This was something said at the Oscars: that Hollywood can be credited with challenging “our” values, presumably asking the hard questions, questioning long held beliefs, and so on. This was something of a pat on its own back, and something you generally hear a lot in liberal discussions of art.
I’d like to ask if this is really true.
The problem is, as far as I can tell, what Hollywood actually does is try to challenge “those other guy’s values over there.” Almost none of the values one thinks as common to people in Hollywood (i.e. liberal values) seem to get challenged very often, if at all. All of the values challenged are basically the liberal perception of either what mainstream values are, or conservative values are outright.
While I certainly think a film like, for instance, Brokeback Mountain is a powerful and great film that deals with some long neglected themes, I’m not sure Hollywood celebrating a gay movie is particularly self-challenging. It might well have a powerful positive social effect on society, I don’t doubt that, and that’s laudable.
But patting yourself on the back for challenging your perception of what other people’s values are is a very different thing from patting yourself on the back for taking a good hard long look at your own values, questioning them. The latter is truly laudable. Whether the former is or not depends more on whether you agree or disagree with the values being attacked, and so its hard to really celebrate it universally (a Holocaust denial film would sure challenge some basic values… but few would celebrate it)
I agree with Apos. It was a vapid and unctuous speech. Hollywood did not lead the way in civil rights; it led the way in Blaxploitation. It did not resist McCarthyism; it capitulated to it by hiding themes in obtuse symbolism. It did not pioneer the topic of gay rights; it followed the lead of society and did not produce a non-laughable gay character until the 1970s (Boys in the Band). What a joke that it should congratulate itself.
You’ve missed and/or avoided the point. There is a huge huge difference between simply attacking other people who are different from you, and challenging yourself. The latter is arguably always laudable and deserves a serious pat on the back. My point is that Hollywood generally is only doing the former. And while those attempts may be laudable for other positive social ends, they don’t deserve celebrations of their bravery or rigor in going after sacred cows and such. Anyone can pillory someone ELSE’s supposedly dumb or evil beliefs.
Most of the people who’s values are supposedly being challenged seem to think so. They basically think they are having fairly leaden straw men swipes taken at them.
I don’t see how Stone fits. The man made a laudatory documentary about Castro and rails about corporate/military conspiracies. What’s more leftist than that?
Again, that’s just dodging. Hollywood certainly has no problem fitting attacks and hard questions for supposed religious bigots into films. Why not liberal sacred cows too? I’m not even saying that Hollywood would have to become less liberal. Just to ACTUALLY challenging ITSELF sometimes if it wanted kudos for breaking the mold and doing something daring.
One of the problems I have with movies that deal with serious topics is that they tend to be very one-dimensional. That is, they tend to give a very skewed, black & white approach to a particular problem or issue. It goes with the medium I guess. While movies can be emotive, moving and very powerful they should not be held out as the standard bearer for social change.
This isn’t tantamount to agreeing with me in the slightest. I didn’t say that Hollywood hasn’t done social good by championing good things and trying to deal with these issues in a progressive manner. Every statement there is a cynical overreach. Hollywood moviemakers produced many important films that did a lot of pioneering good in all those realms and started countless discussions and new ideas, challenged many sacred cows and taken plenty of heat for doing so. They’ve also produced some snivelingly poor and cowardly stuff. In THAT respect, Hollywood is a mix of bad and good.
But what I’m arguing is that there is a big difference between challenging other people’s values, and challenging your own. There is a special respect due to people that challenge their own values above and beyond normal challenges, and I feel that by and large, Hollywood moviemakers demand that respect without doing anything to earn it. Hollywood does socially positive gay films because by and large the culture of the stars and movie-makers is gay positive. And I LIKE that, don’t get me wrong. But it seems obtuse to tell me both that you have the right values AND that you can speak about challenging “our” beliefs while somehow including yourself in the “our.”
