This review of Hollywood vs. America by Michael Medved (Harper/Collins 1992) appeared in two magazines. The beginning sections discussing Medved’s treatment of movies appeared in Z Magazine (date forgotten). The later section, “The Statistics of Baron Munchausen,” was published in The Humanist, January-February 1993 under the title “Michael Medved Drowns by Numbers.”
Introduction
“This book will undoubtedly outrage a heavy majority of show-business professionals. I am painfully aware that one of the consequences of its publication will be my potentially permanent estrangement from some of the thoughtful and well-intentioned people in Hollywood I have been proud to call my friends. In their view, I am a traitor to an industry that has always been good to me, and the criticisms I raise here are misguided, offensive, even dangerous.”
Any crank with a pulpit, from Rush Limbaugh to Axl Rose, can call himself dangerous. This way, the person can congratulate him- or herself on their maverick nature, or their stand on principles, or having said that the Emperor has no clothes– regardless of the ‘heretical’ idea being advanced. After patting themselves on the back for presenting heresies and goring sacred cows, the self-styled-maverick will wail about the blackballing and vilification that will soon be “predictably” visited upon him. For example, if someone were to state that “I’ll probably be called a racist for saying this, but we really oughta cut out welfare, and just make those blacks work at picking cotton so they don’t do us no harm,” you can bet my reaction’s going to be pretty damn predictable.
Michael Medved uses this crank’s gambit at the very beginning of Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values. In Medved’s mind, he’s the Lot of Hollywood’s Sodom, a maverick prophet-heretic who says that the Emperor Has No Clothes. The rest of the movie industry is a slime pit full of fanatical, ‘loony-left’ figures who refuse to provide the public with the family-oriented films it demands. More to the point is George Gilder’s dust jacket blurb: “Hollywood is forfeiting both profits and paying customers in a crazy campaign to foist its own loony lifestyles and muddled world views on the American people.”
Medved’s thesis is that the films currently offered by Hollywood represent an all-out assault on the traditional values of America. Families are portrayed as almost consistently dysfunctional. Murderers and criminals are portrayed as appealing heroes. Adventure films wallow in violence. Religious values are routinely attacked. The institutions which once shaped our lives are now treated with suspicion, scorn, and ridicule. History is recast in a squalid and cynical mold. Characters are now shown pissing, crapping, vomiting and eating other human beings in gut-wrenching detail. The picture of the world offered by the entertainment industry is that of aimless despair without end. Medved claims that this current ‘despair glut’ is a result of a kind of ‘sickness of the soul’ within Hollywood, as indicated by how many actors and actresses are divorced, single parents, political activists, vegetarians or Scientologists.
As a result, Medved maintains, the moviegoing public has abandoned the movies. People want more wholesome and uplifting entertainment, and Medved cites box office returns, public opinion polls, and the depressed state of the movie industry to support this point.
There’s a story I once heard– it’s probably apocryphal, but I’d like to get a reference on it– about how someone had filmed a battle between Pancho Villa’s army and U.S. Marines near the turn of the century. When the film was shown to an audience in a small Texas town, they stumbled from the theater, retching and crying at the spectacle of seeing men killed. Today, it’s high comedy when Arnold Schwarzenegger pledges not to kill people in Terminator 2— instead, he casually maims them. Ha. And as irreligious as I am, I can sympathize with the complaint that New Age blather about reincarnation and Karma is presented as well-meaning spiritual awareness. The idea that kids want to dress up like unstoppable serial killers like Jason or Freddy Krueger on Halloween is revolting as marketing Adolf Hitler masks to the little toddlers. And when I watch ‘heroes’ like Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme gouge out the eyes of the depraved, fanatical, Rastafarian drug dealers, I wonder if it’s subtly encouraging popular support of capital punishment– especially for minorities. There is a strong ‘soul sickness’ in the United States that regards such spectacles as entertainment. And remember, we’re talking about an industry that claims to champion artistic freedom, but supports itself through sequel-after-sequel and the odious practice of ‘product placement.’
In other words, this could have been an important and valuable book– if someone like David Puttnam (producer of The Mission and Memphis Belle) had written it, I’d probably be giving copies to friends. However, it’s been written by Michael Medved, whose insights and rhetoric reveal a shocking intolerance of opinions and values different than his own. (It reveals a lot more about Medved, whom one imagines– after reading his chapters on vomiting and pissing– keeping careful count of every bodily fluid excreted in every movie he’s seen. It’s a lot like collecting scabs and boogers to prove the wretchedness of humankind.) People all over the political spectrum complain about the violence and exploitation in many films made these days; but Medved maintains that it’s those creepy, degenerate liberals who are responsible for it all. As one reads Hollywood vs. America, one realizes– without much surprise– that Medved is more interested in advancing a specifically right-wing agenda than in asking for more humane, intelligent, or caring films.
