Hollywood: Right Face
The innocuous title of an upcoming Miramax movie Kids makes it sound like just the kind of film the Walt Disney Co., Miramax's corporate owner, would love. But Kids is no Lion King. The movie chronicles 24 hours in the lives of a band of thrill-seeking New York teens. In the opening scene, a boy known as “Virgin Surgeon” deflowers a teenage girl. After that come graphic depictions of unsafe sex, full frontal nudity, pot smoking and racial violence, all performed by a cast of barely pubescent-looking actors and actresses. Critics are already calling the film, which will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival this month, the most controversial film of the year, perhaps even of the decade. If, as expected, Kids gets an NC-17 rating, Disney, which has a corporate policy of not releasing NC-17 ratings, will most likely force Miramax to sell it to another distributor.
Kids will doubtless reinforce Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s recent complaint that Hollywood “poisons the minds of our young people with destructive messages of casual vioence and even more casual sex.” […]
Kids will also provide fodder for the army of critics who complain that Hollywood’s attitudes on most social and behavioral issues are more permissive and liberal than most Americans’. […]
Family trend. Yet, the controversy surrounding Kids and a handful of other upcoming movies like the blood-splattered Dead Presidents and Striptease, the Demi Moore film about nude dancers, masks a larger, if unheralded, trend in Hollywood. The entertainment industry is churning out more “family friendly” movies than it has in years. “The industry is finding out that it’s possible to generate large sums at the box office without gratuitous sex and violence,” says Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Jack Valenti. Adds critic Michael Medved, who blasted Hollywood for trashing American values in a 1992 book: “It’s really extraordinary how fast the change has come about.”
In its annual report on the movie industry, the Christian Film and Television Commission points out that the big Hollywood studios released 132 family-friendly movies in 1994 about 40 percent of their total output and a jump of 8 percentage points over the previous year. “As someone who has spent nearly a decade lobbying Hollywood executives,” says Theodore Baehr, chairman of the commission, “I’m happy to report that 1994 was an extraordinary breakthrough for the good, the true and the beautiful in popular entertainment.”
TV’s response. The television industry is also making a clear effort to make TV more family friendly. Less than two years ago. Attorney General Janet Reno put Hollywood on notice: Cut down on graphic portrayals of violence on television on your own or else Washington will step in. In response, both the network and cable industries commissioned independent organizations to define and monitor television violence. […]
Television is also grappling with the notion of values. Father Ellwood Kieser, president of the Humanitas Prize Organization, which honors TV programming that promotes human values, applauds what he terms a “new sensitivity” in the creative community. More than 100 writers, up from an average of just 30 only three years ago, attend the all-day seminars for Writer’s Guild members that his organization holds each month to discuss ways of incorporating values into entertainment programming. “When you look at the spectrum of American TV,” he says, “the hourlong dramas are healthier than ever from a values standpoint.”
The simplest explanation for what’s taking place in television and movies is financial self-interest. Advertisers are more reluctant today to sponsor programs with excessive violence or controversial themes. For example, commercial time for the critically acclaimed “NYPD Blue,” known for its use of nudity and profanity, goes for far less than ad time on a comparably rated but less controversial show, says an ABC executive. Under pressure from Congress, some big agencies like Amtrak, the Postal Service and the Department of Defense, which spend a combined $68 million on TV advertising, have signed a pledge not to purchase ads on shows considered “excessively violent.”
Moviemakers also insist that politics has nothing to do with the boom in family films. “It’s 100 percent business driven,” says Bill Mechanic, president of Fox Filmed Entertainment. “The most successful films tend to play to the greatest number of people, and that’s not true of R-rated films.” The recent surge in family films, most studio executives insist, has more to do with the success of Home Alone than Dan Quayle’s scoldings. Ed Pressman, who is producing the forthcoming Sylvester Stallone movie Judge Dredd, is toning down the film’s most violent scenes in an effort to win a PG-13 rating, but the decision has more to do with box office and merchandising than politics. As for the actors themselves, Steven Seagal puts it best: “Gossip in the tabloids has more of an impact on me than anything [social critics like] Rush Limbaugh says.”
