I write “Hollywood” as a shorthand way to indicate the entertainment industry wherever it’s located. In the wake of the generally bad year they’ve had contrasted with the big success of the film Top Gun Maverick, a dilemma is becoming clear for the industry.
Television viewing and movie theater receipts are both down. Woke doesn’t sell, not-woke does sell. Things that don’t sell don’t make money, things that sell make money. The entertainment industry writ large likes woke, but also likes money.
For years they made money on the “big” films and made cheap little “art films” that lost money to scratch their ideological itch. More recently, their ideology has gotten in the way of money-making. But their preferred Malibu-Beverly Hills-St. Tropez lifestyle demands plenty of money.
The entertainment industry is discovering they aren’t very successful in selling us their ideology. Attempts to force feed us their woke obsessions aren’t working. The moguls who survive will be those who understand the imperatives of the marketplace.
A personal note: My parents lived in Hollywood between the World Wars and my dad had some interaction with movie colony folk. His view of them, seen up close, was that way too many film folk were what we’d today call Harvey Weinsteins, though he was probably thinking of Fatty Arbuckle & Co. He said their politics were Marxist and their morals were debauched.
He was correct then and I’ve seen little to indicate positive change. In a rare moment of self-awareness, Cher’s lyric describes her industry colleagues as, “Gypsies, tramps, and thieves.”
