Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture And The War on Tradition

Preface to the Paperback Edition

An Accident of Timing

In this world there are only two tragedies, wrote Oscar Wilde in 1892. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Since the publication of Hollywood vs. America, I’ve definitely been savoring the second tragedy.

In writing this book I wanted to stir up controversy—to assault the smug complacency of the entertainment establishment and to help push Hollywood in a more responsible direction. However, the passionate intensity of the public response to my work—both positive and negative—far exceeded my expectations.

In part, the polarized nature of this reaction stemmed from an accident of timing: a few months after I turned in this manuscript to my editor, while the publisher worked to set my words in type, the Vice President of the United States surprised this author (and the rest of the country) by delivering a series of partisan political speeches in which he attacked the values of the mass media. Much to my chagrin, this meant that Hollywood vs. America appeared in print at precisely the moment that the national press raged with the astonishingly bitter charges and counter-charges between Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown.

In retrospect, even the former Vice President’s most devoted admirers should recognize that he made a mistake in his attempt to raise serious issues of media accountability in the midst of a hard-fought election campaign. The context for his often thoughtful statements made it all too easy for skeptical reporters to dismiss them as desperate and distracting ploys by a failing political candidate. Even if many Americans felt sympathetic to Mr. Quayle’s basic concern over the excesses of the entertainment industry, they failed to see a connection between the issues he addressed and his role as a national officeholder. What federal program could the Vice President possibly suggest to curb the media irresponsibility he so stridently decried? As a longtime foe of big government, he could hardly endorse some ambitious new Washington bureaucracy designed to approve future plot twists on Murphy Brown.

No Conservative Monopoly

Moreover, Mr. Quayle’s implicit suggestion that only conservatives worried over the destructive impact of the popular culture struck a false chord with the American public. Citizens of all political persuasions express these concerns; Tipper Gore, for one, warned of the antisocial messages in popular music years before the Vice President voiced his dissatisfaction with contemporary TV. For the last five years, the most militant and effective congressional critic of violence on television has been a liberal Democrat—Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. In October 1992, in the last weeks of the presidential campaign, a Newsweek poll showed an astonishing consensus on the question of the entertainment industry’s irresponsible excesses. Eighty percent of a representative sample believed that movies today contain too much sex and violence. Eighty percent of the country might never agree that Elvis is dead—but they share the conviction that Hollywood has gone too far.

This concern remains all but universal today, long after the electoral triumph by the Democratic ticket. Attempts by some of President Clinton’s more fervent show business supporters to interpret his victory as a vote of confidence in the entertainment industry makes no sense at all. The American people rejected the Bush-Quayle ticket because they disapproved of the leadership in Washington, not because they approved of the leadership in Hollywood. The Democratic plurality in the presidential race in no way signified a repudiation of calls for greater accountability on the part of the mass media; very few of the 43.7 million voters who cast their ballots for Bill Clinton felt they were providing Hollywood with a mandate for more violence and foul language in motion pictures or television.

The president-elect made an unmistakable effort to underscore that point in an interview with TV Guide just a week after election day. The cumulative impact of the banalization of sex and violence in the popular culture is a net negative for America, Bill Clinton declared. I think the question is, what can Hollywood do, not just to entertain, but to raise the human spirit.

Meanwhile, a group of the new presidents closest associates published a collection of policy proposals called Mandate for Change in which they provided further evidence that Washington’s concern over media messages would not disappear along with the Bush administration. Their book, strongly endorsed by Mr. Clinton himself, specifically cites the role of the entertainment industry in promoting family disintegration and suggests that the Chief Executive should initiate a broad national discussion of media responsibility. The authors declare, It is fairly well established that educational programming accelerates early learning and that televised violence exacerbates aggressive behavior.

Fresh Developments and Updated Statistics

These new developments in a new administration point up one of the inevitable hazards for any book like Hollywood vs. America: the author’s best efforts to keep his work comprehensive and current will be constantly overtaken by fresh developments and updated statistics.