At this point, Medved will simply dismiss the above comments as more ‘politically correct’ dogmatism against conservatives. So, casting politeness to the four winds, let me state that Hollywood Vs. America could be the shoddiest work to bill itself as a ‘non-fiction’ cultural commentary since Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education. Hollywood vs. America fails to make anything remotely approaching a cogent, well-reasoned argument. The points he raises are a hodgepodge; one film is attacked because of its ideas, another because of a particular scene or line of dialogue, another because of the politics of its actors and actresses, and another because of its poor box-office performance. . . and Hollywood is even attacked for not making films about specific subjects. His portrayal of Hollywood and the ‘cultural elite’ is on a par with Fundamentalist comic-book tracts. Arguments Medved raises regarding one film are contradicted by arguments he raises about another. Nearly every statement he makes about what the moviegoing public wants is negated by nearly every statement he makes about sensationalism and titillation. I’ve even found examples of where he misrepresents the supposedly exhaustive data supporting his contentions. Even if one were favorably disposed to his ideas, Medved provides no coherent structure within which to evaluate the film industry or its products. In arguing with Medved’s points, I’ve found that one simply cannot reach bottom– there’s always one piece of faulty reasoning or culture-baiting that needs to be addressed. In short, Hollywood vs. America makes no sense whatsoever.
Near-Total Gibberish
One frequently finds Mr. Traditional Values arguing in circles. Medved criticizes several directors– Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, Gus van Sandt and David Cronenberg, to name a few– for having acquired a respected reputation, “despite their never having had a major financial success.” (One frequently has the sense that Medved is really criticizing Hollywood for allowing these filmmakers to go on working.) So they’re bad filmmakers because their films aren’t blockbusters. . . like Terminator 2. But Terminator 2 is also one of those films that the public is disgusted by, because of its violence, and because its hero is a vicious, murderous machine. Its success lies more in its sensationalism, Medved seems to argue, because as he maintains elsewhere, people really don’t want to see such awful movies. They want to see films of quality— as long as they’re not directed by people who have gained critical respect, like Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, Gus van Sandt and David Cronenberg.
And especially not Oliver Stone, whose films Medved scorns as products of the ‘loony left,’ that the public doesn’t want to see. Considering that Wall Street, Platoon, and even JFK were financial successes, it’s difficult to take this point seriously. I got the very strong impression that what Medved was trying to say– without spelling it out, that is– was, “Hollywood should be condemned for allowing these unfit people have budgets and make movies.”
Medved spends some time complaining about Closet Land, a low-budget examination of torturers and political victims. It’s an intelligent film, but unpleasant and horrifying; Alan Rickman inflicts all sorts of pain and degradation upon children’s book writer Madeline Stowe. Medved condemns it because it speaks out against the sort of torture that happens in the world today. (He also complains that Ron Howard had the temerity to produce it– again, the these people are unfit to make movies litany.)
However, Medved says that China Cry, a little-seen film about how Christian faith helped a young mother survive in Communist China, is inspiring, uplifting, laudable for its championing of traditional values. But Costa-Gavras’s Missing, about how a devout Christian Scientist (Jack Lemmon) tries to find out what happened to his son during the Chilean coup of 1973, is slammed for anti-Americanism and “careless connection to historical reality.” In other words, their tortures are OK to talk about, but the tortures the U.S. supports are verboten.
Then there’s Running on Empty. Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti portrayed a pair of former radicals who, way back when, blew up an office building and accidentally killed a guard. They’ve spent the last decade or so on the run, living under assumed names, trying to provide a decent life for their children– and they suddenly stand to lose it all when their son (River Phoenix) has a chance to go to Julliard. One would expect that Medved would think highly of this film, as it does depict parents struggling to maintain a happy and stable home life for the kids. Nope: Medved sums the movie up by writing “A couple of aging radicals who have been living as fugitives since they blew up a building in the ’60s; naturally, they are a passionate, fun-loving couple and model parents to their two terrific kids.” To write otherwise would undermine Medved’s contention that right-thinking Americans really hated the ’60s. (I imagine that Medved must loathe Casablanca for its ‘politically correct’ reference to Rick’s having fought the Fascists in Spain.)
This is perhaps one of Medved’s most irritating habits– he will summarize a film in perhaps a sentence or two, usually with an eye towards discrediting it. You get the feeling he’s waiting for his critics to mention an intelligent film– like The Last Temptation of Christ— so he can cop an attitude and say, “Oh, don’t tell me you liked that!” We wind up with the ironic result that Medved’s argument in favor of family values rests on an affected jadedness over sex, violence, and pessimism in films.
As for modern historical films, Medved– calling these films “irresponsible revisionism” and “a series of preachy, politically correct, propagandistic presentations ot our country’s many crimes and misdemeanors”– seems to argue that films shouldn’t depict America as having any flaws. This is a man who puts sarcastic quote marks around the word ‘genocide’ when applied to Native Americans. For an indication of how he’d like to see NA’s portrayed, he quotes Richard Grenier, of the conservative National Interest, on the film Dances with Wolves; “Some of the greatest generals of the Union Army led American troops against the bloodthirsty Sioux, who erupted in the midst of the Civil War in one of the most savage Indian uprisings in history. Along the western frontier, the Sioux massacred. They pillaged. They raped. They burned. They carried women and children into captivity. They tortured for entertainment. All this was their long-established custom. . . Kevin Costner, in a state of holy empty-headedness, has falsified history as much as any time-serving Stalinist of the Red Decade.” Well, U.S. soldiers weren’t exactly known for their restraint either– one of our ‘greatest generals,’ Custer, led the notorious attack on the Washita River settlement against women and children. Stagecoach, The Searchers, and They Died with their Boots On are about as accurate as Costner’s epic, but I don’t compare their creators to Stalinists, or accuse them of outright falsification of history.
