5 ms·

I've always found Hollywood to be ideologically mostly one-note, and a very disproportionate representation of US culture, as informed by its owners [1]. It was

by deogeo 7y ago

I've always found Hollywood to be ideologically mostly one-note, and a very disproportionate representation of US culture, as informed by its owners [1]. It was no bastion of free expression, even before China's influence. [1] https://jasonbayz.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/demographics-of-the-american-media-elite/ https://jasonbayz.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/demographics-of-t...

slg 7y ago
I imagine this comment was not intended to be openly anti-semitic, but it certainly reads that way. It comes off as the old "Jews control Hollywood and use it to spread their ideological propaganda" conspiracy theory. I would suggest you expand and clarify your point to avoid this hopefully accidental implication.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Huh, I think the blogpost parent links to at the time I'm writing this[1] is quite consistent with your reading. It's certainly hard to describe that implication as accidental. Quite sad! [1] ("Demographics of the American Media Elite"; mentions "Jews" in the very first line of post content!)
  - deogeo 7y ago
    I encourage you to correct any inaccuracies you find in the linked post. Edit: I very deliberately linked to a specific post, and do not endorse, nor did I even bother to read, the site as a whole. If the best retort you can muster is attacks against the author, then may I assume that you dislike the author, but agree with the facts presented in that specific post?
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      Nah, I'm not going to do that. Heck, why should I even care whether that post is accurate? Either way, it's just a bunch of manufactured divisiveness; a pointless distraction from far more real issues. Including the weird old-boy-networks in literally almost every other industry (tech being perhaps the one major exception) that you do not hear or read about, because no one can point to divisive demographics.
    - slg 7y ago
      I spent a few minutes skimming some of the blog posts on the page you linked and there are a few choice nuggets like this: >For the last few years I’ve believed in, and written under my pseudonym about, hard racial differences in intelligence. I was quite sure that most or all of the gap between the measured IQ of Black and White Americans was genetic in origin, everything I observed seemed consistent with that, and I assumed it would eventually be proven scientifically. and >The American swing voter, overwhelming, sympathizes with Israel rather than with the Palestinians. Yet, he also doesn’t like to hear about Israel. Why? He knows why American politicians talk about Israel. Hearing about it reminds him of his impotence in the face of the Jewish lobby he knows about but whose existence he can’t even acknowledge. This is true whether his is a white nationalist, an American nationalist, or simply a voter who asks “which candidate cares about me?” That is just old fashioned white supremacy and anti-semitism. If you don't agree with those principles, I highly suggest linking to some other source. If you do agree with them, I'll be polite and kindly ask that you don't spout those ideologies on a site like HN.
      - deogeo 7y ago
        > That is just old fashioned white supremacy and anti-semitism. I will concede the anti-semitism point. But the opinion on IQ is consistent with mainstream psychology [1] - it is, to the best of our knowledge, accurate. Of course you did not label the claim false, merely 'white supremacy'. Furthermore, the poster whatshisface made the claim that Jewish people have higher average IQ [2]. Do you believe he, and Jordan Peterson (who he sources for that claim), are Jewish supremacists for holding that position? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20978083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20978083
        slg 7y ago