For instance, in this book (which was completed in May 1992) I report on figures for motion picture attendance for the year 1991—which plunged to their lowest levels since 1976. The year-end numbers for 1992 provided even more striking evidence of audience alienation, as attendance continued to decline and plunged to a sixteen-year low and to its lowest level ever in terms of percentage of our population. Nor could Hollywood’s apologists explain these declines as a simple shift from theatrical attendance to home video viewing, since video rentals fell off sharply in 1991, and then remained flat in 1992. In the traditionally recession-proof entertainment industry, which has enjoyed some of its most successful seasons in past periods of economic distress, these figures suggest a general (and intensifying) dissatisfaction with the content of the popular culture, rather than the temporary impact of financial hard times.

The summer movie season is on, but moviegoers are decidedly turned off…. Many moviegoers say this summer’s crop is one of the worst ever, The Wall Street Journal reported on August 6, 1992, at the height of Hollywood’s busiest time of year. CinemaScore, the universally respected Las Vegas-based company that polls opening night audiences across the country to gauge their reaction to new motion pictures, confirmed that Hollywood’s grades declined for the third year in a row. CinemaScore president Edward Mintz described public reaction to Hollywood’s offerings for the summer of 1992 as very disappointing, ugly, and a disaster.

One of the films that bucked the downward trend and became a gigantic 1992 hit in both theatrical release and home video also served to illustrate one of the major points in this book. Sister Act, the fast-moving, though formulaic, Whoopi Goldberg comedy, showed a more affectionate attitude toward the Roman Catholic church than any other film of recent years; audiences found themselves amused and uplifted by its story of a Reno lounge singer whose life and values are positively transformed when she is forced to hide out in a convent. The picture earned some $140 million in domestic box office gross, stunning all observers by placing fourth on the list of the year’s top money makers, and outpacing all other nonsequels in 1992.

At the same time that the unexpected success of Sister Act illustrated the publics eagerness to embrace entertainment with a more sympathetic attitude toward conventional faith, other high-profile projects illustrated the self-destructive nature of Hollywoods underlying hostility to organized religion. The hugely talented Steve Martin starred in Leap of Faith, in which he played a greedy and hypocritical faith healer and evangelist who sets up his revival tent to prey on the unsuspecting citizens of Rustwater, Kansas. Leap of Faith represented only the latest (and one of the most expensive) installments in the long series of earnest epics about crooked clergy, which I describe in Chapter 4 of this book, and like virtually all of its predecessors it proved an unequivocal flop at the box office—emerging as one of the most conspicuous commercial disappointments of Hollywood’s Christmas season.

Another failed 1992 film—the sorry sequel Alien³—provided a recent and particularly telling example of the industry’s astonishing propensity for gratuitous insults toward religious believers, also discussed in Chapter 4. In Alien³, heroine Sigourney Weaver finds herself marooned on an outer-space penal colony populated entirely by brutal, hardened, sex-starved, and foul-mouthed criminals. At one point, an inmate helpfully informs her, You know, we’re all fundamentalist Christians here.

Enhancing or Inhibiting Success

I do not suggest that this utterly unnecessary jab at religious traditionalists guaranteed the failure of Alien³, any more than I suggest that Sister Act’s relatively benign view of Catholicism guaranteed its success. Social and cultural messages are only one element—among many—in determining the public’s response to a motion picture release. In the case of Alien³, no one organized a boycott of the picture because of its glancing and gratuitous insults to Christian believers; moviegoers found an abundance of far less subtle reasons to avoid this thoroughly loathsome and inept motion picture. To suggest, however, that a picture’s ideological orientation has no impact at all on its public reception is every bit as illogical and extreme as the notion that this element will singlehandedly assure triumph or failure.

The more balanced and moderate view suggests that the underlying attitudes toward religion and other institutions that turn up in movies can help to create a level of comfort—or discomfort—in the mass audience, and thereby enhance or inhibit a motion picture’s success.

Imagine for a moment that Sister Act had gone out of its way to deride Catholic beliefs and institutions, as did Nuns on the Run (1990), another recent comedy with a strikingly similar plot but a radically different tone. Even with that hostile tone, the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle still might have reached a mass audience, but it’s hard to imagine that its final box-office take would have been as formidable as it was if Catholics had felt consciously offended by the film.

