Go for broke

I’ve been hearing that this year has been a bad year for Hollywood. Box office receipts are down—way down.

The reason is that the key teen demographic—especially among young men—is tuning out of the movie theater.

Once reason I’ve heard is that in the age of home entertainment, there’s ever less reason to go out to see a movie.

That might be—but I have another theory.

Hollywood is using the silver screen as a soapbox to promote its pansexual agenda. For example, action pictures naturally appeal to guys. To the extent that they appeal to women, the appeal consists in virile men who come to the rescue of women—as well as women who bring out the best in men.

But, nowadays, there are more and more action flicks—and this holds true for TV fare as well—in which we have a ninety pound, kick-boxing superheroine who can beat the stuffing out of half a dozen Marines.

A few years ago this was papered over by giving the superheroine some sort of genetic or bionic enhancement. But nowadays even that pretence of plausibility has dropped out of sight.

Nowadays the moviegoer is expected to swallow the spectacle of a featherweight fashion model beating the holy tar out of well-muscled men twice her size and leading Green Berets into battle.

Like unisex bathrooms, no one ever put this up for a vote. There was no national debate. The general public was never consulted.

Instead, it just came down from on high by the Anointed Ones in Hollywood. It is our civic duty to accept this palpable lie without reservation—like taking a dose of bitter medicine. To challenge the new code as so much hokum and bunkum would invite a charge of hate-speech.

Now, I ask you, why would any self-respecting male plunk down good money to see his manhood belittled?

On a related note, I also observe, when I’m channel surfing, a new double standard, which is a reverse of the old double standard. A male detective is not allowed to humiliate a female character by asking embarrassing questions about her sexual history, but a female detective is allowed to humiliate a male character by asking embarrassing questions about his sexual history. Typically the man breaks down before the female detective after she gleefully badgers him into tearful submission.

Likewise, you have female officials who subjugate men, using their coercive authority to do what they could never do by physical force or force of character. They command, but they do not lead.

There’s a political agenda going on here, and you have to wonder how many male viewers resent the subtext.

It’s not that there isn’t a place for the heroine. Ironically, in the days before feminism and women’s lib, there were actresses like Crawford, Davis, Dietrich, Garbo, Hepburn, Stanwyke, and West, who dominated the screen in a way that no contemporary actress does. There were star vehicles written just for them. Moviegoers went just to see them. The actress carried the whole show.

This is because, back then, a woman had to make it in a man’s world through sheer talent, grit, and force of personality. And that translated onto the screen.

I’d add that, back then, a movie star looked like a grown woman—not a high school cheerleader.

Then you have a movie like Brokeback Mountain. This is a “love story” between two queer cowboys.

Predictably, it gets rave reviews from the critics for its “courageous” treatment of the forbidden theme.

BTW, I’ve never known what is so courageous about making movies in which you’re rewarded rather than punished by the Establishment.

Now, bracketing the whole question of social morality, who is the audience for a film like this? At least ninety-nine out of a hundred moviegoers are straight.

There are a lot of moviegoers who are not necessarily disapproving of sodomy, but that doesn’t mean they want to pay good money to see a couple of catamites rolling in the hay.

It they’re going to see a love story, it will be boy meets girl, not boy meets boy.

Just as market share of the liberal news media has atrophied over time by becoming so elitist, by putting ideology above popularity and realism, the audience for Hollywood movies is withering away for the very same reason.

These films are not about art or even entertainment. They are simply a political statement dressed up in sepia.