“Under attack.”[…]
Nothing seems to have hardened the views of Hollywood leaders like the fear of crime. It was by far the most important problem the entertainment elite said was plaguing the nation, with 92 percent describing it as a serious or extremely serious problem. In response, industry leaders said they supported the death penalty (56 percent) and believed that courts are not dealing harshly enough with criminals (72 percent). Still, Hollywood leaders are not nearly as concerned as the general public about the impact of TV and movie violence —57 percent of the public thinks violence in the media is a major factor in real-life violence, while only 30 percent of the Hollywood elite thinks so. “The one area — crime — where Hollywood shares the public’s concern, it doesn’t take much responsibility,” observes U.S. News pollster Ed Goeas.
Another development supporting the rise of conservatism in entertainment is that Hollywood is graying: In recent years, the most active part of the creative community has aged, started families and moved out to the suburbs. According to Charles Slocum, a consultant to the Writer's Guild who analyzes membership demographics, the percentage of guild members under age 31 decreased from 12 percent to 9 percent between 1982 and 1991. At the same time, writers in the 41-to-50 age group increased from 23 percent to 34 percent, and the trend accelerated through last year. More and more writers also live in suburban communities like Encino, Sherman Oaks and Studio City rather than hipper parts of town like Santa Monica, Venice or Beverly Hills.
For all the hype about the industry’s notorious “alternative lifestyle,” there are signs that the creative community is beginning to behave more like aging yuppies elsewhere in the nation. “It’s been a while since the executive offices of studios were carefree dens of iniquity,” says Pressman, the producer. “There are even day-care centers at the studios now.”
Above all, Hollywood is responding to shifting popular tastes—and the nation’s mood today is unmistakably conservative. “Recent films are saying that people are fed up with overindulgence and suggest a healthy return to family values,” says New Line Cinema CEO Robert Shaye. Christopher Meledandri, president of Fox Family Films, also detects a yearning for more spiritual fare. “Clearly, audiences responded to the magic and spiritualness of Angels in the Outfield and other films with religious overtones,” he says. In the Hollywood elite poll, 72 percent of respondents said they believe in God and almost a third said religion had become more important in their life in the past decade. However, 56 percent said they had little or no faith in organized religion. […]
Sex on the tube. But despite the decrease in religion-bashing and the boom in family films, critics who believe Hollywood trashes traditional values and institutions can still find plenty- of ammunition. Sex, for example, remains rampant on TV. “Today’s typical viewer sees about 10,000 scenes of suggested sexual intercourse, sexual comment,or innuendo during one year of average viewing,” according to research by Robert Lichter, co-director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. He also found that 7 out of 8 acts of intercourse on prime time are extramarital. A recent survey of 750 children commissioned by the advocate group Children Now found that 62 percent of young people believe television encourages them to take part in sexual activity too soon.
And while violence may be declining on prime time, most Americans think there is still far too much of it. In the U.S. News general public poll, 90 percent said violence in the movies and on TV is a serious problem, and 60 percent think the government can play a constructive role in addressing the problem.
It is possible that the recent trend of more family-friendly movies could prove ephemeral. Says John Badham, whose directing credits’ include. Saturday Night Fever: “If we sense that people are responding to family films, all of us me-tooers will say, “I’ll do it too—until they stop making money.”
By Jim Impoco with Monica Gyttman
Task 2.Give the Ukrainian equivalents of the following word combinations and phrases from the article:
- an upcoming movie
- to poison the minds of young people
- to generate large sums at the box office
- an extraordinary breakthrough for the good, the true and the beautiful in popular entertainment
- to cut down on graphic portrayals of violence
- to define and monitor television violence
- to promote human values
- to incorporate values into entertainment programming
- to be reluctant to sponsor programs with excessive violence or controversial themes
- not to purchase ads on shows considered “excessively violent”
- the boom in family films
- to trash traditional values
- to plague the nation
- to gray / age
- to tone down the films most violent scenes
- to be fed up with overindulgence
- to remain rampant on TV
Task 3. Make use of the phrases in Task 2 to answer the questions:
What’s the critics’ attitude towards the Miramax movie “Kids”?
What trend appeared in the Hollywood entertainment industry at the beginning of the 1990’s?
What did the network and cable industry do in response to the order to cut down on graphic portrayals of violence on television?
What is the simplest explanation, in the author’s opinion, for what’s taking place in television and movies?
What causes the rise of conservatism in Hollywood entertainment? (4 factors/ developments)
Is there any decrease in “sex on the tube”?
Task 4. Make an outline of the article (main ideas of the article) in 4-5 sentences.
Task 5. Think about and share your opinion on the following points:
Does violence in cinema and on TV contribute to violence on Ukrainian streets?
Do you think that television and cinema are more family friendly today?