Questioning Elements, Not Condemning Essence

In the same sense that a controversial message can damage a project without utterly dooming it, questioning one element in a film isn’t the same as condemning its essence.

Reviewers and moviegoers will often find fault with an aspect of a film while still appreciating its strengths in other areas. Criticizing a movie’s musical score, set design, editing, or ideological emphasis isn’t the same as dismissing the overall piece of work as worthless or dangerous.

In this context, the titles mentioned in Hollywood vs. America are in no way intended as a laundry list of projects I dislike; any such comprehensive catalogue of feeble or tasteless movies would no doubt run even longer than this book’s 380 pages.

Hollywood vs. America is, rather, a description of underlying attitudes in the popular culture that have helped to alienate a significant segment of the public. At times, those attitudes turn up in motion pictures of great artistic distinction; at others, they appear in projects of irredeemable awfulness. It is, in fact, the pervasive nature of these themes that makes them such a profound problem for Hollywood; although the quality of craftsmanship in today’s motion pictures is hugely variable, their underlying attitudes are not.

That is why this book will frequently cite some annoying element in movies whose overall artistry or entertainment value I otherwise respect. In the case of The Little Mermaid and E.T., for instance, I strongly endorsed both pictures at the time of their initial release—even selecting ?. T. for my retrospective Sneak Previews list of The Best Films of the 1980s. When I respectfully refer to both titles in the chapter in this book entitled Kids Know Best, I do so not because I have reconsidered my previous praise, but because these movies illustrate the way that even some of today’s finest family films will reinforce Hollywood’s ubiquitous notion that children are always wiser and more sensitive than their parents.

Countless examples from Hollywood’s glory years might serve to illustrate the way that even the most magnificent projects can occasionally feature destructive biases or irresponsible messages. Consider the history of the industry’s lamentably racist past: no one would deny the fact that the movie industry of the ‘30s and ‘40s, despite its many virtues, regularly offered insulting and stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans and other minorities.

Gone With the Wind (among many other titles) clearly reflected some of these unfortunate attitudes.

To make this observation is not to condemn Gone With the Wind as a bad film or to question its status as a masterpiece. Birth of a Nation displayed even more obvious and poisonous racial hatred but is still recognized as a timeless and hugely influential artistic achievement. Nevertheless, any comprehensive examination of Hollywood’s history of bigotry must include some mention of such brilliant and seminal films rather than focusing exclusively on embarrassing little Stepin Fetchit comedies.

In the same way, my discussion of the self-destructive excesses of today’s Hollywood makes a point of touching upon some of the very best (as well as some of the very worst) work that the entertainment industry currently offers the public.

Influential, Not All-Powerful

In responding to the swelling chorus of criticism from the public, Hollywood’s leadership often employs disingenuous rhetoric that seeks to blur essential distinctions. For instance, the defenders of the show business status quo automatically equate any challenge to the industry’s current directions with a call for censorship—as if a plea for corporate responsibility amounts to some all-out assault on the First Amendment.

When it comes to discussions of the long-term impact of popular culture, the Hollywood apologists resort to similarly dishonest tactics—deliberately confusing the argument that the entertainment industry is influential with the assumption that it is all-powerful.

This confusion stands behind one of the most common attacks on anyone who suggests that popular culture might be damaging the fabric of this society. According to this line of reasoning, the industry’s critics contradict themselves whenever they contend on the one hand that Hollywood is out of touch with America and then assert on the other that the mass media help to shape the values of the public. If we say that most people in this country remain more committed to religious faith, traditional families, and old-fashioned patriotism than contemporary films and TV shows might suggest, then how can we claim that this material exerts an important influence on public attitudes?

Upon closer examination, this objection makes no sense; it is the logical equivalent of suggesting that all TV commercials for unsuccessful political candidates are, by definition, complete wastes of resources with no impact on the electorate. Since the other guy ended up with more votes on election day, doesn’t this show that the losing candidate squandered all the money he spent for his media campaign? According to such reasoning, no one can claim that Ross Perot’s expensive and popular infomercials influenced the American people, since 81 percent of the votes for President of the United States went to his two rivals.

This is nonsense, of course: the fact that Perot failed to convince everyone in this country can hardly be taken as evidence that he convinced no one.

