On both sides of the Atlantic, Hollywood is suddenly the right's favourite bogeyman. According to the Republican front-runners in the presidential race, it is seething with liberals. Pat Buchanan and his Christian Coalition have pledged themselves to chase those "purveyors of sex and violence back beneath the rocks from whence they came." Bob Dole promises that "if I'm the president of the United States, I'm going to urge consumers to turn off their television sets and not patronise these movies."
A lot of influential figures in Hollywood are Democrats. Why else would we get The American President, Rob Reiner's sympathetic portrait of an idealised Clinton in the White House? Or Dave, Ivan Reitman's account of a laid back, liberal lookalike, standing in successfully for a stiff, Bush-style president? Soon we shall be seeing another presidential movie from a similarly leftish angle, the Oliver Stone epic Nixon, which portrays the ex-president as the pawn of the industrial-military complex in general, and J. Edgar Hoover in particular.
Michael Medved's 1992 attack on Hollywood's values in Hollywood vs America laid out a long list of movies which attacked America's most cherished traditions-religion, marriage, family, heroism, patriotism. Since the book appeared scarcely a week has gone by without a critic castigating a Hollywood film for political correctness, or lowering the moral tone. I've even done it myself.
But Hollywood is driven by profit, not social engineering. Many moviegoers across the political spectrum are increasingly concerned at its cynical use of extreme violence as entertainment-but among the worst offenders are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. All three are active Republicans.
Perhaps we should judge presidential candidates by what they do, rather than say. Last May, Bob Dole publicly castigated the Hollywood giant, Time Warner, for "debasing our nation and threatening our children." Six months later, Dole was inviting the Time Warner chairman to a $1,000-a-plate Beverly Hills banquet to celebrate his new telecom Bill, which was made to order for the big Hollywood players like Time Warner: it dismantles cable regulations, permits a single broadcaster to take over a large proportion of the market, hands out $40 billion worth of new airwaves, and doubles the time between license reviews to ten years, thus rendering Hollywood moguls less accountable to the public than ever before. With enemies like Dole, why should Hollywood need friends?
Besides, there has always been an important reactionary side to Hollywood. Many of the old moguls were Republicans. With Japanese corporations and bosses like Rupert Murdoch taking control of big studios, Hollywood conservatism is stronger than ever-though not always easy to spot. For where liberals tend to wear their values on their lapels, Hollywood conservatives proceed by stealth.
Take war films. Ever since Vietnam, Hollywood liberals have been propagandising for peace. Film after film has depicted American involvement in third world countries as disastrous for the local population and brutalising for the soldiers. Films which acknowledged an alternative reality which had been dominant in movies of the 1940s and 1950s-that war can be honourable, character forming and even heroic-began to re-emerge only in the second half of the 1980s. Glory (1989), which cloaked its pro-war message in a celebration of black Americans' heroism, won a couple of Oscars. And though Forrest Gump (1994) featured yet another dispirited homecoming veteran in Gary Sinise, it received huge acclaim, inside and outside Hollywood, as the first movie in years to pour scorn on the peace movement, celebrate a war hero and include a Vietnam sequence without attacking American involvement.
American faith in its superior technology and know-how likewise returned in the Reagan years. Top Gun, the biggest hit of 1986, was virtually a recruitment film for naval fighter pilots. And in countless other movies-from RoboCop to Judge Dredd-America's fascination with technological weaponry has been thoroughly indulged.
The John Wayne notion that "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" is alive and well and living on in urban thrillers like Seven and Heat. Many American movies trade on values which could be shared by right wing vigilantes. They suggest that violence not only pays: it makes you feel good. The sentiment comes through even in children's films like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
It is easy to concentrate, like Michael Medved, on "irreligious" movies and ignore the unctuous religiosity of such films as Sister Act 1 and 2, Corrina Corrina and A Stranger Among Us. A few Hollywood movies do disparage marriage and the family; but even more go to the opposite-super-respectful-extreme. Celebrations of family togetherness from last year have included While You Were Sleeping, Safe Passage and Unstrung Heroes. Films aimed at younger audiences (Far From Home, Free Willy 1 and 2, and The Santa Clause) lay reverential emphasis on family bonding. The quasi-religious joy of fatherhood has been a central theme of movies as varied as Boyz N The Hood, Nine Months and Father of the Bride Part 2.
Hollywood is often castigated for tolerance of drug abuse-but it is remarkable how little tolerance reaches the screen. The only remotely sympathetic portrait of a drug pusher recently has been in True Romance; in every other film, from The Boost to The Basketball Diaries, drug pushing is treated as the ultimate degradation.
Hollywood is portrayed as sexually permissive, thanks to occasional excrescences such as Showgirls; yet the penalty for permissiveness in movies is often extreme: mental torture and physical threat (as in Fatal Attraction and Cape Fear), sudden annihilation (as in virtually every Hollywood slasher movie).
Nowadays, homosexuals may be allowed to be best friends of the hero (in Single White Female and Father of the Bride Part 2) but only rarely is a leading character gay. Fear of homosexuality remains pervasive, from thrillers like Basic Instinct to prison films like The Shawshank Redemption and even a drag comedy like To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, where the moviemakers' anxiety to downplay the three leading characters' homosexuality is risibly apparent.
Occasional attacks on capitalism in movies such as Oliver Stone's Wall Street are outnumbered by crowd-pleasers such as Tommy Boy, Richie Rich, Forrest Gump and Sabrina, all of which have a view of capitalism which Rupert Murdoch might consider over-optimistic.
Despite the accusation that Hollywood is sapping America's patriotism, self-doubt is markedly on the decline. Few modern Hollywood stars risk portraying rebels. Even those who used to do so (like Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino) now play authority figures. Villainous roles are left to British actors. If you see a male character with a ponytail or hippie attitudes, the odds are he'll turn out to be a psychopath.
The difference in tone between the 1990s and even the early 1980s can be seen most dramatically in two films about the space race. The Right Stuff (1983) debunked America's conquest of space as a cold war public relations exercise; whereas last year's hit Apollo 13-a depiction of a notorious US failure-avoided exposing the inadequacies of Nasa and contented itself with celebrating good old American know-how, resilience and courage.
Fears about Hollywood promoting a skewed set of values are well founded; but, on the evidence of the 300 films I see every year, I'd say the Hollywood right is at least as guilty as the left. n
