Hollywood to America: What’ll It Be — Progressive Propaganda or Mindless Popcorn Flicks?

Studios offer a false choice

Twisters tore up the box office and now it's laying waste to streaming competitors.

The movie is a huge hit, yet it still has Hollywood worried. You see, director Lee Isaac Chung had the perfect weather-related opportunity to grandstand about climate change, but he decided to tell an entertaining story instead. 

Imagine all the teachable moments DiCaprio or Clooney could have hammered us with!

Chung insists that “movies should not be about preaching a message,” and although his position seems straightforward, The New York Times tells us he’s secretly communicating something sinister. His comment is really “a dog whistle to conservative ticket buyers.” (How would Eight Percenters make sense of the world without dog whistles?)

For two decades, studios have tapped everyone from Al Gore to Batman to harangue viewers about the climate. And since The Maddening began, Hollywood has spent the last 10 years larding movies with a wide range of progressive messaging. Some of those movies turned out to be big hits (Barbie), but many flopped (Strange World, The Marvels, The Color Purple, Dark Waters). 

The Times calls Chung’s decision to go apolitical “startling,” and spies a shift from Hollywood. Other recent hits, from Deadpool & Wolverine to Top Gun: Maverick, have also jettisoned heavy-handed preaching. 

So The Times declares:

[S]tudios seem to be heeding a message that many ticket buyers — especially in the center of the country — have been sending for a long time: We just want to be entertained, no homework attached.

Put bluntly, it amounts to an attempt by Hollywood to bend to red state audiences.

Got that, red staters? 

You have two choices—movies packed with progressive lecturing or mindless popcorn flicks. Conservatives can either use their gray matter to sop up far left messaging or leave their brains outside the theater.

The newspaper of record and Hollywood gatekeepers seem to be oblivious to a third option. 

If you’re fed up with groupthink in entertainment, media, and more, please consider subscribing to Shiny Herd. Free subscriptions are still the only kind I offer. I’m grateful to all of you who pledged support, and I plan to accept your generosity at some point.

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Only Two Choices?

There’s nothing wrong with movies that merely entertain. 

Sometimes what we all need is just a good scare or a good laugh. And I have no doubt that plenty of non-progressive viewers rejoice when they encounter a movie that’s just entertaining. However, that probably has a lot to do with the monoculture’s tedious dominance. When the propaganda hose has been firing at your face for so long, it’s a relief when someone finally shuts it off. 

But that doesn’t mean film lovers should cheer when studios signal that they’re shifting to films that are just entertaining. Americans want to be entertained, but they don’t just want to be entertained. Beyond progressive fantasy flicks and message-free entertainment, there exists a third option—entertaining movies that explore conservative themes. And a fourth option. Entertaining movies that explore classical liberal themes—or (the horror!) “TERF” themes. And on and on. 

My wife and I started our production company to tell the kinds of stories Hollywood won’t tell, to, as our motto puts it, make important ideas entertaining. We aim to tell entertaining stories that aren’t just entertaining.

Little Pink House tells a story about a blue-collar woman who fights to save her home and her neighborhood, but it also explores governments’ use of force. Likewise, Can We Take a Joke?, The Coddling of the American Mind, and a new project that we’re excited to announce soon, aim to do more than just entertain. 

Entertainment Plus

Hollywood’s decision makers assume audiences are as intellectually lazy as they are. But take a gander at America’s favorite movies of all time, and you’ll find lots of titles that don’t stop at entertainment, including Dead Poets Society, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Life is Beautiful, Fight Club, Up, The Lord of the Rings, Schindler’s List, The Godfather, and America’s favorite movie The Shawshank Redemption. 

Many of the movies on the list invite viewers to bring their brains along as these films aren’t just sensory mishmashes packed with CGI fight scenes and flexing superheroes. Imagine how today’s industry gatekeepers might have ruined some of America’s most beloved movies. 

Hollywood is run by Eight Percenters who default to making films that appeal to Eight Percenters. That means they’re often overlooking the 92 percent of us who don’t claim membership to their little tribe. 

Hollywood has slipped into tedious repetition — the same old themes over and over, the same old villains and heroes over and over, the same old politics over and over. Sometimes it seems like all studios know how to do is set the propaganda hose to “jet” or turn it off.  But those aren’t the only options.

Rest assured, DiCaprio, Clooney, and company, we know where you stand. We know you’re frustrated that we don’t embrace your pet causes. 

But the frustration is mutual. We’re baffled by the confidence you have in your beliefs. You examine the world with one eye closed, and expect us to regard you as wise? 

We 92 percenters deserve more intellectual diversity than your tribe offers.

We deserve better choices. We deserve better movies.

If you’re fed up with groupthink in entertainment, media, and more, please consider subscribing to Shiny Herd.

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His written work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Reason, and The Washington Post. His recent film work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.