Similarly, the nature of media impact is never a simplistic all-or-nothing proposition; to say that Hollywood’s messages have some influence on the public is not to claim that they are the only influence. In this light, the stubborn survival of traditional values in no way contradicts the notion that they are under attack, nor does the resilience of those values among most Americans prove that the media have played no role whatever in undermining them.

The limited and complex character of popular culture’s effect on society at large is discussed in Part V of this book, with particular attention (pages 259–60) to the apparent inability of the entertainment establishment to bring the rest of the country in line with its point of view. This evidence of media impotence or irrelevance is, however, so easily distorted or misunderstood that it bears further examination here.

The example of television advertising provides the most useful model for understanding the way that repeated images and messages in popular entertainment can alter the way we think and act.

By now, most Americans are familiar with the intensive multimedia campaign for the Lexus automobile, yet how many of the hundreds of millions who have been exposed to this material will ever actually buy one of these cars? Given the substantial cost of this luxury vehicle, only the smallest fraction of all those who see the commercials will ultimately do what the media messages urge them to do and drive home from a dealer with a gleaming new Lexus.

Does this mean that the advertising campaign is useless and ineffective? Hardly. The purpose of most mass media efforts is to work a long-term, cumulative change in images and perceptions of a given product. The Lexus ads are not only intended to persuade some wealthy, middle-aged consumer to go out and buy the car as soon as possible, but they are also designed to plant the idea in younger viewers that this automobile is a desirable status symbol, a suitable trophy to crown future success. On the simplest level, the car commercials increase public awareness of a relatively new product, forcing us all to recognize that this once exotic import is an increasingly common fact of life on the highways of America.

Nearly all the available research suggests that the media sell violence and other forms of socially destructive behavior in much the same way they sell cars. Only a miniscule percentage of all pop culture consumers will be directly and immediately influenced to imitate what they see on screen, but for nearly everyone else Hollywood’s messages help to redefine what constitutes fashionable or desirable conduct. If nothing else, repeated exposure to media images serves to alter our perceptions of the society in which we live and to gradually shape what we accept—and expect—from our fellow citizens.

The advertising model also serves to clarify one of the persistent and troubling questions about the impact of popular culture: if Hollywood’s irresponsible obsessions contribute to the social problems around us, then why is it that even among those people who repeatedly patronize the most violent and degrading forms of mass entertainment, only a tiny handful ever become ax murderers or serial rapists?

The Lexus ad again provides an answer: repeated exposure to a television commercial doesn’t mean you will automatically buy the car. An advertising campaign needs to influence only a puny percentage of its potential viewers to make a big difference to the car company, and popular culture needs to change perceptions of only a small segment of its vast audience to make a significant difference to society. Even a marginal increase in the number of violent criminals can damage the quality of life—and intensify the climate of fear—for all law-abiding members of society.

As this book attempts to make clear, Hollywood’s impact on society is subtle and gradual, not gross, dramatic, or instantly apparent. That is why responsible observers will focus on the question of cumulative impact, rather than singling out conspicuous but isolated examples of offensive material.

During more than 300 press interviews concerning this book and its message, I frequently have been asked to cite one particularly obnoxious example of the sort of motion picture or TV show that I find objectionable. I always refuse to comply with this request because what troubles me is no one movie, one television program, or one popular song. It is, rather, the hundreds of thousands of regularly repeated messages, the sheer weight of this material as it piles up over months and years of daily consumption, that should give us pause.

No single piece of entertainment represents a serious threat to our civilization, but the cumulative impact of this material (which assaults the average American more than thirty hours each week) plays an obvious and inevitable role in shaping the perceptions and values of this society.

More Diversity, Not Less

This distinction between a focus on individual instances of offensiveness and a general concern for the values of the popular culture is essential to understanding the conclusions reached in this book.

