Hollywood vs. America
How many parents have struggled to find a movie that they feel comfortable taking their kids? Or children choosing a movie to watch without embarassing their parents? Former film critic Michael Medved addresses these issues in his 1992 book Hollywood vs. America.
Medved essentially shows how Hollywood continues to churn out films that reflect values and messages that fail to resonate with American citizens. These movies benefit Hollywood directors' own sense personal mission, but do even generate box office returns. Essentially, America is ignoring these movies. Because these movies appear to attack American values.
Medved organizes his Hollywood expose into five parts, divided into several categories. Medved argues that Hollywood produces movies that attack traditional values, attack religion and clergy, attack the family, attack traditional morality, and promote violence and gore.
This book is not just a scare tactic. Medved has intimate knowledge of Hollywood, having viewed a half-dozen movies every week and befriended many Hollywood elite. What is impressive is his vast array of evidence, which includes plot points from films and box office and admissions data.
For his first point, that Hollywood attacks religion, Medved trots out a plethora of priest-bashing flicks. These include The Runner Stumbles (1979), Monsignor (1982), Agnes of God (1985), Heaven Help Us (1985), The Penitent (1988), Last Rites (1988), We're No Angels (1989), Nuns on the Run (1990), The Godfather, Part III (1990), and The Pope Must Die (1991). Nearly every one of these show priests abusing their power or even murdering their parishioners -- which should be stated, the latter is not known to have happened in real life. Medved exhibits a few films that are positive towards individual clergy, but still take a dim view of church hierarchy. These ambivalent films include True Confesions (1981, Robert De Niro), Mass Appeal (1984, Jack Lemmon), The Mission (1986, Jeremony Irons and Robert De Niro), and Black Robe (1991). One could also add The Blues Brothers to this list, which depicts two men who engage on a "godly" mission but depicts horrifying nuns.
What is incredibly interesting is that Hollywood directors have no clue that faith is a large part of American life. Medved recounts how he would ask industry members at parties what percentage of people attend church or synagogue in America, and they would typically respond less than five percent. In fact, Medved points out, the number is closer to 40%, according to a January 1992 from Newsweek. Seventy-eight percent pray regularly, and more than 90% believe in a personal deity. Only 4% of Americans were totally nonreligious: religion is not a part of their lives, they do not attend church, and have no religious affiliation. When presented with this evidence, Medved explained, Hollywood literally cannot believe it, because everyone with whom they interact is irreligious as well. According to a 1983 Public Opinion survey, 45% have no religion and 93% of Hollywood seldom or never attends religious services. One television producer addmitted he did not know a single director, writer, or actor who attended church or synagogue. While these numbers have certainly changed in the thirty years since this book's publication, they show how vast the gulf between Hollywood and the rest of America. (According to 2014 survey data from the Pew Research Center, 36% of Americans attend religous services regularly, 55% of Americans pray daily, 75% of Americans identify as religious, and 25% identify as irreligious. The irreligious number has grown tremendously, while church attendance has only dropped by 4% since 1992.)
Hollywood also likes to portray Bible-believing Christians in a certain way. In Crimes of Passion (1984), Children of the Corn (1984), Poltergeist II (1986), The Vision (1987), Light of the Day (1987), Salvation! (1987), Pass the Ammo (1988), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), The Rapture (1991), At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991), and Guilty as Charged (1992), the films portray Christians and pastors as crazed, apocalyptic murderers. Anyone who took these films seriously would have a seriously skewed view of American Protestants.
The next category that Medved examines is the family and morality. It seems that Hollywood does not show a single happily married couple. One sitcom of the 1990s, Married with Children, shows a married couple who are constantly having problems and whose love life is as passionate as geriatric bowling night. Film and television show a constant barrage of people having sex before marriage, outside of marriage, but not a single example within marriage. Medved is not trying to be a prude but wishes that Hollywood could at least show happy married couples. Contrary to the myth that 50% of people will get divorced (which was simply the number of marriages in 1981 compared to the number of divorces in that same year), 90% of all marriages survive, according to Louis Harris's 1987 book Inside America. In addition, 80% of Americans were satisfied with their marriages and would marry the same person again. When Hollywood pushes the idea that marriage is a death trap and that only sex outside of marriage and adultery is exciting, they are not reflecting the actual facts and values of American life, but their own values, which stand outside of the mainstream.
In the chapter Encouraging Illegitimacy
, Medved illustrates a series of shows in which the main character not only has a baby outside of wedlock but even have babies via artificial insemination. While it is interesting for shows to explore issues like this, when it becomes so widespread in Hollywood as Medved shows that it does not present any alternatives, it starts to become suspect. When the former alternative lifestyles become mainstream, you know it's Hollywood. All sociological evidence shows that children reared in single-parent families or families without a father are more likely to fail school, commit crime, and be incarcerated, a rabid epidemic assaulting the black community. While it's fine for Hollywood to explore gritty situations, it seems irresponsible of them to only show non-nuclear and non-traditional families, which are still the minority in America.