Believe it or not, Medved attacks Top Gun, Rambo, and Iron Eagle for not glorifying the military enough. “They each featured rebellious, nonconformist, individualistic heroes struggling against a military establishment that was portrayed in largely unflattering terms.” Medved wonders why there are no films about the glorious victory in the Persian Gulf, and no screen biographies about heroic Norman Schwarzkopf. Well, maybe it’s because Heartbreak Ridge, about the Grenada invasion, didn’t do so well, and perhaps such things as the “Mutlaa Massacre,” soldiers crowing about ‘turkey shoots’ and the live burial of refugees put a bad pall on the festivities.
Which brings us to Medved’s discussion of Hollywood in wartime. For examples of the higher values of Hollywood during World War II, he tells us of how Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, and several other film industry notables put their film careers on hold until they finished their military service. Medved finds this in sharp contrast to Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis– not coincidentally, two actors who’ve starred in Vietnam War films Medved finds objectionable– who failed to sign up for the service during Operation Desert Storm. And once again, there’s that sense that these people are unfit to make movies.
Medved doesn’t mention how two ultrapatriotic, hawkish actors, Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, somehow avoided battlefield service during the “Good War.” He doesn’t see any irony in Bruce Willis being a Reagan supporter, or that Sylvester “Rambo” Stallone avoided Vietnam service in favor of containing communism in a girls’ school in Europe. The people on Medved’s side of the fence appear to be loudmouthed, opportunistic cowards. Say what you want about him, but at least the reviled, ‘loony left’ Oliver Stone actually enlisted to serve in Vietnam.
Sometimes Medved will cite a source or expert who’s not exactly known for conservatism– but he will usually pair them off with doctrinaire right-wingers to create the illusion of a consensus over ‘family values.’ For example, he quotes psychologist Carol Tavris on the overuse of violence as a solution in films– right on the heels of an anti-heavy-metal rant from nicotine addict William Bennett. TV critic Tom Shales talks about how trite he felt Dances with Wolves was– a quote Medved pairs off with Richard Grenier’s National Interest rant that the Sioux weren’t depicted as being sufficiently subhuman. Medved quotes Steve Allen, a man of ‘impeccable liberal credentials,’ on the need for family– right after having Commentary‘s Irving Kristol complain about ‘turbulent generations.’ One can sense the relish Medved gets from reciting Malcolm X’s “By Any Means Necessary” catchphrase to support the conservative-religious rebirth of Hollywood; I suppose we’re expected to exclaim “Quelle ironie!” Even though liberals are expressing concern over the amount of violence and the lack of humaneness in modern culture, conservatives are targeting the loony lefties of Hollywood as the cause of it all– and one imagines a demented Medved jumping up and down, flapping his arms and shrieking, “You see? They all agree with me!”
Medved also complains about how these unflattering portraits of America will play overseas. Since many foreigners used to look at America as the land of opportunity (and Medved quotes British-born David Puttnam to this effect), it’s a bit irresponsible to have the cartoon immigrants in An American Tale to complain about how awful it is in the New World. But Medved doesn’t mention the film Moscow on the Hudson, which concluded with Robin Williams, playing a Soviet defector, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with other immigrants in a New York diner to raise his spirits. Medved serves up an ‘aid and comfort’ argument at times, where American filmmakers should not be making films that criticize American institutions because it undermines our strength. And indeed, Medved approvingly quotes right-wing ideologue Irving Kristol as saying, “A world power, if it is to maintain its position, needs to generate respect for its culture, not only for its military prowess. . . American popular culture is less an ornament of American democracy than a threat to this democracy.” In other words, criticizing America is tantamount to treason.
It’d be pretty tough to make a children’s film that Medved would approve of. He slams E.T., Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Home Alone and The Little Mermaid for presenting an anti-parent, ‘kids know best’ theme, where parents are klutzy and insensitive incompetents. One would normally reason that the box-office success of these films indicates that the public liked them, in spite of Medved’s more informed judgement that parents really don’t want their kids seeing such family-bashing films.. I’ll leave it to the reader to look up Medved’s impressive gymnastics on the subject. (Even funnier, Medved actually lumps The Bad News Bears in with Benji as a family film– apparently he’s forgotten that film’s notorious use of profanity.)
Medved praises Kevin Costner for taking roles that are Gary Cooperish and all-American in films like Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, and Dances with Wolves. However, Medved slams Field of Dreams for dealing with ghosts, and Dances with Wolves is criticized for being too ‘politically correct’ in presenting the Sioux as decent human beings– thus leaving the reader wondering why Costner was praised in the first place, for playing a decent guy in these sinful movies. In rhapsodizing over Costner’s all-Americanness, Medved conveniently leaves out Costner’s role as a Russian spy in No Way Out (which also gave us a rather un-family-values love scene with Sean Young), and as an adulterer in Revenge. Bull Durham, about sex and baseball, co-starred that feminist jezebel Susan Sarandon, whom Medved scorns for bearing children out of wedlock. So, just what is Costner being praised for?