I never argue that Hollywood should altogether eliminate violent or profane or sexually graphic motion pictures, but I do believe that the industry currently makes too many of them. Sixty-one percent of all movie releases are rated R at the most recent count; to suggest that this percentage is much too high is not to insist that R movies have any place whatever in the movie mix. At the same time, G-rated family films now comprise only 2 percent of the titles released each year, offering parents precious few opportunities to enjoy an evening (or afternoon) at the theater with their children. Urging Hollywood to increase the range of these family-friendly alternatives does not amount to a demand that the industry only create movies like Aladdin and Homeward Bound. Diversity is one of the obvious glories of this society, and it is surely appropriate for the industry to provide very different sorts of entertainment for different audiences. In readjusting our media menu, the princes of the popular culture should strive for more diversity, not less.

Providing a more responsive—and responsible—range of pop-culture alternatives will not only serve the cause of decency and sanity, but will also advance the commercial interests of the entertainment industry.

One of the most startling and controversial aspects of the research for this book is the evidence it provides that Hollywood’s obsession with sleaze and gore hurts rather than helps its pursuit of profit.

This contention received powerful confirmation in an independent analysis by one of the industry’s most respected consulting firms just a few weeks after my work was published. According to a detailed report for subscribers from Paul Kagan Associates, Inc.: There is an underexploited segment in the motion picture industry that could be costing the studios millions of dollars at the bottom line: family comedies and dramas that are rated ‘PC by the MPAA. Based on an analysis of 1,187 films released from 1984 through 1991 that played on at least one hundred screens during their peak, the most successful group of films were rated TG'…. Ironically, while ‘R'-rated films are less likely to score big at the box office and are less profitable than films with other ratings … the percentage of ‘R’ raters in the mix has increased from 50.3 percent in 1989 to 58.2 percent in 1991. At the same time, the percentage of TG’s fell from 22.4 percent in 1989 to 18.6 percent.

The Kagan report—precisely echoing data presented in Chapter 18 of this book—provides dramatic statistical support for a conclusion that tens of millions of moviegoers have reached on their own: Hollywood is out of touch with major portions of its potential audience. An industry that steadily increases the percentage of ‘R'-rated films—despite their consistently weaker prospects at the box office—may not be malicious, but is most certainly dysfunctional.

A Change of Heart

In recent months, a number of the industry’s more enlightened executives have begun to confront the deep-seated problems of their business and to launch attempts to reconnect with alienated elements of the mass audience.

In July 1992, Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of Walt Disney studios, addressed a national convention of video dealers in Las Vegas and told them: ‘When our critics charge that we show violence that is too graphic, depict sex that is too gratuitous, or feature lyrics that are too inflammatory, we’re all too quick to offer the defense that it’s only a movie, or piously invoke the First Amendment. The sad result is that more and more movies get made that are uninspiring or formulaic movies that are seemingly driven to offer nothing more than the cheap thrill…. Responsibility is the issue. We should not be distracted by talk of censorship, the First Amendment, or some cultural elite. Each of us in Hollywood has the opportunity to assume individual responsibility to create films that educate rather than denigrate, that shed light rather than dwell in darkness…."

A month later, Peter Chemin, president of Fox Entertainment Group (and more recently named chairman of Twentieth Century Fox motion picture division), spoke to a cable convention on the legitimate, genuine concerns millions of Americans have about what we’re putting on television. The entertainment industry needs to be sensitive to community and individual values if we’re going to be present in virtually every home in America.

Peter Tortorici, senior vice president of programming for CBS, also seemed to catch on to the new respect for heartland values. We keep getting responses from viewers saying they want family entertainment, he told the Los Angeles Times in December 1992. They want a show they can safely watch with their kids. They want a show that provides a family experience. Shows from the past, like ‘The Waltons’ and ‘Highway to Heaven,’ those shows haven’t been around for a long time.

In addition to such sympathetic statements, the entertainment industry has begun to take a few concrete steps to recapture the confidence of some of its disillusioned consumers. The New York Times ran an encouraging holiday season article (November 12, 1992) under the headline Hollywood Testing the Financial Value of Family Values, in which it listed an impressive array of new projects that the writer characterized as a feel-good flood.

