3 ms·
You originally said that Hollywood movies had become "heavily politicized". I think what you really mean to say is that they've started promoting certain ideas
by foldr 4y ago
You originally said that Hollywood movies had become "heavily politicized". I think what you really mean to say is that they've started promoting certain ideas that you don't like. Or are you going to tell me that Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind didn't engage with any controversial political ideas?
- inglor_cz 4y agoNot the OP, but a person from behind the former Iron Curtain who watched a lot of old commie stuff, the good and the mediocre and the really boring ones. There is politicized and politicized. Art often has a political message, but there is a certain threshold where the message starts squeezing everything else out of the picture and the characters become stuffy - a weird kind of "ideal exemplars" of a certain desired stereotype instead of believable humans. If the main hero can't be characterized more personally than "Soviet and a hero" or "trans and brave", the threshold is crossed. People like to watch movies about other people, not stereotypized puppets.
- foldr 4y agoThere are loads of Hollywood movies from all eras that meet all these criteria. It's not a new phenomenon. Check out the oh-so-subtle characterization in The Sands of Iwo Jima, for example. Or if you want an idealized do-gooder character, how about Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night? (A great movie, but Tibbs's character is only a little more filled out than 'black and a good guy'.) It's honestly astonishing to me that people would think that American movies with political messaging are somehow a new phenomenon. I'd have to assume that these folks have just not watched many old movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sands_of_Iwo_Jima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sands_of_Iwo_Jima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Night_(film...
- corrral 4y agoI think if you made two buckets labeled "sex" and "politics" a majority of well-regarded films from all of the 20th century, right back to the beginning of film, would land in at least one of the two. Lots would qualify for both. Tons of our most beloved films are political, and that's true back to the dawn of cinema.
- inglor_cz 4y agoI don't doubt that you are right, but I am fairly ignorant when it comes to older American movie production, so I cannot pinpoint any examples.
- rayiner 4y agoI think a fairer reading is that big budget summer blockbusters used to try and be politically palatable to 95% of the country.
- jonathankoren 4y agoYou mean like Robocop, Starship Troopers, Avatar, Star Trek IV, ...
- corrral 4y agoShit, Jaws would probably be regarded as "too political" these days, by some folks. It could easily be read as an anti-Covid-denier allegory, after all....
- swatcoder 4y agoTaking that same reading further, you’d have to acknowledge that they now try to be politically palatable to 75% of the world because the global markets are now available and rich. Catering to regional tastes just isn’t competitive at that scale.
- gamblor956 4y agoLOTR was a screed against both war and industrialization. Star Wars is pretty much solidly on the side of opposing facism. The Matrix was openly an LGBTQ metaphor (though now the Warhowski sisters claim it was specifically a trans metaphor). Avatar, Dances with Wolves, and Star Trek IV strongly promoted ecological preservation ideologies.
- oneoff786 4y agoPeople don’t come out of LOTR and think “hey you know what’s bad? Industrialization.” They don’t come out of Star Wars thinking about fascism. They definitely don’t come out of the matrix thinking about LGBTQ issues. They come out thinking about killing orcs, killing storm troopers, and killing agents in slo motion.