It’s like the passage where Medved criticizes Sleeping with the Enemy. Julia Roberts is married to possessive, anal-retentive borderline-psychopath Patrick Bergin, so she fakes her own death, escapes to the midwest, and falls in love with Jason Patric. Medved says the film depicts the institution of marriage as horrible, brutal, stultifying, and even physically dangerous. Gee, that’s funny; I got the impression it was depicting a specific, fictional marriage to Patrick Bergin’s character. Medved also attacks The Stepfather, another good thriller, for similar reasons– portraying anal-retentive, pro-family husbands as raving psychopaths really gets under Medved’s skin. The psycho wants to preserve a storybook family in an hermetic existence, and murders them when they fall short of the “Donna Reed Show” ideal. Gee, if the marriages depicted were domestic Shangri-Las, we certainly wouldn’t have had a movie now, would we?
Star Trek V was the only film in the series to do poorly. Medved glosses over the film’s poor reviews, shoddy production values, a bad script and trite plot, a general downward trend in the series’ revenues, and savage word-of-mouth over William Shatner’s direction. (This is amazingly myopic of Medved, whose rep as a critic was built on his books on the Worst Films of All Time— which relied on a subculture of bad film fans. He should know what bad word of mouth can do.) Instead, he claims that the real reason for the film’s failure was because, at the very end, Captain Kirk claimed that maybe God existed only within human beings. But the moviegoer would learn this at the very end. And since Godlike-but-malevolent beings were a staple of the original TV series to begin with, so it’s not likely that this is what turned people off.
Then there’s Medved’s attack on Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Because Scorsese had the temerity to make a religious film that did not fit in with the demands of conservative churches, Medved feels he’s somehow attacked religion. In this context, it’s amusing to remember how much fun Medved made of the ultraconventional Jesus pic King of Kings.)
The film is the linchpin of Medved’s thesis that Hollywood routinely attacks traditional religious values. Medved’s appraisal of the film– like most of his appraisals of films in this book– rest upon one-liners and snide remarks about how bad it is. Saying that Scorsese should have called it Raging Messiah, Medved proceeds to describe the film in the simplest, least flattering ways. Now, it’s a lot easier to condemn a film that takes the risks of Last Temptation than it is to praise it– by praising it, one has to admit that the film affected them somehow, and risk looking like a fuzzy-headed dupe of cinema. So, Medved adopts a jaded pose.
But Medved’s complaints turn into gibberish when one asks, “What about those of us who liked the film?” I certainly did. I thought it was one of the few genuinely religious films made in recent years, with a few flaws, made with a commitment and dedication to the source material that’s rare in Hollywood. So obviously, I’m not going to argue that Scorsese shouldn’t have made the film, or changed it from his original intentions. The film was also unique in another important aspect; like Nikos Kazanzakis’s wonderful novel, it gave a strong sense of what it was like to live in those times, and in that region. It was, in its way, far more realistic than King of Kings or The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Medved’s case is that Hollywood, against all reason, made a bad film about a touchy religious subject– and for his thesis to have any weight, he has to assert that Last Temptation was a bad film. (I recall Medved giving a ‘thumbs up’ to Rambo III because it portrayed the Afghan resistance. This is a critic with an agenda.) I don’t think Medved actually saw the film at all– what he saw was what he expected to see from sinful Hollywood.
But occasionally, films do approach high art, and occasionally, filmmakers do create something unique and personal. Medved shoots himself in the foot by taking special care to criticize filmmakers whose work qualifies in this realm. Martin Scorsese is not a commercial hack and, like him or not, he certainly can’t be lumped in with the Paul Verhoevens, Peter Hyamses, and Brian DePalmas. Medved seems to be saying that films are pandering, commercial pap, but when people with artistic intentions are in charge, the films just get weirder and weirder. Remember, they’re not fit to make movies, unlike the sainted Frank Capra.
When Medved talks about mainstream values, it’s important to keep in mind that Medved is speaking only about Hollywood product– he doesn’t criticize the films made in countries other than the U.S. and Britain, which usually deal with subjects in a more baroque manner than American films do. (Or rather, they demand a more cosmopolitan outlook to appreciate them.) One might consider how many major directors weren’t even born in the States. There’s David Cronenberg (Canada), Fred Schepisi, Peter Weir, and both George Millers (Australia), Adrian Lyne, Peter Greenaway, and Tony and Ridley Scott, (England), Paul Verhoeven (Holland), and Costa-Gavras (Greece), to name a few. Historically, there’s Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, Charlie Chaplin, Michael Curtiz, Erich von Stroheim, Billy Wilder, and many others. Then there’s American Terry Gilliam, whose creative teeth were cut in Britain with the Monty Python group, and Stanley Kubrick– arguably the finest American director working– who hasn’t left England since making Dr. Strangelove. It’d be a shame to lose this global outlook to Medved’s demand for ‘family values.’