Four weeks later, at the other end of the continent, the Los Angeles Times filed its own report on the changing attitudes of the entertainment elite. Hollywood is taking note of two recent studies, wrote Jane Galbraith, one by film critic Michael Medved and the other by entertainment industry consulting firm Paul Kagan Associates, Inc.—positing that PG-13 and lower-rated features are more likely to turn a profit than those rated R. Galbraith reported the amazing news that even Arnold Schwarzenegger, the undisputed king of R-rated blood-baths, had decided to tone down his new movie The Last Action Hero to qualify for a PG-13 rating. Even more surprising, Paramount Pictures announced that Eddie Murphy agreed to restrain his dialogue in the upcoming Beverly Hills Cop III to avoid the R rating—which means that the irreverent star may have to master a whole new vocabulary.

On the television front, advocates for more responsible standards witnessed even more epochal developments: the three major networks sent an unprecedented letter to Senator Paul Simon promising to limit the depiction of violence in entertainment programs and outlined broad standards to avoid glamorizing excessive gore and suffering. The cable television industry quickly followed suit, issuing a statement that declared: We believe that the gratuitous use of violence depicted as an easy and convenient solution to human problems is harmful to our industry and society. We therefore discourage and will strive to reduce the frequency of such exploitative uses of violence….

The early weeks of 1993 brought new and unmistakable evidence that the climate of Hollywood opinion has shifted decisively and conventional wisdom has changed. On March 9th, Mark Canton, Chairman of Columbia Pictures, told the leading convention of movie exhibitors, Together, I think we can make the needed changes. If we don’t, this decade will be noted in the history books as the embarrassing legacy of what began as a great art form. We will be labeled ‘the decline of the empire’ … any smart business person can see what we must do—make more TG'-rated films.

Speaking at the same industry gathering, Jack Valenti, longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America, conceded, We have to increase the theater audience—we just have to do it while acknowledging that the best way to achieve that purpose would be to start pictures with less violence, less sensuality, and less raunchy language.

The most perplexing question about this refreshing new attitude is why the Hollywood establishment took so long to readjust its thinking and to reach these painfully obvious conclusions.

In the months and years to come we will see whether these good intentions actually pay off with discernible improvement in the content of our popular culture. Of course, all the sympathetic statements by Hollywood honchos could be written off as so many pious but meaningless platitudes, calculated attempts to appease the industry’s critics without making meaningful changes. Nevertheless, even the most cynical observers must agree that the new willingness to confront these questions, and to discuss the entertainment industry’s responsibilities to the rest of us, represents a most welcome development.

Despite the intemperate anger and the personal abuse that this book provoked in some quarters—most particularly from my fellow film critics—I am grateful for whatever contribution my arguments have made to facilitating this discussion. Contrary to dramatic overstatement in some superheated press accounts of my role in the industry, I never planned to make my work the focus for some organized crusade, but I will confess to considerable satisfaction that, in my own small way, I seem to have been able to rattle the cage. Perhaps in the years ahead we may yet witness the fulfillment of the hope W. H. Auden expressed in his 1930 poem Petition, to—

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at

New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

PART I:

THE POISON FACTORY

1

A Sickness in the Soul

Alienating the Audience

America’s long-running romance with Hollywood is over.

As a nation, we no longer believe that popular culture enriches our lives. Few of us view the show business capital as a magical source of uplifting entertainment, romantic inspiration, or even harmless fun. Instead, tens of millions of Americans now see the entertainment industry as an all-powerful enemy, an alien force that assaults our most cherished values and corrupts our children. The dream factory has become the poison factory.

The leaders of the industry refuse to acknowledge this rising tide of alienation and hostility. They dismiss anyone who dares to question the impact of the entertainment they produce as a right-wing extremist or a religious fanatic. They self-righteously assert their own right to unfettered free expression while condemning as fringe groups all organizations that plead for some sense of restraint or responsibility. In the process, Hollywood ignores the concerns of the overwhelming majority of the American people who worry over the destructive messages so frequently featured in today’s movies, television, and popular music.

Dozens of recent studies demonstrate the public’s deep disenchantment. In 1989, for instance, an Associated Press/Media General poll showed that 82 percent of a scientifically selected sample felt that movies contained too much violence; 80 percent found too much profanity; and 72 percent complained of too much nudity. By a ratio of more than three to one, the respondents believed that overall quality of movies had been getting worse as opposed to getting better.