Another idea that Hollywood presents is that kids know best. Anyone can see this principle in practically any film, it shouldn't be controversial to prove that. Basically, the parents are complete bimbos who need their children to enlighten them or show them the way. In some cases, the parents are evil and abusive. While the kids-know-best idea seems harmless, it is the cumulative effect of nearly every film without stop that corrodes American youth's respect for parents and authority (within reason, of course). In reality, most parents do know better than their children and want the best for them. Children of course teach their parents things too, but most parents truly do have their children's best interests at heart.
Finally, Hollywood makes films that seem to be anti-American in values. In 1991, the current war was the Gulf War, which was wildly popular by the vast majority of Americans. The fact that Hollywood did not have a single cinematic depiction of this war shows how out of touch Hollywood is with mainstream America. Of course it's fine to have opinions, but Hollywood would rather force anti-war messages on patriotic Americans than reflect what Americans value (patriotic heroes - this may have changed by now, with a gamut of films like American Sniper, Zero Dark Thirty, and Chris Hemsworth in 12 Strong).
Medved points out that all the films he cites which exhibited content that did not resonate with Americans were not box office successes. Put another way, Americans did not turn out for films which showed content they did not like. The few times Hollywood produced family friendly
and G/PG films in this timeframe were massive successes, indicating that audiences showed up. So if Hollywood made bookoo bucks on family films and made pittances on films with rape, murder, and mayhem, the obvious question is why didn't they go where the money was?
In Part 6, Medved seeks to answer that question. He outlines the history of Hollywood and their ideas which brought them to this day. In 1922, postmaster general Will H. Hays created a code by which studios agreed to abide. The Hays Code prohibited displays of sex/nudity, obscene language, gratuitous violence, ethnic slurs, priest-bashing, and mocking any religion, among other things. In 1930, an Hays Office was established, which reviewed every film and gave it a Motion Picture Seal of approval. In 1966, however, Jack Valenti became president of the Motion Picture Assocation of America and removed the Hays Code. Finally, the embattled Hollywood directors were free from the crushing weight of the code, despite the fact that the greatest directors of the all time -- Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Billy Wilder, George Cukor, Frank Capra, and Orson Welles -- produced magnificent films under the Hays Code.
Medved convincingly shows that 1966 was a pivotal year. In 1965, the Academy Award went to The Sound of Music. In 1969, it went to the X-Rated Midnight Cowboy. Intriguingly, attendance plummetted. Since 1953 (after the invasion of television), movie audience stayed fixed around 40-49 million attendees per week (before TV, in 1948, it had been at 90 million). In 1965, still under the Hays Code, attendance was at 44 million a week. In 1969, it plummeted to 17.5. What could have happened? Since then, attendance never went above 23 million (except in 1984), but stayed around 18-19 million. Attendance had effectively halved. After this, grindhouse and exploitation films, which had previously been completely sidelined, began to place elements in major Hollwyood releases. To put the data more convincingly, out of 1,010 films released between 1983 and 1989, all G films grossed a median of $17.3 million. PG titles earned a median of $13 million. For PG-13 releases, the median was at $9.3 million, and for R films, the median gross box office was $8.3 million (less than half the box office of G). What these data show is that audiences respond more favorably to films they can take the whole family to, which of course generates more ticket sales than that of a single stag going to a late-night erotic film alone.
I do not have children, so it's hard to know what movies I would allow my kids to see, but I can assure you that Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw II will not be allowed. I was exposed to violent films like Kill Bill and The Matrix at a young age, and I turned out okay. But what Medved shows is it's not a single movie here, a single movie there, it's the cumulative effect of all the films which reflect values which do not seem to align with the vast majority of Americans, who value traditional values (things like patriotism, respect for elders, family, treating people well). In other words, common decency. An obvious critique of Medved's work is he seems to read these films too literally. Many directors see their work as satire or political commentary or social release -- they are fantasy, and if we didn't have violent films, we would all kill each other. However, such arguments fail to take into account that vast majority of Americans are not violent and do not want to kill others (except perhaps in self-defense). Therefore, it seems irresponsible for Hollywood to be churning out films with values we do not appreciate. How many times have you had to cover your kid's eyes? (I know it's happened to me.) It would be easier if one didn't have to do that. The answer is clear: if you make movies for the whole family, the people will come. One also wonders how much has changed since 1992. I think that faith has become more prominent in Hollywood, with shows like God Friended Me. Violence has definitely increased (Inglourious Basterds, John Wick, various war movies etc.). Sex is in nearly every show or movie, so that hasn't changed. Interestingly, when you apply Medved's thesis to 2019, it holds true: the top box office hits were films that were not facile but that everyone could attend without fear of objectional content. Avengers Engdame, $858.3 million, yes it was dark, but it was still family friendly. The Lion King, $543.6 million. Toy Story 4, $434 million. Frozen II, 430.1 million. Captain Marvel, $426.8 million. Spider-Man: Far from Home. Star Wars Rise of Skywalker. Aladdin. The same could be said for 2018 (with the exception of Deadpool 2). Medved is right: build a family movie, and they will come. (However, the bigger problem here is these are all fanchises and series). Maybe what Hollywood needs is not just to merely follow family-oriented formulaes but a revival.