In support of a ‘voluntary code’ for film content, Medved claims that such filmmakers as Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock managed to create great films while under the Hays Code– which is like saying that racial discrimination is needed because it gave us great blues and gospel music. Any decent biography of these men will show that they were trying to get around that code any way they could, and made great films in spite of the Code. We can only speculate on the films these men would have made without the code– for Medved’s thesis to have any merit, one would have to believe that these filmmakers would invariably make bad films without the supervision of the Code. Maybe they, too were really unfit to make movies. (Medved is overfond of invoking the spirit of Frank Capra– look, Capra was nice, but he wasn’t the only popular director working fifty years ago. And he’s not likely to be making films these days, being dead and all.)
Throughout the book, Medved describes widely disparate films– regardless of originality, or rarity of approach– as “more of the same old thing,” “yet another in a long litany of,” and the like. Rather than being a family man offended by outré ideas, Medved has found a safer pose to adopt; act as though you’ve seen it all. This conveniently allows Medved to dismiss any film of artistic merit, because it’s just more of the same. Brazil and Blade Runner can be tossed into the ‘dystopia’ bin, Slacker would be just another ‘cult film,’ and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, one of the most frightening films of the decade, is just another exercise in making killers sympathetic heroes.
Another method of Medved’s is to point out an inconsistency, real or imagined, in the public statements and actions of film industry spokespeople, and then claim that this discredits any ideals they profess to have. For example, he takes MPAA chairman Jack Valenti to task over invoking ‘freedom of expression’ to defend The Last Temptation of Christ, but not to defend a sordid little slasher flick about a Santa Claus serial killer. Medved appears to be saying that, if Valenti’s not willing to protect every such instance, then his ideals mustn’t be worth much– so let’s junk the ideals. It’s a platitude of civil libertarians that if freedom of expression is selectively applied, then it’s worthless; but Medved’s the first person I’ve run across who considers it worthless enough to disregard even as an ideal. Hollywood vs. America is full of such faulty arguments.
As I was reading this book, and the lengthy interview with Medved in Los Angeles magazine, one thought kept coming back at me; just what sort of movies would Medved want made? I tried to imagine a film that would avoid every criticism that Medved had raised in Hollywood vs. America, and I found that it was, in a word, impossible. Not even Disney films would qualify. In The Absent Minded Professor adults are either fumblers and schemers, and universities and the government are run on deal-making and financial maneuvering. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes depicts teenagers as being smarter and wiser than their elders. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea gives us Captain Nemo, a monomaniacal hero who has forsaken civilization, revels in vandalism, and who desires the destruction of his society’s institutions, like slavery. The Jungle Book‘s most appealing characters are lazy slobs (Baloo the Bear), thinly disguised hippies or hipsters (King Louie, the Liverpudlian buzzards), or sinister demon figures (Kaa, the snake). Pinocchio depicts adults as ineffectual wimps (Gepetto) or terrifying monsters (Stromboli), and portrays juvenile delinquency. In fact, the only film I could think of that didn’t attack religion, that didn’t present at least unsavory character, that didn’t have a hint of despair in its actual content, that was completely immune to Medved’s moral complaints, is Andy Warhol’s Empire State.
But like I said, one never gets to the bottom of it.
The Statistics of Baron Munchausen
It’s all well and good to look at Medved’s screed as part of the “Culture War,” and debate a young neocon’s magnum opus in the context of free speech and artistic expression within a bottom-line-driven industry. But chances are, we’d be avoiding an area where Medved’s case is ostensibly his strongest– his use of market data to claim that degenerate films have frightened away moviegoers, and that good, clean decent films will lure them back. Central to his demonization of the film industry as a bunch of degenerate psychotics– and to Medved’s thesis in general– is his citation of market statistics. Frequently, he cites the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) figures to indicate a dwindling moviegoing public. “These statistics,” Medved writes, “available upon request from the Motion Picture Association of America, tell a dismal tale of an industry that has needlessly and stupidly sacrificed the majority of its available audience.”
This is Medved’s one great reach for empiricism– it’s not just a matter of opinion, but qualitative, statistical fact, or so he claims. The numbers are as a telescope to Medved’s Galileo pose; Medved can dismiss objections as silly liberal whinings and the ravings of politically-correct loony-lefties, because, after all, he has facts that back him up.
Readers of Hollywood vs. America would do better measuring the Great Pyramid to decode hidden prophecies, or looking for the Antichrist in UPC barcodes. On close and skeptical examination of Medved’s Grodian Knot of statistics, one finds several instances of inadequate documentation, unsupported assumptions, skewed interpretations, sweeping claims based on tiny sample sizes, and at least one instance of outright misrepresentation. Medved’s use of statistics is so utterly incompetent– and his ideological agenda so extreme and uncompromising– that one has a hard time believing that he didn’t do this intentionally.
Michael Medved accuses the movie industry of nothing less than perpetuating fraud: “I am increasingly convinced that industry leaders deliberately emphasize the numbers on ‘box office grosses’ in order to deliberately mislead the public (and themselves) and to disguise the depth of their dilemma.” But nowhere in his book does Medved reprint the MPAA data in a direct and concise manner. Unless readers are willing to call the MPAA (at 212-840-6161) and request the material (U.S. Economic Review and Incidence of Motion Picture Attendance), or raise a few critical questions, they have to rely on Medved’s inadequate analysis and presentation.
