Michael Medved - Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Tradition

In this world there are only two tragedies, wrote Oscar Wilde in 1892. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Since the publication of Hollywood vs. America, Ive definitely been savoring the second tragedy.

In writing this book I wanted to stir up controversyto assault the smug complacency of the entertainment establishment and to help push Hollywood in a more responsible direction. However, the passionate intensity of the public response to my workboth positive and negativefar exceeded my expectations.

In part, the polarized nature of this reaction stemmed from an accident of timing: a few months after I turned in this manuscript to my editor, while the publisher worked to set my words in type, the Vice President of the United States surprised this author (and the rest of the country) by delivering a series of partisan political speeches in which he attacked the values of the mass media. Much to my chagrin, this meant that Hollywood vs. America appeared in print at precisely the moment that the national press raged with the astonishingly bitter charges and counter-charges between Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown.

In retrospect, even the former Vice Presidents most devoted admirers should recognize that he made a mistake in his attempt to raise serious issues of media accountability in the midst of a hard-fought election campaign. The context for his often thoughtful statements made it all too easy for skeptical reporters to dismiss them as desperate and distracting ploys by a failing political candidate. Even if many Americans felt sympathetic to Mr. Quayles basic concern over the excesses of the entertainment industry, they failed to see a connection between the issues he addressed and his role as a national officeholder. What federal program could the Vice President possibly suggest to curb the media irresponsibility he so stridently decried? As a longtime foe of big government, he could hardly endorse some ambitious new Washington bureaucracy designed to approve future plot twists on Murphy Brown.

Moreover, Mr. Quayles implicit suggestion that only conservatives worried over the destructive impact of the popular culture struck a false chord with the American public. Citizens of all political persuasions express these concerns; Tipper Gore, for one, warned of the antisocial messages in popular music years before the Vice President voiced his dissatisfaction with contemporary TV. For the last five years, the most militant and effective congressional critic of violence on television has been a liberal DemocratSenator Paul Simon of Illinois. In October 1992, in the last weeks of the presidential campaign, a Newsweek poll showed an astonishing consensus on the question of the entertainment industrys irresponsible excesses. Eighty percent of a representative sample believed that movies today contain too much sex and violence. Eighty percent of the country might never agree that Elvis is deadbut they share the conviction that Hollywood has gone too far.

This concern remains all but universal today, long after the electoral triumph by the Democratic ticket. Attempts by some of President Clintons more fervent show business supporters to interpret his victory as a vote of confidence in the entertainment industry makes no sense at all. The American people rejected the Bush-Quayle ticket because they disapproved of the leadership in Washington, not because they approved of the leadership in Hollywood. The Democratic plurality in the presidential race in no way signified a repudiation of calls for greater accountability on the part of the mass media; very few of the 43.7 million voters who cast their ballots for Bill Clinton felt they were providing Hollywood with a mandate for more violence and foul language in motion pictures or television.

The president-elect made an unmistakable effort to underscore that point in an interview with TV Guide just a week after election day. The cumulative impact of the banalization of sex and violence in the popular culture is a net negative for America, Bill Clinton declared. I think the question is, what can Hollywood do, not just to entertain, but to raise the human spirit.

Meanwhile, a group of the new presidents closest associates published a collection of policy proposals called Mandate for Change in which they provided further evidence that Washingtons concern over media messages would not disappear along with the Bush administration. Their book, strongly endorsed by Mr. Clinton himself, specifically cites the role of the entertainment industry in promoting family disintegration and suggests that the Chief Executive should initiate a broad national discussion of media responsibility. The authors declare, It is fairly well established that educational programming accelerates early learning and that televised violence exacerbates aggressive behavior.

These new developments in a new administration point up one of the inevitable hazards for any book like Hollywood vs. America: the authors best efforts to keep his work comprehensive and current will be constantly overtaken by fresh developments and updated statistics.

For instance, in this book (which was completed in May 1992) I report on figures for motion picture attendance for the year 1991which plunged to their lowest levels since 1976. The year-end numbers for 1992 provided even more striking evidence of audience alienation, as attendance continued to decline and plunged to a sixteen-year low and to its lowest level ever in terms of percentage of our population. Nor could Hollywoods apologists explain these declines as a simple shift from theatrical attendance to home video viewing, since video rentals fell off sharply in 1991, and then remained flat in 1992. In the traditionally recession-proof entertainment industry, which has enjoyed some of its most successful seasons in past periods of economic distress, these figures suggest a general (and intensifying) dissatisfaction with the content of the popular culture, rather than the temporary impact of financial hard times.

The summer movie season is on, but moviegoers are decidedly turned off. Many moviegoers say this summers crop is one of the worst ever, The Wall Street Journal reported on August 6, 1992, at the height of Hollywoods busiest time of year. CinemaScore, the universally respected Las Vegas-based company that polls opening night audiences across the country to gauge their reaction to new motion pictures, confirmed that Hollywoods grades declined for the third year in a row. CinemaScore president Edward Mintz described public reaction to Hollywoods offerings for the summer of 1992 as very disappointing, ugly, and a disaster.

One of the films that bucked the downward trend and became a gigantic 1992 hit in both theatrical release and home video also served to illustrate one of the major points in this book. Sister Act, the fast-moving, though formulaic, Whoopi Goldberg comedy, showed a more affectionate attitude toward the Roman Catholic church than any other film of recent years; audiences found themselves amused and uplifted by its story of a Reno lounge singer whose life and values are positively transformed when she is forced to hide out in a convent. The picture earned some $140 million in domestic box office gross, stunning all observers by placing fourth on the list of the years top money makers, and outpacing all other nonsequels in 1992.