[QUOTE=Apos]
I don’t see how Stone fits. The man made a laudatory documentary about Castro and rails about corporate/military conspiracies. What’s more leftist than that?
[quote]
I was talking about Matt Stone, not Oliver.
Hollywood does sometimes “challenge itself.” See Tim Robbins’ The Player – which is, of course, about the film industry itself, not its politics.
There is no “my way” or “your way.” Either we disagree, or we don’t. It appears we don’t, since I don’t think the claims that Hollywood has nothing to congragulate itself over in terms of social good are viable.
Ah. But then, those guys never patted themselves on the back for challening “our beliefs,” nor do they really count themselves as part of the Oscar Hollywood crowd.
It might well sometimes, but in any way deserving of particular commendation the way it regularly pats itself on the back for? Are you really arguing that because Tim Robbins made a film about how the movie industry can be corrupt and slimy and competative and backbiting that this is somehow tantamount to him challenging his beliefs about the death penalty, the war, or any other social issue having to do with leftist politics? Is anything in the Player even something most in Hollywood wouldn’t recognize and admit to in the first place?
Bearing in mind that
A) The Academy Awards of Arts & Sciences is Hollywood’s way of taking itself seriously and patting itself on the back on an annual basis
and
B) The speech given was a direct response to Jon Stewart; IIRC George Clooney said in the interview afterward that that part of his acceptance speech was not planned. The Academy Awards are in themselves a performance. He played to the crowd and walked away looking great.
The films the Academy considers relevant are topical and usually touchstones for debate. The first time I saw an ad for North Country, I thought (very cynically) “Oh, look, Norma Rae in a mine.” It’s perfect Oscar fodder. Most film makers believe that by putting that kind of material out there, they’re challenging the rest of the country to open their eyes and do the right thing.
It wasn’t just Clooney’s speech. One of the presenters said it as part of introducing an award.
But that’s what I’m saying: it’s challenging what it sees as what the REST of the country must believe (whether they actually do or not is still another matter). Not challenging “our” (i.e. Hollywood’s and other liberal institutions) beliefs. I haven’t watched a Hollywood film that’s challenged any of MY beliefs (which aside from wanting a smaller government and more even taxation are pretty liberal) in years and years.
For some reason, I feel like a slab of taffy. Let A = “This isn’t tantamount to agreeing with me in the slightest.” Let B = “It appears we don’t [disagree]…”. How is it that both A and B are true? Oops. On preview, I see your correction. Seems we’re back to normal. Or something. At any rate, I don’t think Hollywood has challenged American values since Lois Weber. And look what happened to her.
Was it the part where they did the “relevant films of our time” montage? I wasn’t paying too much attention at that point, I got stuck being bartender.
I agree. What I’m trying to tell you is; don’t take them as seriously as they take themselves. It’s an industry full of people so insecure, they need to have awards show every year to tell themselves how wonderful they are. C’mon. Did anyone really do anything but roll their eyes when Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins made that speech in 1993? I didn’t even remember it was about Haitian refugees til I googled it just now.
Do they feel they’re fighting the good fight? Probably. As Reese Witherspoon said (paraphrased), they just want to matter. They want to feel they’re doing something relevant in their work. Maybe part of it is guilt, justifying their salaries, probably most of it is ego. I agree with Lochdale. It’s a difficult medium in which to convey more than one or two dimensions. There is the rare film that does address social issues and make people more aware of what’s going on in the world. Usually it isn’t the US film industry that puts it out, though.
I don’t know why anyone thinks Hollywood has anything to do with anything but profit. Their social activism is simply what sells their product. You ever notice that sport stars, unlike movie stars, don’t go to Africa to help the starving children? They both have enough money to make it worthwhile, but the movie stars and music stars have market shares in Africa to worry about in Africa, while the sports stars usually only sell their products near their home towns.
Bit of trivia for you - in 2004, the best county for Bush in the country (net Bush votes) wasn’t in Texas or anywhere like that, but Orange County, CA.
