The movies that get nominations for Academy Awards are one thing; the movies that people actually go out and watch are another.  The films that gross big at the box office are generally apolitical, like comedies and romantic stories, or else vaguely right wingish in nature: action films where the tough, crime fighting hero shoots and beats the shit out of cartoonishly evil villains, in defiance of some pansy-assed bureaucracy worried about "civil rights."  I think you've almost completely missed the mark here.  It is true that the movie industry is demand driven; it is, however, false that that demand leans left, or even that the typical Hollywood film that people watch leans left.  

In fact, I would argue that the typical Hollywood film does not lean left at all, certainly not since the mid-seventies, when the ass kicking, crime fighting, walking death penalty film was big, the kind of film that made Clint Eastwood and Schwarzenegger household names. And to the extent that films actually influence the political debate, I would say they turn it to the right.  I can remember Reagan using "Go ahead, make my day" -- Eastwood's most famous tough guy one liner -- as his own for a while, and all those paranoid, the streets are full of vicious criminals crime films of the 70s and 80s fed the "law and order" wave of the 80s and 90s.  I haven't seen films with a "liberal" bent make nearly as big an impact as just that one genre of films has.  

It never ceases to amaze me how conservatives have so little faith in the free market when it comes to the entertainment industry.  No doubt many in Hollywood lean left.  Be that as it may, if there were such a huge pent-up demand for movies with more conservative themes, how come not a single move studio has decided to focus on this low-hanging fruit?  Last I checked, all of the studios are for-profit corporations run by executives who are highly motivated to generate profits for their shareholders (and large bonuses for themselves).   When an exceptional movie like the Passion of Christ does well at the box office, conservatives hail this as proof that their constituency would go to movies "if only the studios would put out more movies like this."  If this were true, then the free-market would produce those movies, just like it produces SUVs when gas prices go down and hybrids when gas prices go up. 

 No, Matthew is right, the demographics for movies are much different than the demographics for, e.g., voters.   

Most impressive. You were able to stay awake in the same room as Mickey Kaus, the most sleep-inducing rightwinger since God invented Paul Harvey.

Surely he claimed that the destruction of welfare was connected, somehow, to better movie quality. It is Kaus' favorite topic.  

And to add a couple more anti-liberal films of the '70s and early '80s:  Death Wish (1974) and First Blood (1982)

It would be hard to come up with an analysis of the movies more wrong than this.




This is that there's a tendency for people to focus gripes about the content of the American cinema on the supply side, the characteristics of "Hollywood," when more attention should be paid to the demand side, the characteristics of the audience.




The focus of conservative discontent about Hollywood has to do with the amount of sex and violence - particularly sex - that is often gratuitously inserted into movies. That this appeals to the prurient interests of people is indeed a "demand" issue, but it's got little to do with the demographics of the audience. Middle-aged people out in the sticks can get just as turned on by a naked Heather Graham as twenty-something Upper West Siders.




Teenagers go to a lot of movies. They need reasons to get out of the house away from the prying eyes of their parents, and can't legally participate in a lot of nightlife activities. As a result, there's a relatively low bar you need to cross to convince a teen to go to your movie.




Well this is true and that's why there are so many movies, particularly in the summer, that are aimed at teenagers. But these aren't in general "liberal" movies except in the sense that they tend to have a lot of action and cartoonish violence and other things that conservatives don't like. But they don't take a "liberal" point of view. Indeed, more often they glorify things like the military, vigilatism, rogue cops etc. that are hardly liberal heroes.




Parents with kids at home are the reverse -- it's expensive for them to hire a sitter for the kids, and since they don't get that many opportunities to spend an evening out the opportunity cost of going to the movies is high.




Memo to Matt: they have these other ways to watch movies these days called DVD players, TiVo, cable and so on that dwarf the amount of money earned at the box office. The idea that movies are geared only to who can get to the box office is exaggerated.




So it is true that movies tend to appeal to a younger audience than average, but urban? Not so sure about that. Most movies are aimed a suburban malls, which are not generally known as hotbeds of liberalism.




Finally, the lesson to learn from Best Picture noninees this year is precisely the lesson that Matt seems most reluctant to learn. That is, that all of these pictures were the product of the vision of certain A-list Hollywood celebrities like George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee and Steven Soderbergh. Every one of them is an outspoken liberal. So the most "personal" films that Hollywood puts out - and the ones that have the most artistic ambition - are indeed indicative of a prevailing liberal mindset in Hollywood. It's just that these films are so unrepresentative of typical Hollywood product that to draw any conclusions about liberal Hollywood from them is ridiculous.

Dale, Matt's post struck me in a way that very much applies to your comment.  It finally occurred to me that we need to stop looking at conservatives in terms of hypocrisy about the "free market."  They're not hypocrites at all because they're not free market advocates; they're supply-side economics advocates.  That goes for increasing supply and decreasing supply, but the only thing they know is the supply.

