Leftism and Hollywood's Downturn

As many of us know, Hollywood in 2005 has experienced its worst downturn in recent memory, with box office takes plunging, fewer films becoming blockbusters, and many expensively produced movies becoming major flops. Studios have largely fingered as the culprit the increasing abundance of other entertainment options, such as home theater and DVDs, video games, and the Internet.

But are these really to blame? Entertainment choices actually have been increasing for many years, starting with radios and television sets in the 1950s. Video games went mainstream in the '80s, while the Web has been around for a decade and DVDs for nearly as long. Certainly these may play a partial role in the Hollywood downturn, but I believe that the primary cause is a different beast altogether - bad movies. And are these related to the Tinseltown crowd's leftwing tendencies? You bet.

To most Hollywood actors and filmmakers, achieving artistic credibility among their peers is of paramount career importance, even more so than earning large sums of money. (Just to point out, this is no different than artists in fields from painting to poetry; hence the term "starving artist.") That's why you see directors like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, neither of whom have scored a hit in many years, continue to attract top acting talent and generous studio funding for films that are almost assured to pull great reviews but poor box office results. As the Hollywood crowd sees it, who cares how many people actually watch the movie; it's Woody Allen and he makes great art.

Thing is, when most of your peers have political and cultural values far different than most Americans, you may be impressing your friends but you're also alienating most of your audience. This, I believe, is why moviegoers shunned well reviewed films with ultra-liberal viewpoints like Kinsey and The Interpreter, but flocked to critically savaged yet family-friendly movies like Napoleon Dynamite.

Now certainly this is not the only cause of bad-movie syndrome; Hollywood has in recent years relied far more on formulaic sequels, remakes, and TV adaptations than on fresh and original scripts. But the confluence of leftism and artistic peer-review has no doubt played a significant role.