        I'm not going to debate the scientific justifications for white supremacy. You have yet to even make a halfhearted denial of these bigoted ideologies and therefore the benefit of the doubt that I had afforded you multiple times has worn out.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      I have heard two stories told to explain this. One is, it used to be that acting and movie-making was considered a "low" thing to do, so a marginalized but white-looking minority got pushed in to doing it. Hollywood was low-status so long ago that there's no way the ethnic bias could still be around so I don't believe that theory. The other one is that Jews have a high IQ average, so you find them in important positions more than you would otherwise. I used to think that was a fringe internet blog theory, but apparently the mainstream pop psychologist Jordan Peterson professes it: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/psychology/on-the-so-called-jewish-question/ https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/psychology/on-the-so-called-... Jewish people get more Nobel prizes, have higher SAT scores, and are overrepresented in so many things that the average IQ theory seems like the most reasonable explanation. This comes with the mandatory disclaimer that the variations between individual people are much larger than the differences between ethnic averages: making it useful for sociology on a mass scale but useless for understanding any individual person.
      - deogeo 7y ago
        Explaining the success of other groups by invoking racial superiority is rarely received well. Usually 'privilege' is blamed instead.
- jbarham 7y ago
  > It comes off as the old "Jews control Hollywood and use it to spread their ideological propaganda" conspiracy theory. Thoroughly debunked here: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-19-oe-stein19-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-19-oe-stein...
sedeki 7y ago
Disproportinate representation of US culture? Which culture do you think should be represented in Hollywood?
- chrisco255 7y ago
  I think what OP is saying is that Hollywood isn't a great representative of U.S. culture as a whole. It is a bit of an exclusive club and it's dominated by a certain ideology.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Don't leave us hanging killer, what is that ideology? From where I sit it's mostly a lowest-common-denominator approach that's designed to be inoffensive, appeal to the broadest culture possible, and sell the most tickets.
- deogeo 7y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to say that US culture is too prominent in Hollywood movies, but that the US culture itself is greatly skewed by the lens of Hollywood. There are exceptions, but it usually hammers on a handful of themes, and rarely allows stories that run counter to its sensibilities. For example, in the recent Welcome to Marwen film, the attackers are all white, and one has a neo-Nazi tattoo. In the real incident the movie was based on, one of the attackers was black, and none had neo-Nazi tattoos. A second example is the invented racist fix in a boxing match, where, again, the white boxer is shown as unfairly being selected as the winner of the match, despite incompetent compared to the black boxer. But in the real fight, most everyone, including the black boxer, agrees the match and outcome was fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)#Lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)#Laws... In the case of historical movies, this bias is easy to spot (except when it comes to the selection of which parts of history to show). But in fictional stories, it's harder to complain, yet the narrative pushing is just as strong.
  - PorterDuff 7y ago
    Entertainment media narratives are mostly interesting when they are done for reasons outside of maximizing sales. You certainly can't blame someone for making up plots with just any old nonsense as long as the butts fill up the seats. I wonder if the writers of penny dreadfuls ever tried to 'improve' the public in some way. There's probably a sociology paper in looking at older pulp fiction or movies made via the old mass-production system to see if they are aimed in different ways than modern ones.