Problem: skyrocketing healthcare costs.  Rather than decrease demand for coverage and treatment by prevention, better healthcare practices, education, and efficiency, they work to increase the supply of poor healthcare by using patchwork subsidies for Medicare-covering HMOs and banning malpractice suits.  Effect: cheap but bad healthcare or good but expensive healthcare: you choose.

Problem: drugs.  Rather than decrease demand for drugs by increasing treatment, increasing education, providing alternative entertainment for teens, improving the economic mobility of the poor, etc., they work to decrease supply with excessive sentences for dealers.  Effect: just a lot of black men in prison; drug addicts = completely inelastic demand.  As long as there is a market, there will be dealers, no matter how many you jail.

Problem: evil Hollywood.  Rather than decrease demand for violent or sexy or drug-addled or subversive movies by providing high-quality alternative sources of entertainment, they work to decrease supply by restricting the types of movies that can be made.  Effect: none; the demand remains strong for "liberal" movies.

Problem: expensive gasoline.  Rather than decrease the demand for fossil fuels by pushing for more efficient energy production and use, they hope to increase supply by drilling in Alaska and on the outer continental shelf.  Effect: discourage efficiency and green innovation, continuing the bemoaned addiction to oil with only temporary price relief.

Problem: abortion.  Rather than decrease the demand for abortions by providing better pre- and postnatal care, creating a more welcoming world for single mothers, providing refuge from abusive families, etc., they work to decrease supply by banning abortions.

See, banning stuff and subsidizing stuff is just another version of supply-side economics.  And while supply-side economics has some valuable lessons and it has its place, thinking it's a cure-all is preposterous.  The sooner conservatives realize that demand matters, too, the sooner we can stop the PR war (which supply-side will always win) and the sooner we can start doing something productive (which requires both supply- and demand-side answers).

P.S. Liberals need to realize this about guns and our supply-side solutions; somehow we decided to play the gun game on conservative turf.

When people are sitting in a theater and not thinking politics, the typical conservative guy comes across as the asshole, the typical liberal as the good guy.

ARGville - a home for ARGs

=== Do conservatives really want to put themselves in the position of arguing McCarthy was a force for *good*? ===

sPh

There is a lot of silliness these days in left vs. right arguments about Hollywood and what the current Oscar nominees represent. A few points I think need to be made:

1. The major movie studios are big corporations, often part of a huge conglomerate, and the business people that run these companies and decide what movies get made generally care a whole lot more about making money than they do about the films' politics. If there is a prejudice they have, it's not left or right, but more anti-political than anything else, for fear of offending half the audience. So the result with most Hollywood movies is a safe, bland story, usually avoiding anything controversial. The prevailing environment is very different from, say, the 1970s, when movies didn't fear taking on dicey subject matter. I think this year was worthy of note for the few movies that dared to have some bite, in contrast to most studio movies made in the past decade or two. This situation has prevailed despite the liberal leanings of most directors, writers, and actors. That's because the "artists" don't decide what movies get made. The business people do.

2. For what it's worth, most movie theaters are where the people are, and that's not in urban or rural areas. It's in the suburbs. And I don't think the typical suburban moviegoer is looking for politics one way or the other. He or she likes to laugh or cry, get scared shitless once in a while, watch pretty girls, and see something get blown up. Escape and fantasy have always scored bigger than movies with a message.

3. The top Oscar contenders are usually not tops at the box office. For the most part, the big movies, by their very nature, lack the qualities of art that the Oscar is supposed to reward. Human-scale stories with good writing and acting are always going to win more awards than movies starring a CGI monster.

4. If you look at the five Best Picture nominees, despite all the press they may be getting now, they are hardly at all significant in the overall business of Hollywood movie-making.

• Brokeback Mtn: $14M budget / $50M+ US box office (to date)
• Capote: $7M / $15M
• Crash: $6.5M / $55M
• Good Night...: $7.5 M / $25M
• Munich: $75M / $40M

The total budget of the five combined ($110M) is about half the budget for "King Kong" alone, and that's including the Spielberg flick. Subtract that and you're talking about Kong's catering bill. So these prestige films are really just an afterthought, a rounding error, in where studios spend their money, and to make the case that these films demonstrate a political agenda that Hollywood is pushing is to wildly misrepresent what Hollywood is really doing.

5. If you fairly look at the five movies, I think that there is exactly one that is making a political point. That one is "Good Night, and Good Luck." Its subject is political -- the dangers of McCarthyism -- and though a period picture it certainly resonates today. Call it liberal if you want. The other movies are, in my opinion, human dramas, much more interested in the personal than the political. If they touch on politics at all -- as "Crash" and "Munich" do -- they look at more than one side, ask questions, but don't draw any easy conclusions. "Capote" and "Breakback Mountain" feature gay characters, but there is nothing political about them. The failure to condemn them for being gay does make the movies political or liberal, and if you think it does, then you simply do not know what the hell you're talking about.