Discussing the 1990 film industry year, Medved writes:
“. . . 27 percent of those who have attended college describe themselves as “frequent” moviegoers, but only 11 percent of those who failed to complete high school place themselves in that category. More significantly, 45 percent of all Americans are identified as “infrequent” moviegoers (less than twice a year) and a full 33 percent declared that they never go to the movies.”
Forty-five percent of the American public are “infrequent” moviegoers? Not according to Medved’s source, the MPAA figures. The actual breakdown is as follows (Medved’s book uses the 1990 figures):
|
Frequency of Attendance |
1989 |
1990 |
1991 |
| Frequent (at least once a month) |
24% |
21% |
21% |
| Occasional (once in 2 to 6 months) |
32 |
34 |
34 |
| Infrequent (less than once in 6 months) |
10 |
12 |
12 |
| Never |
32 |
33 |
32 |
| Not reported |
2 |
1 |
1 |
Notice that only 12% of the public is identified as “Infrequent.” So, where does Medved get his 45% figure? My guess is that he added the “Infrequent” and “Never” categories together, and called this new total “Infrequent.” This allows Medved to make the misleading impression that the “Infrequent” and “Never” categories, combined, constitute 78% of the public.
As for Medved’s assertion that Hollywood has “needlessly and stupidly sacrificed the majority of its available audience,” well, the above MPAA data says just the opposite. In the MPAA’s table above, the “Frequent” and “Occasional” categories– the people who still go to movies– constitute 55% of the public surveyed. Last I checked, 55% is a majority.
Later on, Medved writes that “The only numbers which accurately reflect the industry’s ability to connect with the general public are figures on ‘admissions’– the total number of American moviegoers who actually go to the theaters and pay to see Hollywood’s product.”
As far as the admissions statistics go, Medved says that “1991 brought only 960 million motion picture admissions– the lowest total in fifteen years.” [Medved cites Variety as a source; the MPAA figure for this year, compiled more recently, is a comparable 981.9 million.] But between 1980 and 1991, the average attendance is 1,089.2 million admissions– and no year since 1980 has varied more than about ten percent from this average. In fact, 1982, 1983 and 1984 were all 10% higher than that average.
This “lowest in 15 years” is bad for the industry, but it’s speculative at best to say that this shows a massive abandonment of the movies, motivated specifically by moral outrage. It’s more reflective of the home video boom, massive increases in admissions prices (up 81.8% since 1980, while real wages certainly didn’t jump that much), and a bad economy– in spite of Medved’s unsupported claim that the industry is ‘recession-proof.’ And the MPAA’s figures show that in 1980, 1.85 million households owned VCRs. In 1991, this number had increased by a factor of thirty-five, to 67.5 million. It costs perhaps three dollars to rent a video for a family of four. Theater admission is six dollars per person, plus parkingm gas, and effort. It doesn’t seem farfetched to suppose that this might affect theater admissions totals, does it?
But Medved dismisses all of this: since renting a video is like ‘watching television,’ he argues, it doesn’t really count when you’re trying to figure out how well Hollywood is in-touch with the audience. The subjects of home video and variants don’t even turn up in his index, and the idea of “waiting until it comes out on tape” never enters his mind. Medved then adds a snippy footnote about a ‘seeming contradiction’ between abandonment of theaters and the home video boom. Sorry, Medved; it looks more like people are bringing Hollywood product into their homes more often.
Now, we come to Medved’s talk about the MPAA ratings and box-office revenue. Medved asserts that MPAA statistics show that R-rated films aren’t the sure-fire moneymakers that people think they are. Since R-rated films make up 60-65% of Hollywood product, Medved’s argument goes, one would expect them to take up 60-65% of the top 20 earners of the 1980s. But they don’t; in fact, G- and PG-rated films make up what Medved calls a ‘disproportionate share’ of these top 20 earners.
First of all, Medved is talking about twenty films, out of a ten-year output of between 6-6,500 films during the 1980s. Why does Medved base his assertions on such a small sample size, chosen specifically from the upper end of the curve? It’s like polling the richest 0.3 percent of the country about cutting the capital-gains tax.
And Medved isn’t very clear about just how many R, PG or G-rated films are actually in the Top 20. Instead, this is what he writes:
“• Looking over Variety‘s list of the Top 10 box office films of the decade of the 1980s only one– Beverly Hills Cop— happened to be rated R, even though R films accounted for more than 60 percent of all titles released in this period.
• At the same time, PG films represented less than 25 percent of all titles– but occupied six of the top 10 places on the list of the decade’s leading moneymakers.
• If you expand the calculations to consider the twenty leading titles in terms of domestic box-office returns between 1981 and 1990, 55 percent were rated G or PG; only 25 percent were R films.”
Sounds like one of Martin Gardner’s whimsical math puzzles from the old Scientific American, doesn’t it? After some figuring, I came up with the following worksheet:
| MPAA rating |
G |
PG |
R |
Other |
|
Top 10 earners |
6 |
1 |
4 |
|
|
Second 10 earners |
5 |
4 |
||
|
Total (20) |
? |
? |
5 |
4 |
Given the information Medved provides, and a little creative algebra, the reader simply cannot tell exactly how many G or PG films are in the Top 20 hits. Figuring out how many R-rated films are in the top twenty earners is no problem. But the reader is unable to find the breakdowns of the very G- and PG-rated films Medved says are the real moneymakers.
