The Hollywood Culture Wars: Will Home Theater Change the Stakes?

Since the 1960s, movies have been "antifamily, antireligious, antibusiness, and antimilitary." Conservative film critic Michael Medved complains that Hollywood has betrayed mainstream Americans, and that their disenchantment is shown in the steady decline in their movie attendance. Medved finds it ironic that the movies the public prefers become blockbusters but don’t win Oscars. "The movie establishment honors precisely those releases that fail to connect with mainstream audiences: edgy message movies from a liberal perspective."

No doubt the Oscar nominations for 2005 disturbed Medved. The list of nominees for Best Picture must have been a conservative’s nightmare: Capote, about an elitist homosexual journalist cozying up to a mass murderer; Crash, another exposé of American racism; Brokeback Mountain, about two cowboys whose homosexuality is made to seem involuntary and tragic; Good Night, and Good Luck, a portrait of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose purging of left-wing Hollywood is presented as fanatical; and, perhaps most disturbing to conservatives, Munich, a retelling of the Palestinian assassination of Israeli Olympic athletes and the relentless reprisal by a crack Israeli hit squad, told in a way that seemed to Medved "to critique the Bush administration’s harsh response to terrorism."

Here’s how conservative pundit Ann Coulter listed the Oscars: "Best song went to a musical tribute to the overseers of human sex slaves, an occupation known as ‘pimping’; best picture went to a movie about racism in Los Angeles; best supporting actor went to the movie about how oil companies murder people; and best supporting actress went to the movie about how pharmaceutical companies murder people." She concludes: "On behalf of red state America, let me be the first to say: ‘Screw you, Hollywood.’"

Their anger is vehement, and it’s baffling. So far, the box-office grosses for 2005 put the kind of movies Coulter and Medved prefer way out in front: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, $891.2 million worldwide; Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, $848.1 million; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, $677.3 million -- all major studio productions, good exciting family fare with PG-13 ratings or better. And that doesn’t include DVD revenues. Even with all of the buzz Brokeback Mountain created before and after its nominations, it has grossed a mere $80 million, less than a 10th of the amount earned by Harry Potter. In fact, if we total the worldwide grosses of all five Best Picture nominees, the sum so far is $350 million, less than 40% of the total for Harry Potter alone.

Why the rage? It would seem that if it’s a contest for audience, the G- and PG-rated movie has won hands down. In fact, in a population divided pretty much 50-50 between "red" and "blue," the reds have it, in more ways than movies.

Can exclusion from the Oscars really matter that much? Most of the Oscar nominees were made by independent production companies, not by the major studios. American conservatives have the money and influence to start their own production companies, and even to initiate an alternate awards ceremony. (The Golden Globes have found themselves prime time on the small screen.) Why rail from the sidelines?

It isn’t that simple, of course. Hollywood has been left a long, long time. So many of Hollywood’s classics are left-leaning -- just look at the gems rereleased on DVD by Criterion. Legendary right-wing movies such as The Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation now seem more like curiosities than genuinely moving works of art.

Film and literature have much in common. Movies such as Harry Potter that get a lucrative G or PG rating tend to be based on scripts from the "young adult" category of literature -- The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, for example -- titles that adults and children can share. They are usually uplifting and entertaining, hence their popularity as film scripts. Their DVDs will continue to sell past the marketing buzz.

All great books written for adults, however, involve struggles of the weak against the strong that are often disturbing and violent: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front -- all of them full of social critique, all of them "edgy message novels." Film is as an appropriate place as literature to work through complex human issues, and our issues today include homosexuality, violence, racism, the energy crisis, protection of privacy, consumerism, and AIDS. None of them is "entertaining."

Although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may seem elite, smug, self-righteous, condescending, or just foolish, it wants to present itself as producing art as well as entertainment. And for better or worse, it uses the Oscar nominations and ceremony to do it.

One great impact of the Oscars, if you think of it, is on "downstream revenues," that is, DVD sales. Scott Hettrick (Video Business) writes that theater attendance is "in near-constant decline and box office grosses down 7% compared to a 7.5% year-to-date increase in the far more profitable home video market." For now, it looks as if the film industry will depend less on successful theater releases and more and more on DVD sales and rentals.

Therefore, Hettrick asks, "if DVD has become the primary profit center and appeals to all ages -- including the over-40 crowd that long ago stopped frequenting movie theaters -- then why are studios still primarily producing horror, fantasy and comic book movies and crass comedies, all aimed at teens and young adults?"

Who can predict where the home-theater market will take the movie industry? If anywhere, may it be toward more variety, more niche audiences served, and more low-budget, sophisticated, challenging, adult-oriented films. Hey, put the kids to bed and get out the DVD of that edgy new message movie!

 ...Charlotte Meyer
charlottem@hometheatersound.com

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