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A Class Apart
| Article
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20036 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1992 |
2,374 Words |
| Author
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Benjamin J. Stein
Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor
living in Malibu, California. He is the author of the View
from Sunset Boulevard. |
Michael Medved's provocative book attempts at its very end to raise a few possible explanations for why the Hollywood product comes out as it does--or rather to raise a few straw men and then knock them down. Medved interestingly raises the possibility that Hollywood is influenced by the chase for the buck, dismisses it, the possibility of a gay conspiracy, dismisses that, and the specter of a Jewish conspiracy, and knocks that down--although with somewhat questionable facts about who really runs studios. (It's a joke that the Japanese really have creative control over Sony-Columbia or that the gentiles at Time have anything to say to the boys running Warner.)
Then what is going on? Why does Hollywood come out as it does? Herewith a few thoughts:
To the question "Why does it turn out as it does?" there are many different answers, because the question really is many different questions:
Why are movies as violent as they are?
Why are TV shows as antibusiness as they are?
Why do movies have so much sex?
Why are TV shows so cloyingly touchy-feely?
Why do both the media and TV mock religion?
Why do MTV videos break all records for sexual titillation?
Why in a variety of ways does the product of the Hollywood community seem to be out of step with the values of at least a good part of the American middle-class community from coast to coast?
Probably there are other subquestions within these, and they will have to be addressed somewhere else. Media is a lot like life: not easy to explain all at once.
Before I attempt to answer these questions, please note that unlike most of the people who write about Hollywood's value system, your humble narrator actually lives and works here in the belly of the beast. For the past sixteen years, more or less, I have toiled as screenwriter, TV writer, producer, and actor. By no stretch of the imagination could I be described as a
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