Medved doesn’t even provide the titles of these films, which isn’t surprising. That would enable his readers to understand why these particular films got their ratings, and why they did so well. Hard to Kill, Sophie’s Choice and Naked Lunch got R-ratings for very different reasons. An Indiana Jones picture is more likely to make money than, say, Goldie Hawn in Deceived, and a Disney re-issue will probably outperform a lot of other films, good or bad. Without any other information regarding the content of these films, the only conclusion Medved permits the reader to make is that the MPAA rating alone is a determinant of financial success– which even Medved himself says isn’t true.
Medved’s argument makes sense only if films are distributed evenly, with all competing on an equal basis. How many theaters did all these R-rated films get booked into? ‘Art’ films of specialized interest (Closet Land, My Own Private Idaho) are also likelier to get an R rating, and they aren’t as likely to be booked into the local mall’s GCC Multiplex 8 as the next Steven Speilberg or James Cameron film. And we don’t even need to consider the quality and degree of promotion for any particular film at this stage. These are all factors that affect a film’s revenues, and Medved certainly knows this. Medved’s bio says he was an honors student at Yale; he could simply have included a list of the top 200 earners, complete with MPAA ratings, distribution figures, and gross earnings, made a couple of line graphs with Lotus 1-2-3, and made a simple and clear-cut case. But he doesn’t.
Medved writes of 1991’s releases that “R films comprised 61% of all titles, but only 30 percent of the Top 20 hits; G and PG films, with 16.5 percent of total releases, represented 40 percent of the commercial leaders.” This, he claims, is a ‘disproportionate share.’ In other words, there were six R-rated films– the single largest group in the Top 20– but G and PG films combined totalled eight. (We can assume that, individually, there were fewer than six PG or G films; if there were, Medved wouldn’t have to combine them to manufacture his point.)
Here’s the MPAA ratings breakdown for all films released in 1991:
|
Rating |
Number of Films |
Percent of Total |
| G |
14 |
2.46 |
| PG |
87 |
15.26 |
| PG-13 |
118 |
20.70 |
| R |
375 |
65.79 |
| NC-17/X |
20 |
3.51 |
| Total |
614 |
100.00 |
This leads Medved to write that “. . . a given G or PG rated film is nearly five times more likely to place among the year’s box-office leaders than an R film,” it’s hard to see just how he arrived at this ratio– he refers murkily to statistics of the last ten years which, not surprisingly, he doesn’t outline clearly.
Medved’s assertion about R-films being “less likely” to place in the top 20 rests on three false assumptions. The first is that films are distributed and promoted equally– as we’ve noted before, they aren’t. The second is that the Top 20 is a representative sample of all films released– they aren’t. And the third requires a small thought experiment to reveal its flaws.
Hypothetically, let’s say 1991 went completely against Medved’s assertions– where the top 20 earners consisted of nineteen sleaze-filled Mickey Rourke-David Lynch R-rated films, and only one pink-and-fluffy G-rated Disney cartoon. Even in this worst-of-all-possible-years, that one G-rated film would constitute five percent of the top 20– and remain a ‘disproportionate share,’ since G-rated product accounted for only 2.3% of the total number of films made.
This is why Medved focuses on the Top 20: each film counts as five percent, thus guaranteeing that G-films will always be a ‘disproportionate share’ of the sample base. The same can be said about erotic NC-17 films, for that matter. (This is why most statisticians want large, representative sample bases.)
There appears to be a fourth false assumption, somewhat inferred, in that Medved seems to believe that films only compete against other films within their own MPAA rating category for a fixed number of top 20 slots. This way, an R-rated film competes against 374 others for six slots; a G-rated film competes against 15 others for, perhaps, four or five slots. This isn’t a valid interpretation– films don’t compete within their MPAA rating. (And if the Top 20 rating breakdown is somehow ‘fixed,’ producing more G-rated films isn’t going to affect it, either. The more we look at Medved’s claims, the more they fall apart.)
Medved cites a study by Robert Cain Associates which, according to Medved’s description, was based on 221 films, “representing virtually all of the domestically-produced theatrical films for which 1991 box office figures are currently available.” But Medved doesn’t provide important details about this study, which he commissioned, and which is supposed to support his charges of the industry “misleading the public.” Did the study take into account the number of theaters the films were booked into, and for how long? Seasonal variances (summer blockbusters versus fall releases)? Amount of money spent on promotion? Relative power of the distributor to book the films into good venues for a lengthy run? Medved doesn’t say. And couldn’t Medved have included the study as an appendix to his own book?
Why would Medved go to such trouble to erect these mazes of percentages and half-totals, and on a foundation of false premises and faulty logic? The charitable guess would be incompetence– and I’m not inclined to be very charitable to Medved at this point.