by deogeo 7y ago

slg 7y ago

I imagine this comment was not intended to be openly anti-semitic, but it certainly reads that way. It comes off as the old "Jews control Hollywood and use it to spread their ideological propaganda" conspiracy theory. I would suggest you expand and clarify your point to avoid this hopefully accidental implication.

zozbot234 7y ago
Huh, I think the blogpost parent links to at the time I'm writing this[1] is quite consistent with your reading. It's certainly hard to describe that implication as accidental. Quite sad! [1] ("Demographics of the American Media Elite"; mentions "Jews" in the very first line of post content!)
- deogeo 7y ago
  I encourage you to correct any inaccuracies you find in the linked post. Edit: I very deliberately linked to a specific post, and do not endorse, nor did I even bother to read, the site as a whole. If the best retort you can muster is attacks against the author, then may I assume that you dislike the author, but agree with the facts presented in that specific post?
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Nah, I'm not going to do that. Heck, why should I even care whether that post is accurate? Either way, it's just a bunch of manufactured divisiveness; a pointless distraction from far more real issues. Including the weird old-boy-networks in literally almost every other industry (tech being perhaps the one major exception) that you do not hear or read about, because no one can point to divisive demographics.
  - slg 7y ago
    I spent a few minutes skimming some of the blog posts on the page you linked and there are a few choice nuggets like this: >For the last few years I’ve believed in, and written under my pseudonym about, hard racial differences in intelligence. I was quite sure that most or all of the gap between the measured IQ of Black and White Americans was genetic in origin, everything I observed seemed consistent with that, and I assumed it would eventually be proven scientifically. and >The American swing voter, overwhelming, sympathizes with Israel rather than with the Palestinians. Yet, he also doesn’t like to hear about Israel. Why? He knows why American politicians talk about Israel. Hearing about it reminds him of his impotence in the face of the Jewish lobby he knows about but whose existence he can’t even acknowledge. This is true whether his is a white nationalist, an American nationalist, or simply a voter who asks “which candidate cares about me?” That is just old fashioned white supremacy and anti-semitism. If you don't agree with those principles, I highly suggest linking to some other source. If you do agree with them, I'll be polite and kindly ask that you don't spout those ideologies on a site like HN.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      > That is just old fashioned white supremacy and anti-semitism. I will concede the anti-semitism point. But the opinion on IQ is consistent with mainstream psychology [1] - it is, to the best of our knowledge, accurate. Of course you did not label the claim false, merely 'white supremacy'. Furthermore, the poster whatshisface made the claim that Jewish people have higher average IQ [2]. Do you believe he, and Jordan Peterson (who he sources for that claim), are Jewish supremacists for holding that position? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20978083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20978083
      - slg 7y ago
        I'm not going to debate the scientific justifications for white supremacy. You have yet to even make a halfhearted denial of these bigoted ideologies and therefore the benefit of the doubt that I had afforded you multiple times has worn out.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    I have heard two stories told to explain this. One is, it used to be that acting and movie-making was considered a "low" thing to do, so a marginalized but white-looking minority got pushed in to doing it. Hollywood was low-status so long ago that there's no way the ethnic bias could still be around so I don't believe that theory. The other one is that Jews have a high IQ average, so you find them in important positions more than you would otherwise. I used to think that was a fringe internet blog theory, but apparently the mainstream pop psychologist Jordan Peterson professes it: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/psychology/on-the-so-called-jewish-question/ https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/psychology/on-the-so-called-... Jewish people get more Nobel prizes, have higher SAT scores, and are overrepresented in so many things that the average IQ theory seems like the most reasonable explanation. This comes with the mandatory disclaimer that the variations between individual people are much larger than the differences between ethnic averages: making it useful for sociology on a mass scale but useless for understanding any individual person.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      Explaining the success of other groups by invoking racial superiority is rarely received well. Usually 'privilege' is blamed instead.
jbarham 7y ago
> It comes off as the old "Jews control Hollywood and use it to spread their ideological propaganda" conspiracy theory. Thoroughly debunked here: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-19-oe-stein19-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-19-oe-stein...

sedeki 7y ago

Disproportinate representation of US culture? Which culture do you think should be represented in Hollywood?

chrisco255 7y ago
I think what OP is saying is that Hollywood isn't a great representative of U.S. culture as a whole. It is a bit of an exclusive club and it's dominated by a certain ideology.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Don't leave us hanging killer, what is that ideology? From where I sit it's mostly a lowest-common-denominator approach that's designed to be inoffensive, appeal to the broadest culture possible, and sell the most tickets.
deogeo 7y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that US culture is too prominent in Hollywood movies, but that the US culture itself is greatly skewed by the lens of Hollywood. There are exceptions, but it usually hammers on a handful of themes, and rarely allows stories that run counter to its sensibilities. For example, in the recent Welcome to Marwen film, the attackers are all white, and one has a neo-Nazi tattoo. In the real incident the movie was based on, one of the attackers was black, and none had neo-Nazi tattoos. A second example is the invented racist fix in a boxing match, where, again, the white boxer is shown as unfairly being selected as the winner of the match, despite incompetent compared to the black boxer. But in the real fight, most everyone, including the black boxer, agrees the match and outcome was fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)#Lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)#Laws... In the case of historical movies, this bias is easy to spot (except when it comes to the selection of which parts of history to show). But in fictional stories, it's harder to complain, yet the narrative pushing is just as strong.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  Entertainment media narratives are mostly interesting when they are done for reasons outside of maximizing sales. You certainly can't blame someone for making up plots with just any old nonsense as long as the butts fill up the seats. I wonder if the writers of penny dreadfuls ever tried to 'improve' the public in some way. There's probably a sociology paper in looking at older pulp fiction or movies made via the old mass-production system to see if they are aimed in different ways than modern ones.