Why do conservatives hate Hollywood?

[pbrower2a]

Maybe because Hollywood presents a reality of thought and imagination other than what Corporatist/Fundamentalist America wants to push upon us all as reality -- All For the Few now so that there can be Pie in the Sky When You Die.   

[pbrower2a]

Well have you seen the way conservatives are portrayed in movies? How about why does Hollywood hate conservatives?

It has hated fascists since 1933, and people are using the word conservative as a euphemism for fascist.

[pbrower2a]

Well have you seen the way conservatives are portrayed in movies? How about why does Hollywood hate conservatives?

It has hated fascists since 1933, and people are using the word conservative as a euphemism for fascist.

By portraying fascists as conservatives, they are "hating" ("hating" is a bit too strong of a term) Conservatives.

In some countries, the conservatives (usually traditional elites, tycoons, and financiers) often found fascism attractive for destroying the civil liberties of peasants and industrial workers - most obviously the right to strike, the cornerstone of all effectiveness of labor unions.

Hollywood studios knew who bought the movie tickets. The big landowners and the tycoons didn't fill the movie theaters.   

[pbrower2a]

They see Hollywood as being against "family values". It's easy to blame mass media for society's problems instead of looking within your own household and community.

The paradox is that in the 1930s and 1940s the Hollywood studios endorsed traditional family values and mainstream religion so that the studios would not release movies that offended potential audiences. The studio owners and bosses, then largely Jewish, recognized that they could shape attitudes toward religion in general. Those Jewish studio owners and bosses went to the moralizers of the day and asked for the Hays code that prohibited the movie studios from doing what those studios' owners wanted prohibited. They treated all mainstream religion sympathetically, promoting a "take care of your own and leave the rest alone" attitude.  Ridicule of religion of any kind would encourage antipathy toward Jews as emanated from German cinema at the time. Of course the Hays code kept the Jew-baiting bilge of Hitlerland out of America as well as excessively-racy, gratuitously violent, or anti-religious material out of the theaters. It was good for business.

 

[pbrower2a]

I'm not sure than opposing the system is right-wing. It can be a very left-wing position, too.

I assume you're talking about Hunger Games and Star Wars?  But it goes beyond that.  In the Hunger Games because the rural poor are shown as better off supporting themselves by hunting, small business, etc. and in Star Wars because the protagonists are out to preserve and later revive traditional religion against a government that oppresses it severely.  Although SW is more ambiguous because there are some explicit digs at Bush in Episode III for example.  But still the overall thesis of SW is religious freedom and the overthrow of an increasingly tyrannical government. 

In Star Wars Episodes IV, V, and VI (the originals), the (evil) Empire is portrayed as a fascistic regime that murders at will, even destroying a whole planet with its "Death Star". Religion is subordinated to the exercise of power even if economic realities aren't shown.

Episode III shows a dying Weimar-like Republic being corrupted into something monstrous. Note the allusions to Fritz Lang's Metropolis to suggest the sort of time... and of course the jabs at figures much like Karl Rove. Anakin killing off the children who already show signs of having The Force could be an allusion to the horrid Night of the Long Knives... or perhaps to King Herod massacring children whom prophecy says might challenge his power.

George Lucas was cadging bits and pieces of history, religion, and science fiction for his metaphors... but clearly the Empire resembles Nazi Germany. Resistance to the Empire wasn't clearly left-wing any more than was the Battle of Britain against the Third Reich. Conservative traditionalists can also be anti-fascists -- just think of Sir Winston Churchill.

I can't say anything about The Hunger Games.

[pbrower2a]

.... The professional individual performers probably come mostly from non-conventional backgrounds where they weren't forced into "honest work" or a "real career" and are probably from very liberal families. Its either that or somehow media people are very empathetic in learning how to do their profession and as a result they believe that everyone matters.

On the other hand, those who manage and bankroll these endeavors are probably libertarian-leaning conservative Republican ivy league/BigTen or at least name-brand MBAs whom many probably see "traditional values" as bad for business but think that America's business is business and that any distraction from the bottom line makes it harder for them to work. However, as in almost any other circle, there are always a few religious nut jobs.

To also tell you the truth, I was surprised to see how relatively popular Romney was in 2012 amongst Hollywood's A and B lists. He even won an endorsement from Jenna Jameson and one of Nicki Minaj's alto egos!

In other words, Hollywood is like the rest of the "liberal media". Its as liberal as the John Galts who own it let it be.

You have it. The stage has been a profitable necessity for a long time -- or at the least a civic ritual. But it offers nothing tangible as do agriculture, resource extraction, and manufacturing.

The impresarios of stage, screen, and studio know enough  to avoid making blatant propaganda unless the message is already popular (as in, "Smash the evil Nazis/J*ps" of WWII) to begin with. Entertainment is more profitable than didacticism. So profit comes before the message and is to be had through entertainment.

I am reminded of a scene in Funny Girl in which Fanny Brice (Barbra Streisand) has made a mockery of prudish sensibilities in her "Beautiful Reflection (of every man's affection)" in which she asks Florenz Ziegfeld what he thought of the successful act.

"I hated it", said Ziegfeld, "but the audience loved it! Do it again!" Such guides entertainment.

If there is money to be had by skewering right-wing ideology, then even FoX Studios will do it.  Spoofs of FoX News have appeared on The Simpsons.   

OK, maybe American plutocrats despised the Soviet Union -- but they were glad to make trucks for the USSR in its factories for use against the Nazis -- for profit, of course.