In 1990, a Parents magazine poll revealed similar attitudes toward television. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed rated today’s TV as fair, poor, or terrible. Seventy-two percent of this sample supported strict prohibitions against ridiculing or making fun of religion on the air, while 64 percent backed restrictions on ridiculing or making fun of traditional values, such as marriage and motherhood. A Gallup Poll in 1991 turned up additional evidence of the public’s suspicious and resentful attitude toward televised entertainment. Fifty-eight percent of Americans said that they are offended frequently or occasionally by prime-time programming; only three percent believed that TV portrayed very positive values.

This widespread concern over the messages of the popular culture stems from an increasingly common conviction that mass entertainment exacerbates our most serious social problems. A Time/CNN survey in 1989 showed that 67 percent believe that violent images in movies are "mainly to blame for the national epidemic of teenage violence; 70 percent endorse greater restraints on the showing of sex and violence" in feature films. A Los Angeles Times survey of the same year reported 63 percent who assert that television encourages crime, while a 1991 Newsweek/Gallup Poll showed 68 percent who hold that today’s movies have a considerable or very great effect in causing real-life violence.

This Simply Cannot Go On

The Hollywood establishment chooses to ignore these public attitudes, or else to downplay their significance. Surveying the severe financial problems that currently plague every component of the entertainment industry, the top decision-makers see nothing more than a temporary slump in business. In one typical comment, John Neal, senior vice president for marketing for United Artists Entertainment, optimistically declared: All it takes is one big hit movie and suddenly the whole picture changes.

That one big hit movie, however, will do nothing to end the alienation of an increasingly significant segment of the mainstream audience. The public’s growing disillusionment with the content of the popular culture represents a long-term trend that won’t suddenly disappear with the end of a recession, or the release of a new batch of lucky box-office blockbusters. The depth and breadth of the current crisis suggests fundamental flaws in the sort of entertainment that Hollywood, in all of its many manifestations, seeks to sell to the American people. That is why ventures as varied as home video and rock ‘n’ roll radio, feature films and prime-time television, are all suffering similar and simultaneous setbacks.

Consider, for example, the baleful situation with the three major television networks. In the last fifteen years they have lost a third of their nightly audience—some 30 million viewers. As a result, their cumulative profits have sunk from $800 million in 1984 to $400 million by 1988, to less than zero in 1991. Business analysts advance many theories for this disastrous falloff, but even television insiders consider that much of the public’s disenchantment relates directly to the quality of the programs. The networks have lost audiences because they’ve lost touch with the American viewer, according to Gene DeWitt, head of a prestigious New York media consulting firm interviewed by Time in November 1990. They haven’t delivered programs that viewers want to watch.

Syndicated columnist Mike Royko spoke for many Americans when he recently declared, I enjoy TV trash as much as the next slob. But the quality of truly trashy trash has declined. He went on to explain that of the top seventy-one shows in the Nielsen Ratings, there isn’t even one that I now watch regularly. His fellow columnist Cal Thomas announced his resolution at the end of 1990 to give up watching the networks altogether. They have not only abandoned my values, he wrote, they now have sunk to the sewer level, dispensing the foulest of smells that resemble the garbage I take to the curb twice a week.

Many of the major networks’ lost viewers have fled to the new Fox Network, or to the abundance of alternatives on cable TV, but these additional options have done nothing to increase the public’s approval of what it is watching. A survey commissioned by the National Association of Broadcasters found that a growing number of households with TV sets feel increasing dissatisfaction and that the majority of viewers believe television is a negative influence.

One reflection of viewer restlessness is the tendency toward grazing in their nightly viewing—using remote controls to switch stations in the middle of a program. According to a major survey for Channels magazine in 1988, 48.5 percent of all viewers regularly change programs during a show—and nearly 60 percent of viewers in the crucial eighteen-to-thirty-four age group. Grazing is by definition a sign of dissatisfaction, explained James Webster, professor of communications at Northwestern University. Viewers know what is going to happen, and they wonder what they’re missing on some other channel. According to the Gallup Poll, in 1974, 46 percent of Americans rated watching television as their favorite way of spending an evening; by 1990, that number had fallen to 24 percent.

