I think it’s generally accepted that Hollywood and the entertainment industry tend to lean left.
Any ideas on why that is?
I think it’s generally accepted among the paranoid right.
Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean that nobody’s really after me.
I thought all pricks leaned left.
Because the Right is the man. Art is about screwing the man.
Film making is very much about understanding the human condition. I think when you write about, portray, direct you must develop an empathy for your subject, this would tend to develop an understanding of the various aspects of the human experience.
The Studio Bosses and the money makers aren’t left leaning I bet…
Artists, actors and other creative workers tend to be more sensitive to issues I imagine. They aren’t as worried about the profits since they have good earnings.
Was I the only one to read the thread title and think it meant the Hollywood sign is out of kilter? :smack:
That implies that only the left understands the human condition or has empathy with it, a premise that I reject. One could just as well say that filmmaking is about stripping humanity of complex dimension and condensing life into a few brief scenes. I don’t think that’s something the left would want to claim.
I think that if an actor leans left, he does so for the same reason that anyone else leans left: he believes that a centrally planned economy is politically justifiable, and that civil liberties are by right derived from self-evident truths. In my opinion, the reason that so many actors and other artisans (as opposed to those in production and sales) lean left is that they themselves have experienced the needs that they perceive. Often, their early lives were a struggle against conformity and a resistance to social complacency. Their peers were others in a similar plight, and they saw the message from the left as an inspiration for themselves and their friends. Their communities — in theatre and other arts — were more, well, communal.
This isn’t an easy question to answer at all.
The fairest thing to say would be that Hollywood, or at least big Hollywood, leans left but sells to the vast middle.
I think some clear evidence of this can be found in the career of Tom Hanks, who is one of Hollywood’s premiere liberals, and also one of its biggest stars. He moves a great deal of money into Democratic coffers, yet his film work has been decidedly apolitical. Looking at his recent pictures, we see family movies, a serious interest in the space program, some adventure films, and romantic comedies. Only “Philadelphia” raised any serious political points, and that film was released some time ago.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Although not economically paramount, entertainment is perhaps the most conspicuous US export there is. The rest of the industrialised democratic world lies way left of the US, and so it is perhaps not surprising that entertainment stars adopt a more international perspective than the average resident of [del]Dumbfuckistan[/del] the red states.
Yeah, that would certainly explain why “Constant Gardener,” “Good Night and Good Luck” and “Syriana” were green-lighted. I mean, everybody knows that the American public was crying out for movies about the evils of McCarthyism, pharmaceutuical and oil companies. Didn’t you see the lines around the block to see “Good Night and Good Luck”? Didn’t you see the hundreds of millions of dollars “Constant Gardener” rake d in?
Hollywood bosses were ONLY concerned with making huge profits when they agreed to make those films! Making a political statement was the last thing on their minds!
I think there is quite a bit to be said for A. R. Cane’s point. I think that to be a good actor, writer or director, one has to have a fairly good ability to understand multiple perspectives, have compassion for different people, and be flexible in one’s thinking.
It seems to me that there are more conservatives in engineering, for example, where linear thinking, black and white rules, and hard and fast answers are required.
To return to Hollywood, look at individual actors. A good actor plays a range of roles convincingly, probably because of some ability to recognize, understand empathize and depict a range of emotions. While many conservative actors have been popular, and have been no doubt good, most have not been known for an ability to play a variety of characters convincingly. Arnold Schwarzennegger. Tom Selleck. James Woods. Charlton Heston. Scott Baio. The kid from Growing Pains.
I think it is simply a selection process in which a certain personality type is drawn to the arts, and is also more likely to espouse liberal points of view.
For some reason I’m having trouble remembering the names of all these actors that have come out in favor of a centrally-planned economy. Maybe someone can help me out here.
If that’s the case, why are most Hollywood celebrities that cross over into politics Republican? Where’s Governor Newman? Senator Streisand?
I don’t believe a centrally planned economy is a tenet of leftism. Of SOME leftists, true. The core belief of the US left is giving the little guy a chance against the big guys. The difference between the left and the right in the US is that the left recognizes that corporate America is a big guy who is quite as capable of fucking over the little guy as big government.
Well, there WAS Senator Bono … (shudder). Also, there was the woman who play Dobie Gillis’ girlfriend who turned out to be a lesbian IRL. And Clint Eastwood was a mayor was he not? Jesse Ventura was an independent. I’m not sure where he’d fit on the left right scale, if he’d fit there at all.
Also porn star Mary Carey has been politically active. Although she is registered as a Republican, there’s reason to believe she’s a Trojan horse Republican. I’m just glad she’s not a Democrat. (She makes a fine porn star, but her onscreen personna is “dumb blonde” in a way that makes other dumb blonde porn stars look … average. I do like the idea of a campaign poster of Mary with a cock in her mouth: “My opponent is right … I DO suck! And I’m REALLY good at it! Can my opponent say the same?”
But Bono was a Republican, and Eastwood self-identified as more of a libertarian, although he did clearly say he wasn’t a conservative.
Well, since we have a bunch of answers along the lines of, “They tend to be left leaning because they care about people, and people who care about people lean left”, I’ll take the other perspective:
Or maybe it’s because artists tend to be poorly educated in the ‘hard’ sciences, math, economics, etc. So they simply don’t understand these issues, and devolve everything down to the touchy-feely stuff.
It could also be self-selection. People who tend to go into the arts are people who are more empathic than rational.
It could also be self-selection in the sense that the hollywood establishment is left-leaning, arts faculties are heavily left-leaning, and so anyone who comes through that system and makes it in Hollywood is more likely to lean to the left.
It could also be arrogance. Hollywood is full of rich, self-absorbed people who live in a bubble, and therefore think the only way the ‘common man’ can get ahead is with their benighted help.
But to be honest, I think there’s just something about the ‘artistic temperament’ that tends to pull people to the left. Not a lot of conservatives gravitate to the arts. You’re more likely to find them in engineering, business, farming, etc. They tend to be practical, ‘get it done’ kind of people.
So, now we’ve got completely worthless generalizations from both perspectives!
I disagree. If you want to sell to the masses, you’ll make heartwarming family fare. Do you really think the guy who greenlighted ‘Brokeback Mountain’ or ‘Syriana’ thought there was a huge movie-going audience just aching to see a movie about gay cowboys or a big-oil conspiracy in the middle east? Note that “The Passion of the Christ” wound up being produced and financed by Mel Gibson because he couldn’t find a studio that would bankroll the project, despite Gibson having a great track record for turning in profitable movies. And of course, it turned out to be one of the most profitable movies of all time.