Welcome, welcome, welcome to Part 4 of my short series on the death of Hollywood. Please take a seat and get yourself comfy as I begin to further unravel the bloody red carpet of the film industry and sneak a peek at the current state of Hollywood film. So far we’ve been Remembering Film, sniffed the morbid air of The Death of Imagination and asked ourselves Who Killed Hollywood And Why? Followers of the series and those with a canny eye to culture will know that today’s edition, Minority Report, will be examining the socially-aware construction of today’s film within dominant ideology. So, how d’ya like them apples, huh?

The America we once loved has become a dominant and malignant power. Its film industry reflects this, existing not just as an industry in its own right, but as an aid in re-enforcing and upholding the current ideology. We are no longer living the dream, but rather the nightmare. But what is the current ideology? In short, Puritanism. The right-wing stranglehold of America’s socio-political state has wholly infected its film industry, with overtones of Puritanical Christianity an all-pervasive force. The moral majority are in control and their typically judgemental and dominating traits are in full swing.

Back in the day, the staple of the Hollywood diet was fun. These days, though, it’s all about a large helping of moral fibre and, as we all know, too much fibre in one’s diet causes digestion problems...and a lot of shit. And so it is that I am suffering from a severe bout of filmic indigestion. I am literally sick of spoonfed moral fibre and am spewing up my indigestibles in the form of an anti-morality diatribe. Bibs on, folks, I think it’s gonna get messy.

Hollywood film has undergone somewhat of a metamorphosis. Previously imaginative and questioning, it lost its edge in favour of indoctrination. When I was a young kid, my brother and I would mess about at bedime. Soon would come the cry from my parents of “settle down now!,” and Hollywood has taken upon itself such a parental role, not so much pleading as outright stating we must now “settle down.” But what is it to ‘settle down’? Well, one thing’s for sure, it pretty much means losing your dreams. Film doesn’t reward for risk-taking and disobedience the way it once did. These days good old Family Values have come along to piss on our chips. Yes, family values are a good thing, but not as it is, portrayed by a moral crusade from a totalitarian state.

America has become a “get with the program” fascist. The “wedding film” has become a subgenre all of its own. Mainstream movies for the masses are merely propaganda from the moral brigade. But this doesn’t just apply to ‘chick flicks’. Oh no, no longer is it the preserve of a woman to be put in her place, but ‘lads’ films, too, dictate the lesson. Just look to films such as The Wedding Crashers and 40-Year-Old Virgin for your lesson in settling down. It’s just a variation on a theme, with stories just a guff enabler of the message.

But, possibly the saddest thing about the moral crusade is the sex versus violence issue and the fact that the sight of a human being in is natural state has somehow become abhorrent and offensive to the point of needing psychotherapy. How have we got to this, that the sight a woman’s breast is detrimental to out mental wellbeing? It’s just titties, people, come on! But, of course, violence is so much more acceptable; indeed anything above that most reviled of beings – The Sexual Woman. I am in no doubt that sexual violence is a dangerous thing in films, especially for those too young to really understand it. But sex and nudity is natural and it’s the people who make children feel that it is wrong who cause this cycle of repression, and to be sexually repressed is a highly dangerous state to live in.

And so it is that the moral right have taken over. The fact is that the New Hollywood has become inherently infected by it and it seems that, as consumers, we are passively ingesting it. Nobody seems to be questioning this new wave of social control for it has seeped in largely unnoticed to the point that, frankly, it’s creepy. The frivolousness of the Hollywood heyday has gone, now seen as wasteful, as it no longer functions for the current ideology to promote diversity, fun, questioning, imagining. But as we know, Hollywood is by far unconfined to America; its reach is far and wide across the globe. Looks like the body of Hollywood Film didn’t make it to the mortuary after all. Someone wanted her gone, dumped her now bloated body in the reservoir of the world and the poisons within her are leaking out into our drinking water. Consume with care, people. Consume with care.

Coming Next: Part 5: Looking And Not Seeing