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Culture Briefs

October 30, 2006

    Goodbye, Hollywood
    "Prior to the 1970s, Hollywood aimed its movies at a mass culture. But by the late 1970s, the first signs of political correctness began to increasingly separate movie makers from their audience, beginning perhaps most visibly with Warren Beatty's 'Reds' in 1981. But even during that decade, Hollywood balanced films such as 'Platoon' and 'Salvador' with 'Rambo' and 'Top Gun.' And it was pretty clear that the characters played by Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis were on the side of Truth, Justice and The American Way.
    "Jump cut to this past summer, where that Superman movie that Warner Brothers was counting on to kick-start their perennial superhero franchise instead became infamous for having Perry White utter 'truth, justice and all that other stuff,' because the film's writers were ashamed of, well, the American way. ...
    "Hollywood ... alienated a wide swatch of its audience -- perhaps to the point where relations are irreparable. ...
    "So will the last moviegoer shut off the projector when he leaves the theater, please?"
    -- Ed Driscoll, writing on "The Era of Big Cinema Is Over," Thursday in Tech Central Station at www.tcsdaily.com

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