Lamentations
After about three hundred pages of Hollywood-bashing– after describing the movie industry as a group of fanatically liberal, irrational, deranged, and sexually degenerate dogmatists who are unfit to etc., etc.– Medved suddenly shifts gears and adopts a holy “We Shall Overcome” tone. First he talks about how he doesn’t want to advocate censorship; “Official censorship is not the answer, and attempts to move in that direction will always prove counterproductive.”
Indeed. So why doesn’t Medved simply try to make a movie that he’d enjoy? Film critics have written film scripts in the past, and Medved, despite his attacks on The Industry, probably has several friendly contacts and would probably have an easier time of lining up a deal than most of us. I’m certain Medved’s aware of independent filmmakers whose projects got made in spite of their outré nature (Gus Van Sandt, George Romero), and there are international investors who’d be willing to bankroll an explicitly right-wing film. China Cry was financed by the evangelical Trinity Broadcasting Network, Pat Robertson might be willing to invest in return for first-cable-run rights on The Family Channel, and Sun Myung Moon was glad to fund Inchon. The names of conservative actors Charlton Heston and Tom Selleck are sure to attract someone’s money. If Medved’s so certain of this massive family market, shouldn’t he be willing to tap into it and prove his point?
Rather, Medved seems intent on remaking other people’s movies. Entertainment Weekly describes the work of the Dove Foundation, a pastorally-named project that will not only ‘approve’ films for family viewing, but will lobby to have ‘edited’ versions of popular films issued in video stores. Since Michael Medved’s on the board of directors, the families of America need no longer live in fear that Oliver Stone will come shambling along to invade their homes; they can look forward to a future without pissing, puking, liberal politics, nice things about the ’60s, doubts about religious values, or Susan Sarandon on their VCRs.
Medved told Los Angeles magazine that his fear is “being placed in the right-wing, pro-censorship, religious fanatic box. I don’t want to be viewed as a Dan Quayle echo or a Jewish Jesse Helms.” (I wouldn’t even be that nice.) The only thing left is to ask, “What does Michael Medved want from Hollywood and his readers?”
It’s not pretty.
While warning against the ‘temptation of censorship,’ Medved discusses resurrecting, voluntarily, some variant of the Hays Code. Medved doesn’t object to such censorship in principle– he just feels that the Code couldn’t be enforced today, darn it. “The problem is that changes in the fundamental structure of the movie business now make it altogether impossible for a handful of executives to impose a self-policing scheme on the entire industry,” he writes. “The concentration of power in the eight major studios allowed their omnipotent bosses to compel colleagues in every corner of the entertainment community to go along with the Hays office restrictions. If a film violated those standards. . . it wouldn’t be shown, period.” Ah, the good old days.
Medved follows this anti-Hays Code stuff with a call for organized boycotts– that is, decentralized censorship– even though he’s just spent 300 pages saying that people don’t go to movies already. He suggests contacting such ‘watchdog organizations’ as the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association, Ted Baehr’s Christian Film and Television Commission, Christian Leaders for Responsible Television (CLear-TV, another Wildmon project), the Parents’ Music Resource Center, and Bob deMoss’s Focus on the Family. In other words, the loony Right.
Medved characterizes the efforts of Wildmon, DeMoss, et al as “nothing more than an impassioned and appropriate participation in the give-and-take of the free marketplace of ideas.” Well, Ted Baehr used to circulate materials depicting anti-apartheid activists in South Africa as bloodthirsty maniacs. Focus on the Family endorses Creationism and the corporal punishment of children. I’ve got a packet of PMRC materials on Satanism jam-packed with hysteria.
In his Radio Times interview, Medved says that “there are people who keep track of these things,” but he didn’t mention that these people were evangelical Christian extremists. The Journal of the American Family Association, which Medved cites as a research source several times in his book, is devoted to cataloguing incidences of sex acts, religion jokes, and tolerant statements about gays and lesbians in the media; it encourages efforts of censors, bigots and right-wing cranks across the country. Rev. Donald Wildmon, founder of the AFA, was condemned as an anti-Semite by other churches for publishing a list of Jews working in Hollywood. Not surprisingly, there is nary a warning about the extremism of these groups in Medved’s book.
In fact, Focus on the Family’s Bob DeMoss, who calls for a “Civil War of Values” in this country, is something of a Medved resource; not only is his obscenity count of a 2 Live Crew album called ‘heroic’ by Medved, but the dust jacket includes a laudatory blurb from this ‘youth culture specialist.’ Medved cites this organization several times as a reliable source.
Medved himself whines that the movie industry listens to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD) more often than, specifically, the American Family Association. Los Angeles magazine reports that, at a lecture in an Orange County synagogue, Medved complained nobody was making films about heroic Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf. Instead, Medved wailed, Hollywood was preparing a film about Diego Rivera’s lover, Latina painter Frida Kahlo– whom Medved described as “a lesbian with a mustache.” I wasn’t aware that bigotry was a ‘family value.’
It should be mentioned that Medved tries to come across as a reasonable and humane person who is opposed to censorship. Even otherwise reasonable humanists like Steve Allen have been taken in by this pose, and have endorsed Medved’s cultural crusade. Since Medved’s ‘traditional values’ apparently include know-nothing bigotry, uncritical myth-acceptance, suspicion of artistic expression– as well as poor math skills– I think it’s a crusade we’d better fight against.
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