sense at all for an industry that theoretically hopes to draw mainstream audiences to the multiplex.
Another sort of self-destructive bigotry turned up in the clumsy comedy The Crew, starring Richard Dreyfus and Burt Reynolds. The two veteran actors play aging mobsters who retire to Florida with their friends, but try to recapture youth and vitality with one last, daring caper. To facilitate the job, they buy black market weapons, including an oversized shotgun, from a sleazy gun dealer. After concluding the transaction, Dreyfus instinctively says “thanks a lot,” to which the firearms merchant defiantly replies, “Hey, don’t thank me. Thank the Republicans!”
The line stands out as the only political reference of any kind in the entire movie. It also offers no explanation of how new gun control legislation (blocked, presumably, by those Republican rascals) would magically stop a transaction that the movie portrays (accurately) as already illegal. Aside from any serious political discussion of one stupid line, there’s an obvious question about the writers and producers and their knowledge of the audience. Surely, these show business professionals have seen all the national surveys showing that more than a third of Americans proudly identify themselves as “Republicans,” and more than 40% strongly support the right to bear arms. Why would a commercial movie company (Disney, no less) take an unnecessary risk by insulting such substantial chunks of the public with one irrelevant unfunny zinger that bears no connection to other elements of the story?
Such unsubtle political messages turn up in film after film — and always from the same, relentlessly predictable, liberal point of view. In Hollywood’s “Golden Age” of the 1930’s and 1940’s, the big studios tried to avoid partisan politics. “If you want to send a message,” Samuel Goldwyn famously declared, “go to Western Union.” Even classic political films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) avoided identifying either its heroes or villains as Republicans or Democrats. After all, director Frank Capra wanted members of all political parties to enjoy his picture, with its timeless messages about the struggle between idealism and cynical corruption. Today, on the other hand, movies about the political process appeal to the public with more narrowly defined agendas than do most successful real life candidates for office. In the over-praised flop The Contender, Joan Allen plays a fashionable Senator from Ohio, nominated to succeed a deceased Vice President as the first woman to occupy the office. She speaks passionately about abortion rights — having left the Republican Party and joined the Democrats due to her unwavering devotion to a woman’s “sacred right to choose.”
This glamorous heroine also believes that the death penalty is murder, that the government should confiscate all handguns from private homes, and should make it a criminal federal offense to sell cigarettes to minors. She also announces at her confirmation hearings that she is an atheist and the stands by her previous statement that separation of church and state is necessary to prevent government from falling under the influence of “a fairy tale.” The conservatives who dare to oppose her, led by Gary Oldman, prove to be vicious, sexist, joyless, cruel, fanatical hypocrites.
The astonishing aspect in all this is not the shameless (and often entertaining) over-acting, but the obvious contempt by writer-director Rod Lurie for anyone in the audience who dissents from his political prejudices.
Surely a sophisticated observer like Mr. Lurie (former film critic for Los Angeles Magazine) understands that at least a third of Americans harbor deep reservations about the raw abortion policies promoted by the film, and easily two-thirds cherish religious convictions which The Contender ridicules.
Other contemporary political melodramas take commercial risks for the sake of the same ideology. In The American President, Michael Douglas plays the liberal Democratic hero as a crusader against gun ownership and the internal combustion engine. On T.V.’s The West Wing, President Martin Sheen regularly smites the religious right and all others who question his left wing pieties. When movies portray conservative presidents — Dave, Absolute Power, Nixon, Dick — the portrayal is invariably negative.
Hollywood’s activism on behalf of liberal causes and candidates shows up in the off-screen adventures of top celebrities as much as in their creative work. Innumerable entertainment luminaries campaigned enthusiastically for Al Gore — including Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbra Streisand, Rosie O’Donnell, Julia Roberts, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert De Niro, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Newman and many more. Several leading figures in Hollywood — Cher, Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Robert Altman, Susan Sarandon, Gabriel Byrne — even suggested they would leave the country if George W. Bush won.
Regardless of what one thinks of the political sophistication of such pronouncements (would childish threats by spoiled movie stars actually scare people in voting for Gore?), they raise obvious questions about the future popularity of such stars. Do these princes and princesses of pop culture truly want to discourage all conservatives from ever buying tickets to their movies?
With their off-screen political activities, on-camera ideological messages, gratuitous anti-religious prejudice, and over-emphasis on harsh language and violence, the moguls of mass media show little appreciation of the diversity of the United States when it comes to values. How could any clever business leader repeatedly ignore the tens of millions of people who harbor more traditional values?
In fact, the big entertainment conglomerates have managed to survive despite this arrogance for two reasons. The first, is niche marketing — trying to sell 20 movie tickets a year to a relative handful of drooling, subliterate, hormone-addled adolescent males, rather than a half dozen tickets to more mainstream families. The major companies have also been sheltered from the consequences of their own alienation due to the recent explosion of foreign markets. With the end of the Cold War and the removal of international barriers, the studios make more and more of their money by pumping American product into unsophisticated and undemanding societies eager to consume anything associated with the USA. According to the most common estimate, the Hollywood majors got only 30% of their revenue from overseas in 1980 — but in the year 2000, these foreign audiences generate more than 60% of Tinseltown’s cash flow.
Unlike political office holders, in any event, top producers and powerful stars never face the righteous wrath of angry voters — and so cheerfully ignore the real divisions in America. While both houses of Congress painfully reflect those divisions, Hollywood remains unanimously liberal, adolescent and indulgent. Many Americans have chosen to vote “no” on this unrepresentative institution (nearly a third of Americans have given up going to movie theatres altogether) but the entertainment ideologues, eager above all to impress one another, refuse to get the message.
If these pampered pop culture potentates ever had to seek votes from a broad-based American electorate, they would lose in a landslide. In the ongoing spat between political heavyweights and show business titans, there’s no doubt which group speaks more clearly for — and to — the American public. From Dan Quayle to Joe Lieberman, Bill Bennett to Tipper Gore to Lynne Cheney, the political leaders who criticize the entertainment industry show a far better grasp of the varied preferences of the general public than do the increasingly isolated Hollywood hotshots.
(e3mil columnist Michael Medved hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio talk show that focuses on the intersection of pop culture and politics. You can contact him or read his weekly movie reviews at www.michaelmedved.com.)