This diminished enthusiasm for the popular culture and its products has even infected the huge teenage audience for popular music—an audience never before noted for its finicky taste or searching discernment. Overall sales of records, cassettes, and CDs plummeted a disastrous 11 percent in the first six months of 1991, and signs of restlessness and frustration turned up everywhere in the music business. Bob Krasnow, chairman of Elektra Entertainment, told Billboard magazine: In 1991, the record business finds itself dangerously close to creative stagnation. All the formulas have been played out. Meanwhile, numerous articles asked Is rock dead? while all measures of public response suggested that this once robust art form was, at best, on life-support systems.

For instance, rock ‘n’ roll’s share of the music industry’s total take slipped from 46.2 percent in 1988 to 37.4 percent in 1990. Just weeks before his death in October 1991, the legendary concert promoter Bill Graham observed that until now, rock was recession proof … but we have just gone through the worst six months ever in the rock concert industry. Attendance at rock concerts across the nation plunged by more than 30 percent compared to the previous year.

At the same time, the Top 40 radio format continued its long-term slide in the Arbitron radio ratings, abandoned by even those teenagers who have always provided its core of support. In 1991 an unprecedented 56 percent of the teenage radio audience preferred listening to other formats; as a result, country and western for the first time passed Top 40 in overall popularity. In fact, the steady growth in the audience for country music, with its earthy and unpretentious attempts to connect with the everyday concerns of Middle America, provided one of the few bright spots in the general gloom of the music business. Country star Garth Brooks confounded all expectations by creating 1991's top-selling album, Ropin’ the Wind, which is expected to reach sales of more than 7 million units. Music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz, publisher of The Lefsetz Letter,declares, Country music, unlike the rest of popular music, is talking about real lives. About real people. These artists are telling you what they feel. They’re making honest records, and that’s why their music is connecting with the public.

Feature films, by contrast, are connecting with a shrinking percentage of the American people. Sharply increased ticket prices and the controversial content of recent films have combined to make moviegoing a form of entertainment that appeals primarily to an elite audience. According to 1991 figures from the Motion Picture Association of America, 27 percent of those who have attended college describe themselves as frequent moviegoers, but only 11 percent of those who failed to complete high school place themselves in that category. More significantly, 45 percent of all Americans are identified as infrequent moviegoers (less than twice a year), and a full 33 percent declared that they never go to the movies. Several other recent studies (Gallup, Gordon Black Corporation, Barna Research Group, Media General) show similar percentages (ranging from 35 up to 45 percent) who stay away from motion pictures altogether.

The absence of these potential patrons has devastated the movie business. At the height of the usually prosperous summer season, ticket sales plunged more than 31 percent in 1991, bringing the feature film business its worst August in twenty-three years. Even video rentals, whose seemingly inexorable rise has played such a significant role in keeping struggling studios afloat, declined 6 percent during the year. Industry analysts reported that poor audience response to the new feature films had begun to rub off on the home video business, producing a new wariness on the part of prospective renters.

An upsurge in ticket sales during the holiday season generated some reassuring headlines about the movie business, but year-end reckonings offered no real grounds for joy. According to figures from Variety, 1991 brought only 960 million motion picture admissions—the lowest total in fifteen years. The first months of 1992 confirmed the disastrous long-term trend: according to Exhibitor Relations Co., a widely used box-office data tracking firm, movie grosses between January 1 and April 15, 1992, fell an additional 9 percent from their already dismal performance of the previous year. This meant reduced income for the major studios of some $200 million. During the usually busy Presidents’ Day weekend, Variety reported that movie admissions fell a spectacular 30 percent from 1991.

As a result of the shrinking movie audience, the precarious economic situation of the major studios began attracting headlines of its own. Two of the industry’s most important and respected production companies, Orion and MGM, have recently frozen their release and production schedules as they teeter on the verge of financial collapse. Cannon Films and Weintraub Entertainment Group, both of them well-financed and high-flying independents as recently as a few years ago, have now closed down altogether. Even Carolco Pictures, producer of the year’s top hit, Terminator 2, found itself forced to cut production and to lay off one-fourth of its employees as part of its December 1991 retrenchment plan.

Peter Dekom, the universally respected entertainment lawyer and show business analyst, describes the current condition of the movie