Anti-American Hollywood

Hollywood, which once created the finest and most uplifting images of America, is now a prime generator of anti-American hatred around the world, according to Ed Lasky. As he sums it up:

Thus we have a toxic dynamic at work in this ecosystem of Hollywood and Washington. Hollywood blithely creates a revulsion towards America and Americans overseas, helping to create an environment that leads to terror. The billions they reap from these “efforts” find their way into the coffers of a Democratic Party, which has a weak and flaccid posture towards the threat of terror. Thus, Hollywood engenders terror that will beset us and helps to leave us defenseless to confront this danger. [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, Lasky’s article is short on specifics. A lot could be written on this subject. I never read Michael Medved’s book on liberal Hollywood, but I wonder if he explored the idea that many of today’s movies make Americans seem hateful—edgy, angry, tense, aggressive, with traditional white male authority figures portrayed as cold evil automatons, and the liberal “heroes” portrayed as angry, obnoxious rebels, and with a lurking sense of suspicion and dis-ease underlying everything. And if he did write about it, did it occur to him that this extremely unpleasant image of America and Americans is what shapes the way people in other countries view us? Everyone is concerned about the world-wide phenomenon of anti-Americanism. How much of it is due, not to the usual suspects, but to Hollywood?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 16, 2004 04:36 PM | Send