The Myth of Liberal Hollywood (Pelf take note!)

There's been a distruption in the blogosphere the past few days as wingers flip out at the thought of Oliver Stone tackling 9/11. The best all-in-one wrapup arrives courtesy of Kung Fu Monkey, an actual Hollywood screenwriter.

He sinks his fangs into grosses and topics dating back to the turn of the millenium, but here is the reader's digest version for my friends with ADD:

"Hollywood" isn't pushing a liberal agenda. "Hollywood" isn't pushing any agenda. "Hollywood", or rather the disparate, ferociously competing scrum of soundstage-owning mega-corporations based in Los Angeles, are pushing nice, neutral entertainment.

If you are afflicted with ADD and have skipped down here because you were intimidated by the blockquote, scroll back up and follow the link.
From there you can check out James Wolcott absofuckinglutely EVISCERATING several winger blogs on the subject, as well as other entertaining links.

My take is this:
Creative people are always overwhelmingly liberal, the same way educated people are overwhelmingly liberal. But Hollywood is not primarily a creative landscape, it is a corporate one.

And the Corp has no god but money.

Every studio project is fine tuned to appeal to the widest possible demographic, which means there's something for everyone...which is IMHO the problem with the current system and why it is doomed undergo sort of revolution that shook the town at the end of the 60's, but that's another story entirely.

In the short term:

Money has no race, ideology or political affiliation.
Until that changes, neither will mainstream studio motion pictures.

It's interesting to me that the right wing "market forces" advocates are quite often the worst sorts of "conservative", the racist, homophobic type that think weatlh or the lack thereof is some sort of moral judgement on the individual. Sort of a perverted hybrid of the Protestant work ethic and mutant Calvinism.

But it is those very "market forces" that are leading corporate America to (finally) embrace racial and sexual diversity, since racial minorities spend money, and so do gay people....ESPECIALLY gay people.

The Corp is a bull with a ring through its nose, and it will go wherever the money leads it. It'll be interesting to see what type of financial ideology replaces 'market forces' on the far right as the elements of society they hate are showered with ever more attention from money-driven corporations.