erik lundegaard

 RSS
ARCHIVES
LINKS

Saturday May 26, 2018

We All Want to Change the World

I like that Noah Berlatsky has a piece on Hollywood that includes the following sentences:

Conservatives claim that Hollywood is hopelessly liberal, constantly pushing feminism and LGBTQ rights and other subversive agendas. But when it comes to portraying actual subversives, Hollywood isn't enthusiastic. On the contrary, big-budget action films often go out of their way to show that radicals are corrupt, misguided or ridiculous, and to insist that the status quo, whatever its faults, is the thing worth fighting for.

Good god, yes. Beyond that, Hollywood mostly glamorizes guns, violence, sex, and an absolutist vision of the world (white hats/black hats) because that's what sells. Most Hollywood plots would feel right at home at an NRA convention. So not “liberal.”

But the headline of Berlatsky's piece is misleading:

Hollywood isn't on the side of the resistance

His point is that Hollywood isn't revolutionary. Resistance to Trump (which most Hollywood folks back) and actual revolution (which ... not so much) are two different things. Indeed, you read the piece and you go, “Corporations don't want to lose power? No shit, Sherlock. Thanks for the news.”

That said, I'm a fan of anyone calling out the lie in the “liberal Hollywood” charge.

Posted at 09:17 AM on Saturday May 26, 2018 in category What Liberal Hollywood?