Two years ago in what I called
'The Disruption Series' I wrote that the official membership of SAG-AFTRA was
155,000 dues paying members. Roughly speaking the other major guilds in
Hollywood – I'll focus on the Directors Guild and Writer's Guilds of America for
these purposes – have a combined membership have a combined membership of just
over 45,000. So essentially a little
more than 200,000 people control all of the creative work in Hollywood and by default
the entire film industry. I'm pretty
sure there are more people in the fabled one percent.
And while they will tell you that
they aren't nearly as wealthy as the CEOs of the corporations that exploit them
(a common theme during the strike of 2023) all the work they did on the picket
line during the summer and well into fall was essentially cosplay as the
working stiff. I've always had more patience with Hollywood's politics then my
more conservative friends but that period made it extremely difficult for any
reasonable person to look at the creative people in Hollywood as anything other
than the out-of-touch liberals Fox News has been portraying them as for the
last thirty years. When Billy Porter
tried to say the strike was going to hurt him to the point he was selling one
of his houses I was astonished that so many left-wing organizations had
chosen to embrace the cause the way they did during that long summer.
No matter how much the creative forces
in Hollywood have tried to make themselves the voice of liberal causes it has
always been difficult to look at it with a straight face. With good reason.
Ever since the founding of the Hollywood industry officially in the 1920s the
creative forces – most notably the actors but frequently directors and writers –
have enjoyed an unprecedented level of wealth and prosperity that was
essentially crisis proof. It survived the Great Depression, it managed to get
through World War II and every conflict since, it has survived numerous
recessions including 2008 which nearly destroyed the world economy. And while
Hollywood has been victims of the same kind of racial and gender inequality
that have plagued the entire America it's never been the same there as it was
for the rest of the country.
No one will pretend that anyone
who wasn't a white actor or actress didn't have a tough time in Hollywood for
much of the 20th century but to argue that they had it worse then
those who were living in the Jim Crow south in the first half of the 20th
century or throughout the rest of the country is fundamentally naïve. The fact
that the only roles they were allowed to play were stereotypical ones that
maintained racial attitudes is unfair to be sure, but they sure as hell had it
better than busboys working in a restaurant or those who worked in laundries or
other things. It's one of those reason I
reject the idea fundamentally held that so many of the decisions to have films or
TV with greater racial, gender or LGBTQ+ roles are some victories for equality.
They are victories for racial, gender and LGBTQ+ people in Hollywood which
is not and never will be the same thing much as John Leguizamo and Zendaya try
to argue it.
I also reject the fundamental idea
of so many of racial and gender reckonings that have come in Hollywood as some
kind of systemic victory for the world. Again they are only victories in
Hollywood, not the rest or even much of the country. And at a certain level
I'm not sure who benefits from them short or long-term. Is there some benefit
to Hollywood acknowledging that for decades it engaged in brown, yellow and racial
stereotypes? For people of this generation I suppose it matters. But other than
reflect that the past didn't have the values of today I don't know what it proves.
I'm also having difficulty trying to find a significant amount of sympathy for
so many of the actresses who were victims of systemic sexual harassment in
Hollywood rather than lord knows how many women in roles in any other part of
the industry. Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan
might not have had the same careers you wanted but you're still
incredibly wealthy compared to the average moviegoer. I will save my sympathies
for all of the assistants and lesser workers that studio executives clearly harassed
and damaged beyond repair but don't have the benefit of enormous wealth to pad
their departure. They'll never get paid
tribute to at the Oscars.
But my personal politics and
beliefs will not be the main purpose of
this new series. What I will be dealing with is the disconnect between the
countless left-wing causes (and to be clear I'm going to be dealing with what
far left once meant outright to Hollywood) and how far out of touch the actors
and talent in Hollywood was not just with the rest of the country but indeed
their own state. Because hard as it may be for contemporary readers to accept
for most of the 20th century California was what we would have
called a red state and more impressive what we call a bellwether state.
Between 1888 and 1996 it voted for the losing candidate only three times. In
1912 it voted for Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose ticket and the other two
times it went Republican. (I'll deal with that down the road.) It's turning
into a reliably blue state is relatively recent in American history: only
officially starting with Bill Clinton's first election to the White House in
1992.
So there is an argument that Hollywood's
embrace of left-wing causes then and today has always been wildly out of
context with the rest of the country. This can be explained when you consider
the wealth and fame of people in film and later television. The former is a given with progressive causes
in general. The latter is a fairly new development and of course that's primary
about Hollywood itself.
The difference between the
left-wing causes of Hollywood and where we find in academia is a critical one.
For all the flaws of academics which tends to use theories that rarely work in
conjunction with reality, there is at least a level of education and qualifications
on subjects such as diplomacy and domestic policy, however flawed. By contrast the
average actor or director has no knowledge of foreign policy, economic policy,
or geopolitics but feel just as qualified to comment on foreign policy or racial
equality then the average diplomat or politician even though they only know
what they read in the papers, see on TV or read online. And as we all know
people in Hollywood are particularly capable of only listening what fits in
their world viewpoint, disregarding those who disagree with what they do as a
job description, and outright mocking those who are considered qualified to
comment on their art as out of touch. (Yes this is a defense of my profession
as a critic.)
The idea of George Clooney or Julia
Roberts thinking they can comment with authority on the Middle East or racial
inequality is to me as laughable as – well, it has to be said – a businessman
being able to successfully run a country. But the difference is, at least hypothetically,
I can follow the logic with the latter: there is some overlap with being a businessman
and certain aspects of a politician. By contrast whenever an actor or director
has tried to talk as if they are an authority on foreign policy or civil rights
or – in what is now becoming their most ridiculous talking point given their
day job – the evils of corporations, they can only come across as out of touch
and tone-deaf. The idea that a bunch of
elitist millionaires feel free to talk about wealth inequality strikes me as
the kind of thing that should be openly lampooned.
Hollywood has always lived in a
kind of sealed-off bubble. This may seem counterintuitive, considering how much
in the public life they are compared to corporate CEOs and Silicon Valley
billionaires. But the disconnect has always been there. By and large Hollywood
managed to escape the kinds of political problems mainly because the rest of
America was focused on more important things than so much of what was going on
with actors in Hollywood. There was also the fact that, overall, some creative
forces were smart enough to not go out of their way to infuriate America
in a public forum at the time (others chose to openly court hostility) and the
few times they publicly did – at say the Oscars – it was forgotten by the
public though not necessarily the industry. It's only now in the 21st
century that Hollywood's politicizing is becoming a problem because there is
evidence that it is only damaging the industry and those doing so are
increasingly unwilling to back away from their words and actions to do the
things that might help save it.
This series will deal with the
major occasions when Hollywood became openly political, the ramifications of it
to those involved and the industry and how the country and the state reacted at
the time. I write this article who genuinely loves much of the product they put
out but also senses the danger it is in at the moment. I know that Hollywood more than any other
industry mythologizes its own past and has done so with many of his own warts.
They need to face the truth of what those warts were if they want to try and restore
from the damage they've done.
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