oh it’s hard out here for a ‘roo
with the server and the hosting payment due
but you never can know why and who
awol’s administration’s gonna screw
– three 6 koala
this piece is cross-posted at various other community blogs, as well as our own.
on the day after the evening during which hollywood celebrates itself even more so than the other 364 indulgent egotistical diva-navel gazing nights of its self-involved year, we (being marginally in show business ourselves) feel the need to defend our star-studded industry against the most recent hardly-ever-right wing meme currently making the media rounds.
that meme, of course, is how out of touch with america hollywood is. because after all, say the pundits who know everything, the movies up for awards this year have made so little money. and that proves that the people who toil in this town of lalaland are either stupid or have their own agendas. or both. or are godless. or both.
we discuss this after the jump:
other bloggers – including taylor, digby, pam at pandagon, atrios, and especially tbogg (be sure to note the part about foreign receipts), – have dissected the rightists’ arguments much more adroitly than we ever could (meaning they took the time to research the box office numbers, and we didn’t). but we continue unabaited, and unabashed.
the first thing that pops into our minds is, if $$ = connecting to america, what about the adult film industry?
as one of adult entertainment’s largest film studios, vivid already generates an estimated $100 million a year in revenue, cranking out 60 films per year and selling them in video stores, hotel rooms, on cable systems and on the internet. the company sells vivid-branded merchandise, such as condoms, snowboards, apparel and sexually explicit comic books.
that’s one mighty big studio! (that’s what she said!)
but this is actually not the point we want to make, tho it’s always nice to trip up the opposition just by stating the obvious. no, what we want to say is, as usual, the hardly-ever-right wing is once again using two of the very familiar weapons in their media arsenal; that is, changing the subject, and simply accusing the left of the very actions they themselves are guilty of.
and this time, those very actions are “being out of touch with america.” let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that poll numbers are the currency of political favor the way that, well, currency is the currency of hollywood. in that case, let’s look at the political box office:
66% of america wants out of iraq;
66% of americans think awol is doing badly;
only one out of two americans think bin laden will be caught or killed;
less than one out of two americans think awol is handling the war on terrorism well.
woah! if awol were a studio exec, he’d be fired by now! or at least kicked downstairs to a specialty division that only made independent, intimate “tiffany” wars.
basically, things are going down the drain for the administration. so, what does the chattering class do? change the subject: “oh no, films about boys kissing! hollywood is completely out of touch with america!”
and by accusing the left, as represented by the movie industry, of having a huge disconnect with the country, the right hopes that nobody notices that they themselves not only have a bigger disconnect, but are actually creating real life problems because of it.
like the so-called “war on christmas,” this imaginary gap between the film industry and america is a made-up problem, created by the rightist punditry in the hopes that nobody will actually talk about what’s really wrong with this country.
once again, the right changes the subject, and point fingers away from themselves by blaming someone else of doing exactly what they are guilty of.
gee, where have we heard that before?
because nothing’s lonelier than a diary without comments, except perhaps a washed-up 70’s child star.
here is what Riverbend says about them….
>Baghdad Bruning Blogsight
Hollywood has always managed this precarious balancing act between what their creative film-makers (from writers to directors and producers to actors and everyone in between) want to pursue on the artistic storytelling side, and what the suits in the main studio offices think is going to actually MAKE MONEY.
When it comes to a conflict of interest, the MAKE MONEY guys almost always win, which is why the more innovative and “risky” films tend to come out of independent studios. On the other hand, the big studios are quick to note what outsider films are successful (in the MAKE MONEY realm especially) and are quick to jump on a seemingly profitable bandwagon. And they also know that playing it totally safe isn’t a guarantee of box office returns either — sometimes being just controversial enough is a far better path to monetary success than being totally safe and predictable.
The Right (especially the Religious Right) claims that Real America wants no part of “Hollywood values” and wants safe, “wholesome” family movies — and indeed there is a market for that, and it’s substantial — but let’s face it, sex sells. Even in the red states. And when it comes right down to it, what the movie studios are really selling is entertainment, and they can’t do that successfully unless they DO keep in touch with the shifting tastes of the public. They don’t try to stick to what “should” be popular because it fits their preconceived definition of the world or because it promotes a particular set of “moral values” — they make every attempt to determine what WILL be popular, because that’s where the ticket sales are.
The success of the adult film industry, where (based on the few such films I’ve ever had the patience to sit through, artistic merit isn’t even a consideration…) is a case in point — clearly someone is in touch with what that very sizeable market really wants, ’cause it sells like … well, like sex. 🙂