Friday, April 29, 2005

Leo--Could we drop the War Thing?

Future historians forced to rely on Hollywood movies to recontruct the concerns of 21st Century Americans would be justified in identifying the cheif threat to the security of ordinary Americans was neo-Nazi cabals ensconsed in the highest reaches of government. There would certainly be little evidence to suppor the contention that some Americans were worried about Muslim terrorists. A young maverick assistent prof looking for tenure will advance the bizarre thesis that there was such a thing as Islamic terrorists and that for a few years Americans were prone to cite terrorism from these groups as their chief security concern--neo-Nazis didn't even make the list. He will build this iconoclastic thesis on the slim reed of a single documentary by one Michael Moore, which claimed to examine the greatest single attack on the leading country in the 21st century in its history.

His collegues will make some prefuctory comments to the effect of admiring his enginuety in coming up with this thesis but then proceed to dismantle his argument. The weight of the cellioud evidence is overwhelming on the side of the Nazi-corporate nexus at the heart of the US government. Can our young scholar cite a single additional piece of evidence supporting his argument? Is it really plausible that an industry that survives on market revenues and revels in any excuse to explode things on screen would ignore WWIII happening in front of it. Why would an industry facing competitive pressures serving a religious and intensly patriotic market bother to mine the exploits of Greek pedophiles from 2,500 years ago ignore a subject with such dramatic possibilities and ready made interest from their customers?

Say what you will about the biases 1940s film makers brought to thier treatments of WWII, you must credit them with having noticed that WWII was happening. To an economist at the time that fact would have seemed an instantiation of a sort of universal law--a market driven industry will have no choice but to make movies about what its customers care about, regardless of the ideological convictions of the film makers themselves. Otherwise, someone would make films closer to the concerns of the ticket buying public and steal market share from them. Not happening. Go through your local video store at any time in the last four years and try to convince a Martian that the chief security issue confronting Americans is terrorism. Outside of a few documentaries exposing American perfidity--grabbing oil on the pretext of fighting terrorism, say--there is no evidence that such a thing as an Islamic terrorist exists.

The most striking cases of this can be seen when Hollywood adapts a novel. Islamic terrorists, no matter how central to the plot, are invariably changed to evil right-wingers. Such was the fate of Clancey's "The Sum of All Fears".

This Hollywood aversion to certain kinds of controversy is not limited to books about terrorism. "The Bonfire of the Vanities" was adapted straight to the screen except for the theme of the entire book--race. (even more bizarrely from the entertainment perspective, they also took out the endlessly entertaining America hating, alcoholic English journalist and changed him into a generic Bruce Willis smart ass)

It's like taking the War out of War and Peace. Anna Kirenina--great book, but could we not make them adulters? Brothers Karamozov--great murder mistery once you get rid of all that God stuff. "The Possesed"--are people going to want to sit through all that 19th century radical politics? Why spoil a great male bonding movie?

It can't be just fear of ethnic protest that makes Hollywood avoid its most interesting and marketable topics. It seems that a public that is willing to pay to see things blown up by military men would be only more willing to pay if these pyrotechnics involves story lines with some relevance to their lives. Its like we are living in one of those communist countries where they could only make historical movies--anything that happened under the current regime was too sensitive. Of course we can make movies set in our own times as long as the villians are strictly re-animated Nurenburg defendents (defendants from the Tokyo trials need not apply).

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