Is Hollywood Finally Listening?

Is Hollywood finally listening to conservatives? Hollywood has always had a liberal bent, though it was not always particularly noticeable. Part of this was that in the 1940s-1950s, liberalism was closer to classical liberalism (i.e. modern conservatism) than it was to hateful, lunatic modern liberalism. In the 1990s, however, Hollywood began to change and it became openly leftist and extremely hostile to all things non-liberal. But I wonder if that’s changing?

When the Clintons came to office with the support of Hollywood, Hollywood came fully out of the closet and jumped into the tank for the Democrats. As the Democrats drifted further and further to the nasty left, Hollywood followed. Gone were the generic public service announcements of the 1980s and the strategically placed “No Smoking” or “End Apartheid” signs in films, and in their place were open tirades against everything American. By the 2000s, this become so commonplace that there was scarcely a film that didn’t include some anti-Republican, anti-conservative, or anti-American message. And even when the films didn’t include these messages, many of the actors spent their days giving vile speeches supporting dictators and damning America.

The content was changing too. Villains became much more nasty and were drawn from narrower ranks, i.e. they all became melodramatic liberal bogeymen. Moreover, certain types of people could no longer be anything but villains. The American military and intelligence community because disloyal murderers. Priests became pedophiles. Businessmen because perverts, thieves, and killers. Religious people were portrayed as stupid lunatics with cultish overtones. There were no exceptions.

But then something began to happen. Americans, particularly conservative Americans, began voting with their wallets. Indeed, since at least the Iraq war, more and more conservative consumers began turning their backs on Hollywood. Profits continued to rise, but that was because of skyrocketing ticket prices and 3D surcharges; in real numbers ticket sales keep falling. Hollywood has noticed, though most tried to blame the recession. But this trend started long before the recession, and the public's boycott is too selective to be part of a general economic trend.

For example, while war films continue to play well (Valkyrie (2009), Flags of Our Fathers (2006)), not a single Iraqi War film escaped the bust label. Matt Damon was a bankable superstar until he started whining about Bush and Katrina and America. George Clooney’s box office appeal crashed the moment he began spewing. Ditto Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Megan Fox and others, and the presence of these people can now drag any film down. Everything politicized directors like Michael Moore and Oliver Stone did suddenly flopped, as did the political films. People even stayed away in droves from Disney’s attempt to satisfy race-baiting critics by providing a black princess in The Frog Princess, from the anti-religious rant The Invention of Lying, and anti-Wall Street films like Wall Street II.

So is Hollywood getting the message or is all of this falling on deaf ears? Well, consider this. In the past year, we’ve suddenly had two films that never would have been made in the early 2000s. The first is The Book of Eli and the second is Legion. Legion is your standard “angles are nasty creatures sent to kill humans” story that seems to have become popular ever since The Prophecy. But what makes it rather different is that it contains an anti-abortion message. Indeed, to save humanity, the heroes must protect a woman who wanted to have an abortion, but changed her mind. That’s a message you simply could not have put into a film before the somewhat ambiguous Juno in 2007. . . Hollywood’s feminist lobby never would have allowed it.

The Book of Eli is even more interesting. This is a film about a man, Eli (Denzel Washington), who is walking through a post-apocalyptic world with a book. They don’t tell you what the book is right away, but it’s so obvious that you can’t help but figure it out -- The Bible. Throughout this film, we are told that the horrific world in which humanity finds itself is the result of a war in which people tried to destroy every Bible because they blamed it as a cause of conflict, e.g. just like many on the atheist-left do today. At the same time, the few survivors with knowledge of times before the war talk with reverence about the power of the Bible to improve people’s lives and make the world a better place. Moreover, the film doesn’t hesitate to make it clear that God is real or that he is protecting Eli as he travels. AND, as he goes, Eli learns that the importance of the Bible is not the words per se, but living your life according to its teachings. Think about this for a moment. What was the last film produced by a major studio that was deeply complimentary to Christianity rather than deeply insulting?

I'm seeing hints in other movies too. The villains are getting more generic again and less-obviously insulting to America's institutions, and I'm seeing fewer straight up political moments in non-political films.

These could be outliers, but even if they are, they are outliers that simply could not have been made in the early 2000s. Perhaps this is evidence that Hollywood has turned a corner and that cracks are appearing in the Tinsel Curtain? Maybe this is even the beginning of an acknowledgement by Hollywood that it realizes that it needs to win back conservatives? I guess we’ll know when we see our first film in which American soldiers are made out as heroes rather than psychopaths?