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

by sedeki 7y ago

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.

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

by sedeki 7y ago

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

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.