In The Valley Of Who Cares
A twofer from Jonah Goldberg today. In USA Today, Goldberg looks at the deluge of anti-war (and often anti-American) films that Hollywood is spewing this year. One after another, the studios pump their agenda films out. One by one the films fail at the box office - every single one has been a bigger bomb than Ishtar. Goldberg thinks he knows why:
To be sure, many of these films don't attack the troops directly. Some are thoughtful in their critiques, others less so. Regardless, this is still uncharted territory. "These movies certainly are more willing to be critical of the military and misconduct of individual soldiers. Certainly no such feature was made like these during … the Vietnam War," Charles Ferguson, a political scientist and creator of the anti-Iraq war documentary, No End In Sight, recently told The Philadelphia Inquirer. But here's the interesting part: So far, these movies are tanking. Rendition opened on 2,250 screens, with three Oscar winners in the cast, and it was beaten its opening weekend by a re-release of the 14-year-old A Nightmare Before Christmas. Elah was a bigger bomb than those used in the "shock and awe" campaign. The Kingdom earned less than $50 million, and surely only did that well because it was marketed as an action movie rather than an anti-war one. Jeanine Basinger, a film historian at Wesleyan University, speculates that "these films are coming forward during the progress of a war and questioning it sooner may mean that the general public is rejecting what our leaders are telling us … and want to know more about the war."
This is an odd, yet unsurprising, interpretation in an age when The Daily Show is a primary news source.
The public doesn't get to decide what movies are made. As President Bush might say, Hollywood is the "decider." The public determines which movies are successful. Perhaps the studios of yesteryear knew something today's moguls don't. Maybe Americans don't like to see America and her troops run down, even during an unpopular war.
When Peter Berg tested The Kingdom on Americans, he was horrified when the audience cheered when the FBI killed the terrorists at the end. "Am I experiencing American bloodlust?" the director agonized. Berg's contemptuous reaction toward American audiences may point to a few of the reasons these movies are faring poorly at American box offices.
First, economics. Hollywood cares less and less about what Americans think of their products because as domestic movie attendance has declined, Hollywood shifted its aim to foreign markets. In America, filmmakers are at pains to insist their anti-war fare isn't anti-American. No such distinctions need be made when these films open at Cannes, Venice and Toronto. Denouncing the war isn't only good marketing in Europe, it's the fastest route to critical acclaim.
Second, Americans may not be as passionately opposed to the war as the polls have led Hollywood to believe. Left-wing bloggers, hyper-rich Democratic donors and anti-war activists hate the war with biblical fury. But many average Americans are depressed by the war because, until recently, it was going so badly. The polls don't capture this distinction very well.
I have to agree with Goldberg here - that is virtually the same thing I have been saying since last November. The Democrats and Hollywood are both badly misreading the polls and what they mean. But I think there may actually be something else at work here. I rather suspect that there is a certain endless movie loop playing in the heads of many of these people. What Mark Steyn aptly titled the Full Metal Deer Apocalypse.
Folks in Hollywood have a difficult time separating movies from reality. Hence someone like Sean Daniels can write - apparently with a straight face - about what happened at Faber College in 1962. Which, in the real world, is precisely nothing - because Faber College only exists in the celluloid jungle of Animal House. These producers and directors passionately believe they are downtrodden heroes fighting the helplessly heroic battle against The Man. They don't see a bit of irony in complaining about being silenced on coast-to-coast network television. They conclude that evil conspiracies exist against them when their products fail in the market because they have intentionally alienated at least half of their audience.
They will not believe their bad judgment led to the failure of their films. They don't understand that many Americans are looking at what is being offered by Hollywood and are saying, "Who cares?" (That, incidentally, is why the writer's strike is so very badly timed for both the writers and the producers. Because by the time those two sides settle things, people may have moved along from what they have been offering.)
By Bleepless, Tuesday, 6 November , 2007 @ 8:13 pm
There are two ways those flicks could do well. The first is if the scum took over America and attendance became mandatory. The second is if, thirty or forty years from now, there was another fad for bad-movie festivals, so that “Rendition” could be paired with “Plan Nine from Outer Space.”
By Uncle Fester, Tuesday, 6 November , 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Hollywood movies flop, writers are on strike and contributing to the death of their industry, dead tree newspaper circulation is down.
Sounds good to me.
As I’ve said before, as long as the bloggers don’t go on strike, I’m cool.
By Quilly Mammoth, Tuesday, 6 November , 2007 @ 8:36 pm
That, Bleepless, is an outrageous slur on Ed Wood.
By FedUp, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 7:42 am
Must e a reason why no one wants to go see these… More proof that Hollywood is as out of touch with the public as Congress is! Hope the strike continues through the end of the year… or longer!
By Sarge, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 11:24 am
Let’s not forget in all this the movies that are hopelessly misguided. Take for instance, “Home of the Brave,” which I got to witness shortly after its so-called release. Apparently all the soldiers that come back from Iraq are 1.) suffering from severe PTSD, 2.) receive absolutely no support from the government for their wounds, and 3.) are all acting very, very poorly (for shame Samuel L. Jackson! you were more convincing in “Snakes on a Plane”).
As a good friend of mine who recently watched this celluloid abortion put it: “According to that movie, I should be talking a gun out of your hand right now.”
By martian, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 12:11 pm
Sarge, you have to understand that, from a liberal’s viewpoint, all soldiers, especially any who volunteered to be soldiers, are social misfits if not complete sociopaths, to begin with. So, of course, they expect that anyone returning from the “horrors” of war, where they must have committed horrible crimes against humanity (because that’s part of the definition of the American Soldier in their minds), will be even more screwed up mentally and emotionally than they were going in.
By Al in St. Lou, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 3:29 pm
The liberals are the ones who thought The New Republic and Scott Thomas Beauchamp were speaking “truth to power.”
It seems I once saw part of a movie starring Kurt Russell as a supersoldier. He comes back after winning the war, and a little girl breaks the news to him that his type is neither wanted or necessary. IIRC, she at least thanks him for delivering their community from the bad guys’ threat. Basically, the message is that soldiers are a necessary evil that might make themselves unnecessary some day by defeating the last group of bad guys. I know that seems pretty sick, but it came from Hollywood.