Hollywood may be in its death throes, and deservedly so

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving industry, although many good people will be hurt in the process.

(I got so many nice notes about this post, which I originally wrote  for American Thinker, that I figured I’d republish it here.)

Hollywood once supported America and family values; it’s now antithetical to them. This means that many Americans are rooting for its collapse during a writers’ and actors’ strike over an industry change as significant and destructive as the advent of the car was to carriage makers.

I’m a huge fan of pre-1960s movies, and I know a fair amount about the history of Hollywood. In Hollywood’s early years, the executives behind it were almost entirely Jewish immigrants who found a niche in a brand-new industry and filled it.

Throughout the 1920s and into the very early 1930s, movie plots got progressively more sordid. However, in the face of combined pressure from consumers and politicians, Hollywood cleaned up its act, producing family- and America-friendly movies for the next 35 or so years, until the social compact started falling apart in the mid-1960s.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, Hollywood turned against America. This was in part because industry followed the Baby Boomers, who were a huge source of funds and who were moving left at warp speed.

The trend accelerated as Hollywood actors, few of whom were credentialed, figured that they could give themselves an intellectual gloss if they followed campus social and political trends. With bully pulpits, publicists, and unbounded egos, they gave unsavory, unwashed, and unhinged academic intellectuals glamor and reach.

Another thing to know about Hollywood, both past and present, is that it is now and has always been a place of unbridled debauchery. Where one finds power and money, one invariably finds pedophilia and other forms of sexual power politics and abuse.

Hollywood used to keep that sordid fact hidden from Americans. Over the last 20 years, though, it’s been marketing deviant sex to them, especially to youngsters.

If you don’t believe me, check out The Vigilant Citizen. You don’t have to buy into the writer’s theories about a vast conspiracy; it’s enough to read the descriptions of popular movies, songs, and television shows with which readers of this site are probably unfamiliar.

Having said all that, the product that old Hollywood churned out between around 1932 and 1965 was pretty good and very entertaining. If it wasn’t uplifting, at least it wasn’t debased.

Fast forward to 2023, and we’re living in a vast entertainment wasteland. There’s endless content, but it’s mindless, repetitive, boring, immoral or amoral, and a true waste of time. Yet we, the opiated people and, especially, our children, nevertheless waste endless hours of our lives staring at the boob-tube, mesmerized.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, changes are afoot. Hollywood locked itself down during 2020, a costly decision, but it managed to survive. However, it’s looking the system will not survive profound industry changes.

One change is streaming video, which pays content creators a fixed price with no downstream benefit if the product becomes popular. The other is AI, which can study the garbage shows that have been produced over the last five or ten years and produce identical garbage. AI writes without ego or pay, making it perfect for the studios, which are guided by leftist politics, pedophilia, immorality, and money.

In response to a disastrous drop in revenue because of these factors, Hollywood writers have been on strike. Recently, the actors joined them. Both are pushing back against the studios. Looking at Hollywood’s content, this is one of those strikes we all wish would see both sides lose.

Having said that, there are many good people who will be hurt if Hollywood implodes. While the public faces of Hollywood are leftist, the people who provide the infrastructure support (all the names that whiz by at warp speed as a show’s credits roll) are often conservative. And of course, there’s the whole L.A. economy that’s also dependent on Hollywood wealth.

The sad fact is that change always leaves victims in its wake. We never mourn the wheelwrights and carriage makers who fell by the wayside when the car came along because the car was, and is, a much more democratic and effective means of transportation. In the same way, while every good person who loses a job or income if Hollywood fails is a tragedy, the fact is that it’s better for America if Hollywood circa 2023 is no more.

Image: Hollywood sign (edited) by Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0/.